CITIZENSHIP AMENDMENT ACT: DIGITAL ACTIVISM ON TWITTER; A .
Journal of Content, Community & CommunicationAmity School of CommunicationVol. 12 Year 6, December - 2020 [ISSN: 2395-7514 (Print) ]Amity University, Madhya Pradesh [ISSN: 2456-9011 (Online)]CITIZENSHIP AMENDMENT ACT: DIGITAL ACTIVISM ON TWITTER;A CORPUS-BASED TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF TWEETS ON CAAMs. Geetika VashishataAssistant Professor, Faculty of Media Studies and HumanitiesManav Rachna International Institute of Research Studies, FaridabadProf. Umesh AryaProfessor, Department of Communication Management & TechnologyGuru Jambheshwar University of Science & Technology HisarABSTRACTThis article is an attempt to understand how digital activism was used to express dissent towards theCAA 2019 that proposed citizenship based on religious identity. The study analyses the trendingtweets on CAA through the corpus method. The data analysis showed that how Twitter is used bothby the citizens and political parties to promote their views. The majority of Twitterati expressed itsdiscomfort towards the Act that was passed hurriedly by stressing heavily on its“unconstitutionality” & “non-secularity”. The pertinent questions of secularism, citizenship,immigration were found to be poorly dissipated and hateful hashtag movements ruled the discourse.The whole discourse was found to be extremely rigid over the issue of nationality and citizenshipstatus of Muslims and NRC. The statistically significant scores of tests like collocate, N-grams, wordclusters, and concordances too showed similar results with an inclination towards negativesentiments for the Act.Keywords- Corpus Analysis; Twitter; Digital Activism; Social Media; Citizenship; Immigration;Sentiment Analysis.INTRODUCTIONCitizenship is a „consolidated and enlargedcivic, social, political , and intercultural right‟given to each citizen (Caves, 2004). It should begranted irrespective of caste, class, gender,race, or religion. However, in India, thequestion of citizenship is always an„ambiguous‟ and „contested‟ concept (Nirija,2019). „Religious identity‟, „ethnicity‟, „theimpact of partition and migration‟, always hada bearing on the rights over Indian citizenship(Sharma, 2019).distinction based on caste and religion.Nevertheless, it signed the „Assam Accord‟ toforce Bangladeshi immigrants to return totheir home state irrespective of their religionas a few north-eastern regions had complainedof ethnic, cultural and political tampering dueto Bangladeshi immigrants, including Hindus.Interestingly, the accord was never actualizedneither NRC (The National register of citizens)was implemented. Rather, the Congressgovernmentencouragedsettlersandimmigrants because they were vote-banks.Quite contrary to the Congress, the BharatiyaJanata Party government always talked aboutprotecting Hindus of undivided India who arebeingreligiouslypersecutedintheneighbouring countries. They promised it intheir election manifestos as well.TheIndianConstitutionguaranteedcitizenship to all of its residents and made nodistinction based on religion. As per theCitizenship Act passed in 1955, whosoever isborn on Indian land after 1950 is an Indiancitizen. However, for individuals, from othercountries, a means of naturalization was givenafter twelve years of residency in the country.Later, this law got amended in 1987. ThenRajiv Gandhi government said mere birth onIndian soil is not sufficient, „at least oneparent‟ has to be Indian to grant the Indiancitizenship status. It got further amended with„both the parents‟.”(Gupta, 2019). TheCongress government never made anyDOI: 10.31620/JCCC.12.20/17The BJP government brought the CitizenshipAmendment Bill in 2016 with a rider ofreligion, but it lapsed. The same law waspassed in December 2019 in the form of theCitizenship Amendment Bill, 2019. „Wepromise to offer Indian citizenship toindividuals of religious minority communitiesfrom neighbouring countries who sufferedreligious persecution” (BJP, 2019).184
The law states that people belonging to Hindu,Buddhist, Sikh, Parsi, Jain and Christian, whoflew the neighbouring countries of Pakistan,Bangladesh or Afghanistan, in the fear ofreligious persecution; can apply for Indiacitizenship if they have been living in India asa refugee for at least five years, on or beforeDecember 31, 2014. The Act has amended theCitizenship Act 1955 and relaxed the earlierrequirements for citizenship by naturalization(living in India) from 12 years to five years.In developing countries like India too, thisactivismispalpable.Triggeredbytechnological advancements worldwide andlocally, digital activism found its first mentionin Indian news in 2012 when a Puducherrybased businessman was arrested for a tweet.(Aljazeera, 2014). In India, it had a chequeredbeginning. First used during the Annamovement, it had to face state suppression;then it became a social tool for mass protestduring the Nirbhaya case, where a youngparamedic was raped and murdered; then itbecame a political tool in the hands of ArvindKejriwal, now Delhi Chief Minister, who usedit to catapult to power. Lately, it was used byNarendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister inhis election campaigns to win the Lok Sabhaelections in 2014 and 2019. Mr Modi joinedTwitter in 2019 and now he is the mostfollowed politician after former US PresidentBarack Obama and current US PresidentDonald Trump.The law selectively excludes persecutedminorities like Ahmediya Muslims fromPakistan, the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar,the Uyghur Muslims from China, and manyothers. The Act exempts the tribal areasof Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura;andareasregulated through the Inner Line Permit,which include Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram,Manipur and Nagaland.Since the Act granted citizenship based onreligion, challenging the basic rubric of theIndian Constitution i.e. Secularism, it createdan uproar in the country. The law was furthercombined with another- NRC. Ironically, itwas reported from Intelligence bureaurecords, that the act will benefit only 31,313people from non-Muslim minorities thatinclude 25,447 Hindus, 5,807 Sikhs, 55Christians,twoBuddhistsandtwoParsis(Gupta 2019).It is all because of the internet and mobilegrowth in India. India is the fifth-largesteconomy and will touch a mark of 900 millionpeople as its electorates in 2020. It is thesecond-largest market in terms of 430 millionsmartphone users. (Kantar IMRB Report, 2019)Internet users have registered an annualgrowth of 18% in 2018 in India and areexpected to cross 630 million by the end of2020 (ibid, 2019). Internet is penetrating itsroots in India and internet users are increasingday by day. The Internet on mobile and lowmobile tariffs has spurred this speed. In thisscenario, digital activism has an important roleto play. It is giving space not only to activiststo voice their opinions but also to the politicalparties to chart out their political campaigns towin the trust of the people and get masssupport (Sachdeva et al. 2019).Digital ActivismThe Internet now is called a „master medium‟because of „its ability to create a hybrid of thetraditional vertical one-way medium and atwo-way communication horizontal feedback‟(Selnow, 1998). It has the power of convertinglocal themes into global issues. Some of itsbasic characteristics are global reach, speed,immediacy, dialogue, visibility, engagement,contact, connection, collectivity and sharedunderstanding (Mendes, K., Ringrose, J., &Keller, J., 2018). Due to this, a new form ofdigitally-based social initiatives have beengaining momentum in the world, which isreinventing social activism (De Moraes et al.2020)REVIEW OF LITERATUREThe advent of the web has suddenlyincreased the political participation andactivism ( Morozov (2009, 2011) and Dean(2005)for anindividual,whowashitherto scared of moving to the streets forprotests. These digital tools are often usedto initiate, manage, or control risk or crisis(Veil, Buehner, & Palenchar, 2011). Theyprovide “greater access to information,more opportunities to interact publicly andenhancedability toinitiate collectiveaction” (Shirky, 2011).The influence of digital activism was first feltat the global level after WikiLeaks in 2010.ArabSpring,OccupyWallStreet!,#metoomovement, #FeesMustFall all are theoffshoot of this event only. (Bosch T.,2016).185
Vegh categorizes Digital activism as aphenomenon “largely enabled by the newmedia (internet and mobile technology),and more specifically the phenomenon ofsocial media”. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010)defined it as “a group of internet-basedapplications that repose on the ideologicaland technological foundations of Web2.0 which allow the creation and exchangeof user-generated content”. Facebook,Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Plus ,YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr andWhatsApp are a number of examples.The researcher could not find much literatureon corpus-based quantitative or qualitativeresearch in Indian settings.THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKThe study of digital activism on Twitter isbased on the framework of three theories: newsocial movements, media ecology and socialpresencetheory.“The newsocialmovements are a shift from the old politics ofsocial and economic security to the newpolitics of participation, individual selfrealization and human rights.” (Habermas,1987)As per Gerbaudo (2012) “within contemporarysocial movements, social media have beenemployed to generate a new experience ofpublic space, staged against the background ofa society of dispersion”. “The study revealedthat the socio-economic and political issuesdiscussed by the online protesters motivatedoffline protesters during the protests” (ibid,2012). “ The social media would allow thepeople of the region not only to have access toalternative and independent news informationbut also to gradually increase the pressure fordemocratizationandliberalreforms”(Eickelman and Anderson, 2003; Lynch, 2006).Blossom (2007) stressed that “web 2.0 is ahighly scalable, accessible and cheaptechnology, which enables individuals notonly to communicate with groups of otherindividuals but also to influence groups ofother individuals as they share ideas,activities, events and interests within theirnetworks.” According to Vegh (2003),“internet activism is „a politically motivatedmovement relying on the internet‟ usingstrategies that are either internet-enhanced orinternet-based”. Rabindranath & Kapil (2015)further mentioned “three types of internetactivism – awareness and advocacy, mediatedmobilization and hacktivism.” Ekwo (2011)found that “people used keywords on Twitteror Facebook to provide a customized or codedterm to support the resistance, createawareness, cultivate networks of activists, andmeeting spots”. Brennan (2012) said, g activist politics.” Bennett &Segerberg (2012) opined that “a principalfeature of digital activism is that it is poweredby the possibility of personal expression andthe sharing of individual ideas on a largescale.”The most integral part of such “contemporarymovements are the construction of collectiveidentity" (Melucci, 1989). And Digital mediaactivism is all about creating a politics of thecollective identities and collective actions.The network of such activism is comprised ofvarious groups, different sectors and providesa forum for the counter-hegemonic force.(Carroll and Ratner, 1996).This activism is only possible throughthe networks of communication, possible bytechnological inventions. A ividuals who are linked by patternedcommunication flows” (Rogers, 1986) andshare information in the „interpersonalcommunication structure‟ (ibid). The study ofsuch networks ormedia ecology i.e.communication structure, content, use oftechnology and their effects on humanenvironments makes an important discourse(McLuhan, 1962). Media ecology looks intohow media of communication affect humanperception, understanding, feeling, and value.Another theory that has roots in this studyis the Social Presence Theory (Short, Williamsand Christie, 1976). Social presence is a s sense of awareness of thepresence of an interaction partner” and anopportunity to learn about other person‟scharacteristics, qualities and inner states (Shortet al., 1976) leads to better perception,interaction and social identity, which isavailable through new digital platforms only.THE STUDYCitizens are adapting to various social mediaplatforms as tools for participation andexpress their voices in civic and democratic186
processes (Ahmed, Jaidka, Cho, 2014) andwhen it comes to an issue of national andglobal concern, the value of such publiccontribution increases manifold. The issue ofCAA that is going to impact several lives inthe country is of the utmost importance fromthe perspective of research.frequency and KWIC (Key Word in Context)in concordances.The lexical density of tweets shown in thestudy would inform about the richness of thetext. The word listing (along with positive,negative and neutral words) would reveal thenature of discourse. The collocates would helpus in analyzing the relative tendency of theoccurrence of a node word (caa, cab) withother words (Sinclair, 1991). The word clustersand N-grams (the group of software-definedwords) would indicate prominent thoughts.The “keyword in context” function wouldshow the proper textual context in which thedesired keyword is chosen.Since the Internet is also serving as the“repertoire of collective action” (Tilly 1984), itis important to study how these webtechnologies and social media platformsparticularly Twitter are functioning as a meansof mobilizing people, ideas and convertingthem into collective action. It is also a matter ofgreat interest to see what kind of content(voices) these digital activists are putting forth.So, this researcher decides to undertake thisstudy to understand the discourse on the CAAissue on Twitter. The limitations of the corpuslinguistics (subjectivity, representational textand reflexivity) are also applicable here.At the same time, the sentiment analysis of thetweets would showcase the tone and polarityof the text and disposition towards the issueand the overall impact. (Jurafsky, n.d.)The AntConc software was used to conductthe content analysis on the tweets corpus.Applications of textual functions likecollocations, keywords, concordances andothers are used to probe research objectives.RESEARCH OBJECTIVES1. To study how people (activists) usedTwitter to express their dissent andbecome a part of the digital activismagainst the passed law.2. To understand how political leaders haveused Twitter to gather support for thecontroversial law.3. To understand what kinds of issues haveemerged in the discourse.4. To understand in which context the tweetswere used the most.5. To understand what were theoverwhelming sentiments of the tweetsdiscourse.Reference period- First week of the digitalprotests starting from 09 December (when theCAB bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha) till15 December was chosen as the referenceperiod for the study. This was the best periodto record the most genuine and initialreactions of the people.For the second objective of studying i.e.political participation of the political leaders,tweets of political leaders: Prime MinisterNarendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah,Rahul Gandhi, and Twitter handles of BJP andCongress was studied from December 1, 2019to April 30, 2020.RESEARCH METHODOLOGYA corpus-enabled content analysis methodwas employed to find the results. “Contentanalysis may be defined as a methodology bywhich the researcher seeks to determine themanifest content of the written, spoken orpublished communications by a systematic,objective and quantitative analysis” (Zito,1975: 27). A detailed quantitative textualanalysis was done on the tweets‟ corpus interms of word frequency, keywords andlexical diversity to understand recurringwords or concerns of the CAA protests.A detailed study was also undertaken on thecorpus to understand the context by analyzingcluster words, collocates, clusterts/N-gram,Sample selection – The sample comprised38591 tweets having the “caa” and “cab” as theunit of analysis. The tweets were collectedwith the help of Mozdeh, tweet analysissoftware. A total of 38591 tweets were, out ofwhich a considerable number were theretweets.A total of 119 tweets of major political theirpartyhandles(@BJP4India and @INCIndia) were187
also collected and studied. These wereextracted from their Twitter handles directly.17 tweets during the period. Each tweet hadsome media link that showed the HomeMinister talking to people about the futileuproar about the Act. On the other hand,Rahul Gandhi tweeted only once during theperiod and there was no tweet from the sidesof Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi.However, Twitter handles of both the partieswere active during the period, countering eachother‟s claims. Few examples of tweets are:Statistical methods – The study employed thetests like frequency, percentage, type to tokenratio for lexical density; collocates, wordclusters and N-grams (all corpus statistics) forcontextual understanding and Google Add onApp named “Text Analysis text2data.com” forsentiment analysis.FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONSThe findings have been presented below as perthe research objectives. Two kinds of findingshave been discussed here. First reveals thenature of participation by people on the issueof CAA on Twitter. It was presented with thehelp of tests like frequency, word clusters, Ngrams and sentimental analysis etc. Thesecond showcased how political leaders useTwitter to run a campaign on CCA.“Nehru-Liaquat pact signed in 1950 protectedreligious minorities in Pakistan fromdiscrimination.Why did a secular and visionary leader likeNehru use the term 'religious minorities' andnot „all minorities” @BJP4India.“I want to tell the 130 crore people of Indiawith full responsibility that CAA will notaffect any citizen of India in any way: PMModi #PMInLokSabhaities‟?”Political Communication- Twitter was usedas a potent tool for political ation as a tool to influence thepolitical environment and calls it the“incorporation of all kinds of ations”.“CAA will not impact any Indian ter) I assure every person from theminority class that CAA only providescitizenship, and takes nothing away. It won'taffect you in any way: Union Home MinisterShri @AmitShah#AarNoiAnnay.”Both BJP and Congress used Twitter but BJPused it more effectively to put across its pointof view behind the Act. Home Minister AmitShah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi werefound to be proactive on Twitter incomparison to Congress Party President SoniaGandhi and Rahul Gandhi to persuade peopleabout the right intentions of the governmentbehind the Act. Most of the tweets, studied bythis researcher, are a kind of clarification andassurance from Mr Modi and Shah about thezero threat to Indian Muslim Citizenship.Amit Shah was the most active leader amongall followed by Mr Modi. He tweeted almost“Across India, many young men & womenhave been wounded & even killed whileprotesting against the CAA. I urge ourCongress party workers to meet the victim‟sfamilies & provide them with all possibleassistance. On Saturday I met the families of 2young martyrs in assam.@RahulGandhi.”Table 1 and 1.1 shows details of politicaltweets.The focus in the tweets of the BJP was on“convincing people that CAA and NRC willnot be affecting the present citizenship statusTable 1: Tweets by political leadersS.NoUser Name12345Narendra ModiRahul GandhiAmit ShahBJP4IndiaINC IndiaNumber ofTweets4117952OverallRetweets41.7 k9.8k180.8 k49.8k.676 K188OverallLikes175.3 k41.5k491.9 k182.9 k1.545kOverallReplies14.3k203.9k331.6 k10.1k.151k
Table 1.1: Graphical representation of tweets by political leadersof any religion” and “undoing of injusti
The study of digital activism on Twitter is new social movements, media ecology and social . “Thenew social movements are a shift from the old politics of social and economic security to the new politics of participation, individual self-realization and human rights.” (Habermas,
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