Thematic Analysis of Branding Linkages in the Video and Textual Content: A Study of Facebook and Twitter Handles of Narendra Modi

Abstract

Is anything in common between Nehru’s, Indira’s, Gandhi’s and Modi’s communication strategy? All the four political leaders have been taller than the parties they led. All of them dominated the political discourses of their times. All of them used main stream media of their times to pitch their policy decisions. All of them made iconic fashion statements. Indira’s saree swag, Gandhi’s love for Khadi, Nehru’s jacket and Modi’s half sleeves Kurta- set them apart from the crowded league of the politicians of their respective eras.
If we further broaden the horizon of comparison, rhetoric seems to have yielded rich dividends for a number of Indian political leaders. If Lal Bahadur Shastri will be remembered for “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan”; "Tum mujhe khoon do, mai tumhe azadi doonga" will evoke the visuals of Subhash Chandra Bose; “Swaraj Mera Janmsiddh adhikar Hai” will trigger the thoughts of Bal Gangadhar Tilak; “Bharat Chhoro” will put in the forefront the ideology that Mahatma Gandhi epitomized. On similar lines, Indira Gandhi’s “Garibi Hatao, Desh bachao” immortalized her.
The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be remembered for a number of slogans and hashtags (#) coined and released through various social media handles. #MannkiBaat, #SwachBharatAbhiyaan, #MadeinIndia, #Atmnirbharbharat, #SkillIndia, #AzaadikaAmritmahotsav, #ParikshaPecharcha, #Examwarrior, #NaMo, #Vocalforlocal, #HarharModi,GharGharModi, #Chaipecharcha are some top recall taglines Narendra Modi will be associated with.
So, is political communication/marketing all about generating top recall punchlines and delivering them with effervescence?
The current paper undertakes a thematic analysis of 111 social media posts of Narendra Modi between March 2021 to Oct 2021, from Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/narendramodi/) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/narendramodi) handles using NVivo. On the political front, assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry and Assam; Farmer’s Protest and Covid were the key highlights of the timeframe.
The analysis is conducted on the transcriptions of 70 Facebook and Twitter video posts, out of which 42 Video posts are from Facebook and 28 Video posts are from Twitter handles of the political leader. In addition to these, 21 textual posts from Facebook and 20 textual posts from Twitter are also analyzed to arrive at the findings. The findings of the study are presented in the form of frequency tables, word clouds as well as hierarchy charts.
The methodology deployed for data collection is convenience sampling. In all a total of 1338.42 minutes of audio-visual content and 1000 words of textual content from the two social media handles of Narendra Modi have been analyzed. The paper draws from various studies on branding and applies them to political markets to develops a framework of political branding and its elements. An attempt has further been made to arrive at the branding attributes of the themes identified from the analysis of the content. The study aims to fulfill the following research objectives: (i) To identify the major themes and categories in the textual posts on Facebook and Twitter handles of Narendra Modi; (ii) To identify the major themes and categories in the video posts on Facebook and Twitter handles of Narendra Modi; (iii) To outline the branding strategies deployed by the political actors; (iv)To identify the characteristics of social media posts that contribute to brand perception of political actors; (v) To understand the relationship between the themes, categories and the branding linkages of textual posts on Facebook and Twitter handles of Narendra Modi; (vi) To understand the relationship between the themes, categories and the branding linkages of video posts on Facebook and Twitter handles of Narendra Modi.
The findings, reflect health, personalization and religion as the dominant themes in terms of counts in the leader’s Facebook textual posts. In terms of category wise weighted percentage, (i) content strategy, signified by the choice of persuasive verbs, (ii) nationalism, (iii) credibility, (iv) regional connect emerged as the key attributes. The sum of the weighted percentage from branding elements perspective revealed content strategy, followed by political product and collaborative stakeholder community as the dominant narrative for the timeframe under study.
In the thematic analysis of the transcriptions of Modi’s Facebook video posts, content design/strategy dominates on all the three accounts- theme wise count, category wise weighted percentage and branding elements weighted percentage. Nationalism, personalization, issue ownership, regional connect, collaborative stakeholder community and political product offerings (i.e. policy, party and leader) again dominated the political discourse for the timeframe of the study.
On Twitter, in the textual posts segment, content design, governance followed by nationalism topped the theme wise counts. In terms of category wise weighted percentage, the thematic analysis points to development, finance/economy and governance as dominant trends. Credibility and political product were the leading branding elements for the segment.
Finally, the analysis of the transcriptions of the video posts on the leader’s Twitter handle underscores, content design, nationalism and personalization as the dominant count wise themes. Category wise segmentation points to content strategy, issue ownership and nationalism as the key aspects. As for the branding elements in the segment, political product, content strategy, credibility and collaborative stakeholders’ community are found to be the dominant trends.