Closed Ranks: The Discursive Value of Military Support for Indian Politicians on Social Media

TL;DR

This paper examines how Indian defense veterans and politicians use Twitter to influence public discourse, revealing a bias towards the ruling party and highlighting the strategic promotion of nationalist credentials.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of defense-related influencers and politicians on Twitter, uncovering their engagement patterns and political implications in India.

Findings

Defense influencers disproportionately engage with the ruling party.

Politicians use defense influencers to boost nationalist credentials.

Patterns suggest strategic promotion of political closeness to defense services.

Abstract

Influencers play a crucial role in shaping public narratives through information creation and diffusion in the Global South. While public figures from various walks of life and their impact on public discourse have been studied, defence veterans as influencers of the political discourse have been largely overlooked. Veterans matter in the public spehere as a normatively important political lobby. They are also interesting because, unlike active-duty military officers, they are not restricted from taking public sides on politics, so their posts may provide a window into the views of those still in the service. In this work, we systematically analyze the engagement on Twitter of self-described defence-related accounts and politician accounts that post on defence-related issues. We find that self-described defence-related accounts disproportionately engage with the current ruling party in India. We find that politicians promote their closeness to the defence services and nationalist credentials through engagements with defence-related influencers. We briefly consider the institutional implications of these patterns and connections