Milking Fake Tweets » SCAMSUTRA

This blog (link below) is remarkably well researched and shows the NDTV for what it is.

Milking Fake Tweets » SCAMSUTRA

(Disclaimer:- This disclaimer is for NDTV who unleash lawyers for stamping out free speech. I am neither an admirer of NDTV, nor of Ms. Dutt. My image gallery is proof of that. This article does not explicitly imply or state that NDTV uses fake tweets to distort public debate. I have stated my opinion.)

This show was supposed to be a discussion about the situation of Mr. Shanti Bhushan and Mr. Prashant Bhushan who are being accused without proof. A television channel is expected to be neutral, but this show appeared to be part of a media trial of Bhushans.

So I did a little experiment with this episode available online at ndtv.com website.

Show – The Buck Stops Here (NDTV) presented by Barkha Dutt

Date – 20^th April, 2011

Methodology – I switched off the sound and made a note of visuals presented during the show.

(Note: I switched on sound briefly only once to listen to Agnivesh’s famous comment at 40th minute, as pointed out by folks on Twitter. This comment has been preserved at Mutiny along with a contest. Thanks toJayant Gajria for the tip.)

My Observations

Visuals in the show had 2 categories of graphics: Captions Twitter Buzz Both these are labeled in the screenshot.

Visual Category 1 – CAPTIONS

Please note the subtle but aggressive build-up in captions rotated throughout the show:

• Anti-Corruption Drive
• Hit by Controversies
• Lokpal Panel Co-chair in CD row
• Bhushan & Sons
• Bhushans embroiled in CD Row
• CD: Chat between Bhushan, Mulayam
• CD: Phone Chat about fixing a judge
• Conflict of Interest?
• Smear Campaign?
• After CD, Land Row
• Bhushans in Land Row
• The ‘Plot’ Thickens
• Serious Improprities?
• Should Bhushans Quit?

My conclusion – There is a clear negative spin in captions to defame the Bhushans in a show where they are not present to defend their position. This is also known as a Media Trial

Visual Category 2 – TWITTER BUZZ

Out of all the tweets presented in this visual, I found these most interesting.

Irrespective of the fact whether the Bhushans are corrupt or not they should quit. We can’t give them preferential treatment.….@Forever_Tarun (Tarun Arora)

How can a few unelected, ‘self-declared honest pple’ hijack d democratic process&claim 2 represent 120 crore ppl? #annahazare….@neutralviews (neutral)

caesars wife has to be above suspicion. But having said that there wud b no1 left in civil society since v r all suspect 2sum extent….@iamrana (Rana)

A glance at twitter time-line of these worthies revealed that they belong to the Barkha Dutt Fan Club. Their tweets conveniently supported the agenda she was pushing in this episode.

It reminds me of those suspicious “viewer telephone calls” and “audience questions” which anchors often use in their shows.

The following tweet is more interesting:

those in eye of storm should quit. the movement is too important to be disturbed by such issues. ….@abhijain03 (Abhishek Jain)

Now Mr. Abhishek Jain is an interesting character because his account @abhijain03 has only 2 tweets so far!

The first tweet was on 19^th March and second just happened to be on the day of Barkha’s show.

The non-communicative Mr. Jain has 16 followers out of which 10 are females. Actually, only 9, because 1 girl “Anshu Daga” likes him so much that she follows him through 2 identical accounts!

The status of these 9 mysterious followers (on 21 April)

Name	Twitter Account	Date of First Tweet	Total Tweets
Anshu Daga	anshudaga5	17 March	20
Anshu Daga	anshudaga6	23 March	21
Malina Maloo	MalinaMaloo5	21 March	20
Hansika Goenka	HansikaGoenka6	21 March	20
Jayanti Dugar	JayantiDugar7	20 March	19
Deveshi Baid	DeveshiBaid5	20 March	20
Hemaksh Jhajharia	HemakshiJ97	16 March	20
Aashritha Bangad	aashrithab141	15 March	20
Ishta Dalmia	IshtaDalmia4	8 March	21
Jigyasa Gadia	JigyasaGadia3	23 Feb	10

List of Coincidences

• All accounts set up in the last one month (except JigyasaGadia3)
• None of the accounts has a bio
• In each account, tweets are made in batches of 10 on 2 days only. This gives us 2 x 10 = 20 tweets
• They do not appear to be bot accounts because tweets are not uniform and there is no spam
• All are accounts have female names
• All have photographs of attractive females with similar numerical filenames
• None of these accounts has tweeted to ANYONE
• These 9 females (2 are same) follow Abhishek Jain even though he has tweeted only twice (it was once, before 10^th). So they must be his friends… right? But then, he is not following ANY OF THEM.

This means they are not friends. In that case, who are they?

Observations

• All accounts have collected 120-220 genuine followers by following 500-800 people
• These accounts are not bots
• Someone is creating a number of such accounts
• Someone maintains these accounts by posting 10 tweets, once every 2 weeks
• Accounts like anshudaga3, anshudaga5, anshudaga6 and anshudaga7 are created at different times and kept active simultaneously
• 10 out of 16 such accounts are followers of a similar account which was quoted in a TV show with a tweet that conveniently supported the show’s agenda

Note: The following section has been updated. Confusion was caused by the address @ShaliniSharma displayed on TV.

Do put the ministers on the Lokpal Bill committee under same scrutiny. Can’t wait for that ….@ShaliniSharma_ (Shalini Sharma)

Alert folks on Twitter (including Hari, David and Vikas in comments section below) pointed out that NDTV had made a typing error and credited @ShaliniSharma (blank account) instead of @ShaliniSharma_

Ms. Shalini Sharma has made an excellent point. The screenshot of her tweet is presented below:

I thank everyone for this correction and sincerely hope that NDTV is more careful in the future.

Now that the issue of the second fake tweet has been resolved peacefully, this post stands corrected.

My opinion that NDTV shows are not impartial still holds because their anchors (English and Hindi) continue being predictable by following the same strategy:

• Dominate and browbeat guests who disagree, or belong to NDA. The way Nidhi Razdan ill-treated Rajiv Pratap Rudy of BJP in a March 2011 show, is a perfectly good example.
• Politely allow excessive time to guests who are saying “the right thing”. Usually, Congressmen and Communists get sufficient time to blow their trumpet.
• Selectively edit sound bytes from the person they target. This ALWAYS happens when NDTV is forced to show Narendra Modi (as in the case of Anna Hazare praising him recently)

To this list I can now add:

• Shameless, blatant manipulation of social media such as Twitter to support their viewpoint by padding their shows with favourable tweets
• Misleading viewers into thinking that selective social media extracts telecast on NDTV are a truthful representation of public opinion

All of this is my personal opinion, and it is possible I may be wrong.

Therefore, I request readers to verify facts from links provided and draw their own conclusions.

(All screenshots on this page were taken on April 21 and 22, 2011)

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