Sunday, 13 Oct, 2024
What is it about the platform that makes it so constantly contentious?
When you look at controversies in India, most seem to be triggered by a Tweet. Take the massive brouhaha over allegedly offensive remarks made against Prophet Mohammed. While former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma made the remarks during a TV show, the issue became a global one full of outrage after fact checker Mohammed Zubair issued a tweet related to her remarks. More recently, just one tweet by documentary film maker Leena Manimekalai which had a poster showing Goddess Kali smoking a cigarette and holding a LGTB banner triggered a paroxysm of outrage in India. Once again, while TMC Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra attracted anger by stating that that Goddess Kali was a smoking and alcohol accepting diety during a TV show, it was her subsequent tweets of defiance that raised the temperatures even further. Then again, the media has been giving full coverage to Twitter filing a petition in Karnataka High Court challenging the take down notices and other instructions issued to it by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology.
Somehow, Twitter manages to stay in the news, usually for controversial reasons. This is surprising because it is the smallest social media platform in India with the least number of active users. As the accompanying chart shows, other social media platforms are giants compared to the “tiny” Twitter. The largest of them is What’s App with more than 530 million active users. It is followed by You Tube with almost 450 million users. Then come FaceBook and Instagram with 420 and 220 million users respectively. Twitter is way behind with just about 16 million users. These are official figures released by MEITY in 2021. Since then, industry estimates indicate that there has been a growth in user base of all platforms with Instagram showing the most spectacular increase in number of users. But none generate as much controversy as Twitter?
What is it about the platform that makes it so constantly contentious? For one, the 280 character limit for a single Tweet leaves no room for nuance and leads to users taking maximalist positions. Then again, the algorithms used by Twitter are such that its users often appear as members of two warring tribes. There is rarely any conversation on Twitter.it is usually people belonging to ideological poles hurling abuses at each other. This has been evident in both the Nupur Sharma and Mahua Moitra episodes. In the first instance, it was extremist Muslims and Hindus abusing each other to the point that even two innocent citizens in Udaipur and Amravati were brutally killed even though they did not send any tweets. In the later case, it is “liberals” and right wing Hindu groups hurling abuses at each other. Perhaps the biggest, and often neglected reason is the fact that Tweets by influential personalities and celebrities are made “viral” by the hundreds of thousands of What’s App groups across the country. On its own, with just about 1% of India’s population using Twitter, there would not be much scope for controversy. Ironically, it seems to be What’s App that makes Twitter so controversial.
