For over a decade the ruling BJP has been a dominant force on social media—primarily on X and Facebook. A highly organised social media outreach, thousands of handles, among them many ‘bots’, all with a quicksilver ability to generate trends, memes, viral videos, mass retweets and buzzy hashtags. This social media mobilisation—as well-organised as the BJP’s formidable on ground cadres—contributed crucially to the Hindu Right wing’s power to influence national chatter and determine media priorities.
Currently, Modi has over 101 million followers on X and the BJP official handle has 22.2 million followers.
But today, the same social media is a shrieky millstone around the government’s neck, pushing the Modi government into a meekly defensive corner. Top government functionaries are suffering from X obsession, complicit and deeply influenced by “nationalist” X handles.
