Know Your Leader: Cabinet 2019 Summary

The Know Your Leader series began with an intention to highlight the way social media has become an integral part of political communication.

We analysed the social media presence for every Cabinet Minister in 2019. The need was felt for we could see that most conversations around the use of social media by Indian politicians centred around a handful of ministers, especially Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Upon a closer look, we realised that his presence has created ripples among his colleagues and trends started to emerge. 

While almost all politicians use social media to document their work in an official capacity, some are vocal in using these mediums to share personal opinions. In some cases, optimal use of platforms could be observed with creatives being tailored for the medium. Video and live streaming on social media has been a popular choice.

Though there is some distinction in content strategy for each social media platform, it is evident that most of these leaders thread creatives from OOH hoardings rather than creating content for specific feeds. Another concern is that a huge chunk of politicians, especially independents, don’t have basic professional-looking pages. 

This initiative is our attempt to unravel issues at hand and bridge the knowledge and resources gaps in the political marketing landscape.

Tools used

The statistics used in the series have been recorded with the help of free online tools — IG Audit and SparkToro. 

SparkToro audit analyses a sample of 2,000 random accounts that follow the handle, then looks at over 25 factors correlated with spam/bot/low-quality accounts. None of these, alone, indicate a spam/low-quality account. However, when many factors are present, there’s a strong correlation with low quality.

IG Audit fetches up to 200 random followers for the input user. For each follower, the algorithm looks at things like the number of posts, follower/following counts, username, and whether the account is private/public, and outputs a score between 0 and 1, one being real. The average of these probability scores across all 200 accounts is examined to compute the final result. The follower reachability is one of the things the algorithm emphasises on. The tool averages likes and comments from up to 12 of the user's most recent posts.

Observations

• Most politicians use social media to share official updates and news.
• Quite a few creatives shared are made in the layout akin to political hoardings.
• Almost none of the politicians are indulging in conversations with people.
• Most Cabinet Ministers do not have official profiles on Instagram.
• Ones who use Instagram seem to be optimally using the platform. 
• The profiles of most Cabinet Ministers are efficiently documenting events. 
• Most ministers indulge in sharing the agenda of the party they belong to.
• There are gaps when it comes to using social media to build a personal brand. 
• Most content posted by ministers are pieces of broadcasts, there is no conversation. 
• They are not using the various features of social media platforms optimally. 

You can read about the individual ministers here. To download the Know Your Leader: Concise Social Media Analysis — Cabinet 2019, please fill the form below: