A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION ON SOCIAL MEDIA: A STUDY ON TWITTER

Abstract

In the age of digital world, social media is said to have an impact on the public sphere and communication in the society. Although it’s a microblogging site that only allows people to post a mini writing (140 characters), Political parties, politicians, supporters, etc. use it to spread not only information in general but also political opinions publicly through their networks. It also helps in the purpose of entering into direct dialogs with citizens and encouraging more political discussions.

This research takes into consideration three interrelated fields- in particular, politics, journalism, and media studies and explores how Twitter is utilized in the Indian political scenario. The advent of web-based content generating and sharing technologies, is considered critical for public political participation. This is so because new data and communication technologies, connect participatory holes as they encourage nearly anybody, with the right idea, a chance to dispense their perspectives.

The study aims to examine the extent of use of social media by the political parties to promote their image and political messages, among their supporters and peoples in social networking sites. This research intends to explore the efforts of social media use pattern and similarities in support for parties in the real world, relate it to the virtual environment and the effectiveness of social media as a platform for continuous dialogue with citizens in modern politics and its implications for the mainstream news media in India.

The Critical Discourse Analysis was used to investigate the role of Twitter in endorsing open politics online. Experimental confirmation assembled through collection, archiving and study of tweets has demonstrated the potential part of social media in encouraging political interest in India during the year 2017.

Qualitative analysis, using political discourse study has shown that Twitter was a site for ideological clash, which dispersed any attempt to classify the space as another public sphere. The unreasonable idea of communication on Twitter, together with ideological clashes demonstrated that Twitter was to a greater extent a public space and not public sphere. To further detect the sentiments in political tweets based on the semantic rules, sentiment analysis approach has been adapted.