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Usage of Twitter in UP 2017 State Legislative Election by Three National Political Parties

· Pages: 2702-2719· Vol. 6, No. 5, (2022)· Published: May 19, 2022
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Abstract

Political communication is as old as politics; it is often an arena where varied groups of individuals engage in political discourse. Previously, political conversation among the upper class was regarded as a privilege (Schattschneider 1997) and was undertaken via traditional, print, or electronic media. However, the advent of new media has fundamentally transformed the nature of political communication.

Since the last decade, political communication, formerly dominated by the ruling elite, has created a larger space for everyday citizens to participate in political discourse. It has evolved into such a powerful instrument that it has upended the top-down communication method typical in politics and created a forum for citizens to communicate and voice their concerns. It has gained prominence in politics and election campaign strategy. Citizens and political parties can now debate politics no matter where they are because of the massive growth in new media.

As a result, this research study explores the three national political parties in India's adoption and use of Twitter during the 2017 Uttar Pradesh legislative election. This article conducts a content analysis of all tweets sent from the official accounts of political parties throughout the period. To gather these statistics, the advanced search feature on Twitter was employed. Individual tweets are used as the unit of analysis. Tweets were analyzed by categorizing them. This article examines the frequency with which parties' official accounts tweet. What are the political parties tweeting about?

Keywords: Political Communication, Twitter, Social Media, Elections, 2017 UP State Assembly Election

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Author details
Neha Pandey
a:1:{s:5:"en_US";s:20:"Berhampur University";}
✉ Corresponding Author
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