Social Media and Hate Politics in India: A study on

the use of Media as a tool of political

propaganda

ABSTRACT
This study explores how does a political speech on Media shape the political ideology and behaviour of social media
users. Social media gives a much larger space for freedom of expression but within this new platform, hate can also be
shared freely. The following paper also focuses on the impact and spreading of hate Speech delivered by politicians
among social media users. The main purpose of the study is a) to analyse the content of speech used by politicians on
media, and b) to explore the use and impact of media as a tool of political propaganda, c) whether speaker uses wrong
facts and figures in their speech. For this research, the literature on hate speech in India, the theory of political
propaganda, media content analysis and the use of social media are reviewed to make an effective correlation with its
analysis. Moreover, this study employs a content analysis as a research design to analyse the political speech in videos
of all national political parties. Videos are taken from Official YouTube channels. The duration has taken just before
the state assembly elections in the five states (Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana)
during November and December 2018.
Keywords: Political Propaganda, Hate Speech, Media, Political Speech, Persuade

1. Introduction
The internet revolution has readdressed the notion of communications. Along with positive changes, such as,
‘empowering individuals’ who were voiceless before, the internet created ‘access to cost-effective’, ‘easy and
highspeed communication’ irrespective of individuals’ social status. However, the internet has made the world a small
and connected place, in addition to this it has also created a space for hate speech. It soon became an ideal place to
facilitate outspreading political propaganda. According to a report by Law Commission of India (2017),

The term “hate speech” has been used invariably to mean expression which is abusive, insulting,
intimidating, harassing or which incites violence, hatred or discrimination against groups identified by
characteristics such as one’s race, religion, place of birth, residence, region, language, caste or
community, sexual orientation or personal convictions.
(Law Commission of India, 2017)

A chain of continues inciting speeches during campaigning in India's General Election 2014 has brought the issue of
"hate speech" in focus. In this series of provocative speeches president of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Amit Shah
was charge-sheeted for reported hate speech in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, although later on it has been rejected by
the court (Varma, 2014). Addressing a rally, Shah said that “This election is about voting out the government that
protects and gives compensation to those who killed Jats.” (Indian Express, 2014). He further said that “It is about
badla (revenge) and protecting izzat (honour)” (Indian Express, 2014). The issue of political propaganda has presumed
greater noteworthiness in the era of the internet since the accessibility of the internet allows to influence a greater
number of audiences in a short duration of time. In the past, most of the researches centered around the use and effects
of political propaganda on democracies, hate speech on social media and media content analysis on online hate speech.
But less importance has been given to the analysis of hate speech as a tool of political propaganda on media to
influence the audience. Several studies on the impacts of online hate speech show that the greater insecurity,
nevertheless, can stem from the normalization of hate through social media. The goal of the hate groups is not only to
publish the content that contains messages but also to make such content take shape as a normal part of society. The
purpose of this study is to find out how political parties are using social media as a tool of propaganda. Whether and
how they are using Hate Speech content in their speech on respected Official media platforms
This paper reveals how accurate the facts are in the speech given by politicians on YouTube, this study also answered
that how these speeches shape the political ideology and behaviour of the users of YouTube with the help of user
comments.
2. Review of Literature
A National Report-Italy titled 'Media Content Analysis on Online Hate Speech' (Palazzetti et al., 2017) was compiled
under the Coalition of Positive Messengers to Counter Online Hate Speech project. This report evaluated that there is a
need for better civil society reaction to online hate speech by spreading good practices and through the active
participation of local people in creating and disseminating powerful counter-statement against hatred discourse.
Another work on ‘Hate Speech: Key concept paper’ by Elliott, Chuma and others (2016) in a working paper,
deliberated the concept of ‘Hate Speech’ (Elliot et al., 2016). The findings of their paper show that the notion of hate
speech is central to debates over the role of the media in encouraging democratic processes and outcomes, and it is
only to the specific media platform, journalistic practices of a nation, and the extent of government control of the
media.
Langham & Gosha (2018) conducted research over 'The Classification of Aggressive Dialogue in Social
Media Platforms. They concluded that considering aggressive behaviour as the overarching category puts a study into
a better perspective when evaluating human behaviour; hostile behaviour isn't a subcategory of hate, hate is a
subcategory of violent behaviour (Langham & Gosha, 2018). Laswell (1927) research study 'The Theory of Political
Propaganda' shows propaganda is the control of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbols
(Laswell, 1927). It explained that financial depression and growing political conflict had incited widespread
depression, and this made most people defenceless to even crude forms of propaganda. Gelashvili (2018) research
study ‘Hate Speech on Social Media’ provided various conclusions in context to hate speech. It’s first conclusion
includes that hate speech has long been a problem affecting a wide circle of society, primarily minorities, and the
second conclusion advocated that privatized regulation itself poses serious challenges not only with regards to hate
speech but issues such as privacy, pornography, etc. (Gelashvili, 2018).

3. Research Methodology
Qualitative content analysis technique is used as a research design for this study. The qualitative content analysis is an
appropriate method for e-research, though it is often related to the analysis of text documents and for e-research, the
documents are often e-mail, chats and computer conferencing transcripts. For this study, videos related to elections,
shared by the national political parties which have their. Convenience sampling technique is employed for the study to
select the sample, and total nine videos are selected as a sample for each political party separately.The duration for the
sampling in this study considered as two months i.e. these political parties on channels during months of August and
September 2018 are analysed. The reason behind the selection of this duration for the study is state assembly elections
in the five states namely Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana in November and
December 2018.
All the facts given by politician are cross-checked on the Official websites to the respected Government
departments, Press Information Bureau and reputed news websites. In addition to this, all the considered facts are
further cross-checked with multiple sources. Ten comments from each selected video have been considered for the
analysis, and every sixth comment selected randomly after the first ten comments are left out with sorting (newest
first) according to the accessed date. Microsoft Excel has been used to analyze the data throughout the study.

4.1. Hate Speech and Political Propaganda

Hate Speech has been a critical issue during the time of India's General Election 2014, and also for the General
Election 2019. Many politicians have been accused of inciting hatred among different religious groups. To halt this
type of hate speeches the Election Commission of India has established a panel to examine the growing use of
platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube and recommended ways to deal with violations for the General
Election 2019 (Pradhan & Beniwal, 2018; Pradhan et al., 2018). Despite that, the study identified a Hate Speech
content in the political speech in the video on YouTube (See Appendix-A). During addressing the
“karayakartaMahakumbh Rally” in Bhopal, Amit Shah, President of BJP mentioned “Refugees in Assam” and said, “
NRC aane k baad 40 lakh ghuspethiye chinhit ho gye, Ghuspethiye desh k bahar jaane chahiye” (after NRC, 40 lakh
intruders were marked, the intruder should leave out the country) (Bharatiya Janata Party, 2018c). The Citizenship
Amendment Bill allows migrants of the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Parsi or Sikh religious communities but does
not extend to illegal Muslim migrants (India Today, 2018). Moreover, this shows that the speech is not only about
refugees but have relation with the Muslim migrants inciting hatred against them.
4.2. Characteristics of Political Speech on media
The study and thorough analysis of the videos finds a common objective in all the videos is that all the speakers tried
to persuade the audience. They are using biased facts to glorify their own party and diminishing image of the opponent
party, it finds very common that all the speakers uses emotional appeal to build a close relationship with the audience
and creating a ‘we feeling’ with them. It is also evident that they make use of aggressive 1 tone to show their
dedication towards people, party and nation. (See appendix-A)

4.3. Political Speech and their facts

An evaluation into the figure-1 reveals that the politicians employ false facts in their speeches, and especially in the
videos uploaded on their parties’ Official YouTube channels. Moreover, they largely make use of incomplete,
halfbaked2 and unproven facts that cannot be labelled as ‘True’ or ‘False’ to influence public opinion in their favour.
Like as mentioned in appendix B, Kapil Sibal (INC) said “22000 jobs would’ve been created if HAL was awarded the
Rafale deal” (Indian National Congress, 2018c), but we are not able to find any evidence or proof for such facts. Also,
this type of facts attracts the attention of the audience which helps to shape the ideology of the people in favour of
their own political party. However, on analyze the facts presented in appendix B, it observed that around 61% of facts
are true and undisputed, which supports the incomplete facts to look to be true.

4.4. Issues raised in political speeches on YouTube

The analysis in the study shows that the issues raised in political speeches by the speakers of the political parties
before legislative elections were related to the development of the people and the nation. As evident from the speech
of Shivraj Singh Chauhan, former Chief Minister, State of Madhya Pradesh where he spoke about the various schemes
implementing in the state. He gave details about different development schemes for varied section of society like
Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) for farmers, Ladli Laxmi Yojana for girls, PM Ujjwala Yojana for
women etc. (Bharatiya Janata Party, 2018c). On the other hand, the analysis showed that opposition party i.e. INC
raised the issues of Rafale Deal and claimed it as Rafale scam under the BJP lead government and all the four
analyzed videos of INC raised this issue as Rafale Scam (Indian National Congress, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c, and 2018d).
Along with this, Dr. Chandrabhan Singh raised issues where the ruling party lack behind in fulfilling aspirations of
people like women safety, unemployment, corruption, inflation etc. (Indian National Congress, 2018b). Appendix-A
further discussed the various issues raised by the speakers of the political parties in videos.

4.5 YouTube comments and political propaganda

The very important characteristic of Social Media is ‘Interactivity’ which gives instant feedback to the sender. In
YouTube Videos, the sender gets feedback from the ‘comments’ of the users. The research systematically analyzed the
comments to find out the impact of speech over the viewers. It shows that viewers get influenced by the speaker, as
evident from the comments that around 90% of the users commented in favour of the same political party as that of the
speaker. All the analyzed comments are mentioned in Appendix-C.

4.6 Allegations and clarification

The research found that all the political parties make use of allegations over members of opposition parties to diminish
the image of opposition party. However, all the politicians provide clarifications time-to-time on influencing
allegations on them. Like in the National Herald case, Rahul Gandhi said,

I absolutely see a political vendetta. I will answer them in Parliament. The Centre thinks they can stop me
from asking questions about them by vendetta politics. That is not going to happen.
(Times of India, 2015; India Today, 2015b).

These allegations and clarification process are ongoing where facts remain hidden for a long time and this is how
political propaganda proliferate.

1 Aggressive, behaving in an angry and violent way towards another person. (Cambridge University Press, n.d.a)
2
5. Conclusion
The research concludes that politicians make use of social media as a tool of political propaganda to influence the
audience. Politicians employ half-baked truth in their speech to persuade voters. Politicians also use hate speech
content in their speech to shape the ideology of the viewers. Issues raised in the political speeches, available on
Official YouTube channels of political parties are largely based on the development affairs. It is evident from the
comments that YouTube videos affect the opinion of the audience. Moreover, the politicians try to diminish the image
of the competitive parties by putting forth biased facts which praises their own political party.
 PMFBY, Tribes, Dalit,
Transgender, Women,
Development, Ram
Rajya, Ujjwala
Yojana, Ayushman
Yojana, Surgical
Development, Rafale Ca
Strike, Poverty, Corruption,
Infrastructure, Employm
Issues raised Booth, Sambal Aanganwadi and National Herald Case Development Rafale Case,
Women, Developm
Yojana, NRC, Asha Karyakarta
Education, Health Nation
allegations on
Congress, Start-up,
Stand-up Yojana, Jan
Dhan Yojana, PM
Krishi Sinchayee
Yojana, RSBY
Aggressive Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Persuasive Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Influential Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Biased Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Hate Speech FOUND NOT FOUND NOT FOUND NOT FOUND NOT FOUND NOT FOUND NOT FO
Emotional appeal Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

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