Propaganda and Aarey

Do you believe in the posts, comments and facts that shows up on social media? Do you believe on those people and pages designed so well to pop up first on your news feed? If yes, then are you even digitally literate by all means? No, you have become a part of propaganda. See how.

Firstly, one must understand what propaganda actually means. Those who have studied journalism, communication, political science and sociology will know what propaganda is. Propaganda is "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view." In contemporary times, it is called 'Fake Trolls'. How much scope can propaganda provide? Well a lot, if you have money. Social media is the main source of this propaganda, which in a short period of time has garnered enormous revenues.

The biggest propaganda on social media to date is 'What happened in 70 years?' And people answered with corruption. Though not just me, but whole India is against corruption. Many scams came out during those time. But no matter the range of corruption,I will not say that nothing has happened in those years. Because before 2014, I could go to school. Before 2014, I could get admission in college. Before 2014, there were IITs, Universities, Libraries. Before 2014, there were hospitals, clinics and yoga. Before 2014, there were trains, roads, bridges and various transport routes. The mobile technology that you are now reading this article on has come to India even before 2014. The Internet has come before 2014 and the platform on which Modi came to power i.e. social media existed before 2014. And yet we ask, what happened in those 70 years? The more emotional propaganda, the more emotional it's analysis.

Let's just get out of these emotions and see yet another latest propaganda we are surviving. Did you know 'The 'Save Aarey' movement has been going on from last four years? Most still don't know. So they must have assumed by now that Aarey is not a jungle. Not only the officials of the Metro project but even our Chief Minister has said that it is not a forest but a pasture. But do we have trees on pasture? And in that small pasture of proposed land for metro car shed, there are 2700 trees. This is just a verbal propaganda though.

Do you know what's up on social media? To counter protest against the 'Save Aarey' movement, they have started a social media campaign called 'Aarey Aika Na' that got thousands of tweets and retweets in merely 2 days. How? By calling the 'Save Aarey' movement a mistake and fake.

On 6th September, on social media,especially Facebook audience, received a brief statement of Ashwini Bhide, chief of the Mumbai Metro project. She explained in it that how Aarey is not a jungle, the benefits of metro and how environmentalists in the Save Aarey Movement are getting involved to get publicity. I could not find her Facebook page or account. So who makes her to go viral on Facebook so fast? Also, it has gone viral when there was no news in the mainstream media about the movement, except for the few media-outlet. Ashwini Bhide is only has 10,000 followers on Twitter. So how did this post gone viral? How does it appear on all #SaveAarey's posts, comments and various pages? For a while, we will put this question aside and look out for their given explanations.

1. Propaganda - Save Aarey Movement is run by only environmentalists and NGOs.

Fact - This movement was started by residents of Aarey and environmentalists and NGOs are taking part in it.

2. Propaganda - Save Aarey Movement opposes the metro line.

Fact - No opposition to Metro line but Opposition to cutting down trees in the arena to form a metro carshed. A carshed is called a metro vehicle depot.

3. Propaganda - BMC is being accused of erosion by environmentalists.

Fact - The fight is against the removal of 2700 trees in the forest.

4. Propaganda - Will launch the largest plantation campaign in Mumbai's history, planting more than 23,000 saplings.

Fact - They will plant seeds and saplings in exchange of trees that holds soil and water from last 50-100 years. Look at their wisdom though. 

Let's see what's missing in their propaganda. 

1. They have informed about how the metro will save carbon but we didn't know the damage caused by the removal of 2700 trees in the area.

2. They have not outlined the mathematical impact of the Metro car shed on the premise.

3. Well, it's not just carbon and oxygen. "The area selected for the Metro Carshed is the area where water can go directly into the Mithi river. This will cause floods  at the International Airport and in Chakala". It is the state government committee that wrote these details in the report. And it's not in ‘Aarey Aika Na’.

Now think, why is this not in the ‘Aarey Aika Na’ campaign? Because they want to hide. This is propaganda.

This is about the content but it is important to see how they spread. There is an official Twitter account called Mumbai Metro 3. Basically of all the projects in Mumbai Metro, only Mumbai Metro 3 project has a Twitter account. This is strange and, of course, suspicious. Ashwini Bhide's official account tweets with the #AareyAikaNa hashtag. It is retweeted by Mumbai Metro 3. Many influencer's Twitter profiles come up with tweets that support the state government. There are tweets from many Marathi celebrities too.

To find out exactly what this Twitter trend is spreading, I collected the trend reports. They are available from many external websites. I have used socialert.net here. The report is of 10th September.

In the photo above, Ashwini Bhide, Ashu, Ashish Chandorkar, Anush, Sushil Kashyap (influencers), BJP Maharashtra, Mumbai Metro 3 are the top Twitter accounts, who tweeted #AareyAikaNa. Ashwini Bhide, Mumbai Metro 3 added the most tweets, and the rest tweeted one or more tweets. Those accounts are @MPopat and @BollywoodArvind. But who is tweeting it? And why? In India, there were a total of 749 personal Twitter accounts, which tweeted along with the hashtag. The number of retweets may be large. 

Well most of these tweets are in English and not in Marathi. What does that mean? Environmentalists and NGOs have a big part in Save Aarey Movement. And they have a lot of followers, too. So let’s assume that to influence their followers’ opinion or to troll them, they came up with this propaganda to tweet in English.

The number of these English tweets reaches 88%. Marathi tweets are mere 7.4%. Then comes Hindi and Gujarati. But I have no idea how the Finnish and Estonian languages got involved in this. What is the connection between these languages and the trees in Mumbai? That too with the Marathi hashtag #AareyAikaNa!

A global report of this trend was created because of suspicion of this language, and hey surprise, in many countries including India, the #AareyAikaNa Marathi hashtag was used.

This hashtag has been used in the United States, Italy, UAE, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong but to a lesser extent though. Yet U.S. is the second largest after India with 1902 tweets. 

After this I compared #AareyAikaNa trend with #SaveAarey. There was a one week report. See the photo below. The purple color here is #SaveAarey, and the pink color is #AareyAikaNa.

To the left are the tweets' mention, engagement, sentiment and potentials Reach Report.

Mention - More of 'Aarey Aika Na'

Engagement - More of 'Aarey Aika Na'

Potential Reach - More of 'Aarey Aika Na'

But here sentiment is what matters to them. Sentiments of 'Aarey Aika Na' are negative at 70.9%. Whereas the sentiments of ‘Save Aarey’ are positive at 57.9%. These sentiments are calculated by the keyword of each tweet. So if I were writing about Aarey, and I would represent #AareyAikaNa as negative, then it would be my negative sentiment. That is, when the trend started, the protesters also tweeted with the hashtag and negative tweets. So it has become negative sentiment.

This report is from September 4 to September 10. There is a slight consistency in the purple graph on the right (Save Aarey), and only slightly elevated on September 8th, where there was Mega Protest. So that day's tweets increased. The pink color is of #AareyAikaNa which is zero on September 4, 5 and 6. But September 7 is the highest ever. That day, there were more than 1500 tweets. There are more than 800 tweets on September 8. The graph decreases on September 9 and 10. But it should be noted that there are more tweets than #SaveAarey, even if they are compared to other days. The hashtag, which started earlier, tweets more than 1500 tweets a day, and 'Save Aarey', which has been running for years and months, fades. How is that possible?

Twitter campaigns start with writing effective content. A company makes 50 to 100 tweets using couple of hashtags and mentions. It means that those tweets are written by a professional content writer. The mentions included MMRDA, Mumbai Metro 3 and Ashwini Bhide. The content was a complete propaganda, as you see above. After that, this content is given to different agencies, who periodically tweet, retweet, reply to their effective Twitter accounts. Along with this, celebrities are approached for this campaign, as their tweets tend to have more influence. Thus this hashtag with the help of Twitter promotion trends in just one day.

But what has happened to the Save Aarey for the past four years? The #SaveAarey campaign takes more than 4 years to start trending, but in just one day 'Aarey Aika Na' is trending. How is this possible? It depends on whether or not you put money into the agency for Twitter promotion. If you did, then it is possible.

This analysis is only of Twitter and Facebook. Imagine how much money will a newspaper's entire page have on advertising, their graphic design, content, research, Public Relations team. If only they could have took this much time to negotiate for optional land for Metro car shed other than Aarey.

We have hearing on Aarey forest on 17th September in High Court. There is a need to come out of virtual world and showcase our support on ground. Please do come to hear the judgement as Aarey forest is in need of our help.