research

published

1. 

   Poster: Experiences of Journalists on Twitter in India

   Soham De*, Sukhnidh Kaur*, and Joyojeet Pal

   🏆 Best Poster Award

   In ACM SIGCHI Symposum for HCI and Friends 2022

   Web
2. 

   Closed Ranks: The Discursive Value of Military Support for Indian Politicians

   Agrima Seth*, Soham De*, Arshia Arya, and 3 more authors

   In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Information & Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) 2022

   Abstract Web PDF

   Influencers play a crucial role in shaping public narratives through information creation and diffusion in the Global South. While public figures from various walks of life and their impact on public discourse have been studied, defence veterans as influencers of the political discourse have been largely overlooked. Veterans matter in the public spehere as a normatively important political lobby. They are also interesting because, unlike active-duty military officers, they are not restricted from taking public sides on politics, so their posts may provide a window into the views of those still in the service. In this work, we systematically analyze the engagement on Twitter of self-described defence-related accounts and politician accounts that post on defence-related issues. We find that self-described defence-related accounts disproportionately engage with the current ruling party in India. We find that politicians promote their closeness to the defence services and nationalist credentials through engagements with defence-related influencers. We briefly consider the institutional implications of these patterns and connections

3. 

   Note: Picking Sides: The influencer-driven #HijabBan discourse on Twitter

   Soham De, Anmol Panda, and Joyojeet Pal

   In Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS) 2022

   Abstract Web PDF

   Social Media is increasingly central to culture wars, and in recent years has been at the center of debates around the weaponization of peoples’ opinions in polarized situations. We examine one such issue, an attempt to allow schools and junior colleges to ban girls from wearing Hijab in India in the southern state of Karnataka, India, by studying Twitter messaging related to the issue in early 2022, when it was in the news. We find that the narrative supporting the ban of the Hijab on Twitter is primarily driven by a minority of highly-influential individuals who are predominantly male and polarised in favour of the ruling party, while the discourse against the ban relies largely on influencers from within the Muslim community. Our findings show that social media can be a useful tool to craft the contours of politically-motivated escalation in the Global South.

4. 

   DISMISS: Database of Indian Social Media Influencers on Twitter

   Arshia Arya*, Soham De*, Dibyendu Mishra*, and 12 more authors

   In Proceedings of the 16th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) 2022

   Abstract Web PDF Dataset

   Databases of highly networked individuals have been indispensable in studying narratives and influence on social media. To support studies on Twitter in India, we present a systematically categorized database of accounts of influence on Twitter in India, identified and annotated through an iterative process of friends, networks, and self-described profile information, verified manually. We built an initial set of accounts based on the friend network of a seed set of accounts based on real-world renown in various fields, and then snowballed “friends of friends" multiple times, and rank ordered individuals based on the number of in-group connections, and overall followers. We then manually classified identified accounts under the categories of entertainment, sports, business, government, institutions, journalism, civil society accounts that have independent standing outside of social media, as well as a category of “digital first" referring to accounts that derive their primary influence from online activity. Overall, we annotated 11580 unique accounts across all categories. The database is useful studying various questions related to the role of influencers in polarization, misinformation, extreme speech, political discourse etc.

ongoing

1. Towards a definition and quantification of Twitter Formality

   Soham De, Anirban Sen, Debayan Gupta, and 2 more authors

   2022

   Abstract

   Formality has often been regarded as among the most important dimensions of stylistic variation in text. Quantifying formality has applications across several areas including conversational dialogue systems, corporate communications, text summarisation, automated writing assessment and general socio-linguistic analysis. In this study, we attempt to define formality on Twitter through an extensive user survey and use state-of-the-art language models, along with various other linguistic measures to quantify levels of formality. We also aim to introduce robust sampling techniques to allow unbiased data annotation on Twitter data.

2. 

   Trends in Online Propaganda: A Comparative Study

   Anirban Sen, Soham De, and Joyojeet Pal

   arXiv (preprint) 2022

   Abstract

   Social media is increasingly becoming a source of propaganda and misinformation. We collect twitter data on two propaganda events and one non-propaganda event with varying degrees of propagandist messaging, and study the participation of mainstream media, digital influencers, and politicians in the networks around them. We find that the extent of participation of these influential entities varies across events, depending on the nature, target groups, and frequency of the events. Temporal analysis of social media communities around these events also provides evidence of how their communities vary in their leadership over time.

3. 

   Hierarchical Association, Harmonized Aggravation, and Hashtag Assemblies: A Dogma Community keeping its Twitter Candle Lit

   Anirban Sen, Soham De, and Joyojeet Pal

   arXiv (preprint) 2022

   Abstract

   Staying relevant in the hearts and minds of the general populace is increasingly driven by social media footprint. Using a mixed-methods approach, we examine the online activity of a community of social media accounts engaged in collective action to keep the death of an Indian movie star, and its investigation, alive on social media. We find that the community develops de-facto hierarchies, which engineer large assemblages of social media activity online. The use of affordances, language, coercion, and temporal organization allows us unique insight both into how coordinated activity can keep an issue alive online, and also into how a dogma community fashions itself around an unwavering narrative.

4. 

   The Troll’s Toolkit: A mixed-methods study on how journalists are trolled on Indian Twitter

   Soham De*, Sukhnidh Kaur*, and Joyojeet Pal

   under submission 2022

   Abstract

   The rise of political polarization has led to an increase in targeted online trolling of public commentators such as journalists. In this paper, we adopt a mixed-methods approach to understand the mechanisms and consequences of online trolling of journalists on Indian Twitter. We conducted in-depth interviews with 20 high-profile journalists and a large-scale analysis of public engagement with Indian journalists’ Twitter activity. We find that (a) high-organized troll networks use a variety of tactics to target journalists’ identities and credibility using right-wing populist narratives, and in turn, (b) journalists are increasingly self-censoring using methods such as amplifying rather than authoring tweets. Our work highlights the challenges of professional journalism in polarized environments with organized trolling, underlining the risks to the social media driven news environment

5. 

   Catch, Corroborate and Communicate: The Contours of Professional fact-Checking In India

   Arshia Arya, Soham De, Saloni Dash, and 1 more author

   arXiv (preprint) 2022

   Abstract

   The work of professional fact-checking involves three broad processes - selection of the issues that need to be fact-checked, verifying a story that is flagged as being a falsehood, and finally disseminating a fact-checked version of a story, each of which have unique challenges. We conducted in-depth interviews on their professional practice with fact-checkers of five major organizations that work in debunking stories daily, alongside conducted a large-scale analysis of the archives of fact-checked articles and studied the social media footprint of fact-checkers from these organizations. Our findings show that the outcomes of work with each of the three processes influence what stories get debunked by organizations, how much public impact they have, and the depth of debunking in each story, all of which in turn play a role in the scope and breadth of individual organizations’ impact. Our findings have implications from both the supply side of how organizations can place themselves within the fact-checking ecosystem, and from the demand side of how consumers can consider the work and positioning of their preferred fact-checkers.

media

1. 

   Who are BJP’s favourite journalists? What about Congress and AAP? A Michigan study reveals

   Soham De, and Joyojeet Pal

   Newslaundry 2022

   Web
2. 

   Coordinated campaign? India #1 source for pro-Russia tweets amid Ukraine war, says Ashoka study

   Regina Mihindukulasuriya, and Soham De

   The Print 2022

   Web