MEDIA FRAMING OF THE 2014 INDIAN ELECTION: THE RISE OF PRIME

MINISTER NARENDRA MODI

MEDIA FRAMING OF THE 2014 INDIAN ELECTION: THE RISE OF PRIME
MINISTER NARENDRA MODI

Tejasvi Vasudevan

An Independent Study Manuscript Presented to

The Graduate School of Bangkok University

In Partial Fulfillment of

the requirements for the Degree

Master of Communication Arts

2017
  2017

Tejasvi Vasudevan

All Rights Reserved

Vasudevan,T. Communication Arts May 2017, Graduate School, Bangkok University

Media Framing of the 2014 Indian Elections: The Rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi
(161pps)

Advisor: Assoc. Prof. Boonlert Supadhilok, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at the important role that news-frames and media played in the

electoral processes by using five news-frames from six newspapers: Times of India,

Telegraph, The Hindu, Hindustan Dainik, Ananda Bazaar Patrika and Dainik Jagran,

seven months prior to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in India. The paper also studied five

television news channels’ prime-time news and studied the time allotted to politicians,

political parties, and issues related to the elections. Lastly, the paper studied the role of

social media in Indian elections. It argues that news frames with their stories can

somehow change people’s perception of the candidates and move the public away from

issues that were very relevant to them before the elections and get them to singularly

focus on issues the media has framed and create a brand around a leader. Given the

complexity of Indian politics, its numerous regional languages, its varied demographics,

and where amongst the two main political parties, one was headed by a man (Mr.

Narendra Modi) who was rank outsider, far away from the politics of New Delhi and the

northern India which had produced all previous Prime Ministers and more known for his

inaction during the Godhra riots in which many Muslim were killed in his state where he

was the Chief Minister, and the second headed by the scion of India’s most famous

political dynasty (Mr. Rahul Gandhi), the author argues that it was the media who with
their news frames created a brand of the party leader Mr. Modi. The author used only

secondary research due to the time delay between the paper and the elections which

prevented primary research. Never before has such branding of a personality in politics

prior to elections occurred, especially one who was thought of as radical right-wing in a

very secular country.

Elections are an important part of any democratic country. The media helps the

populace to understand the different parties’ take on issues concerning the public, the

candidates and their views. Indians are besotted with politics and the Constitution of

India gives the power to elect the leader of the country to its entire people through the

process of an electoral system. The 2014 Lok Sabha election was surprising in its results

as one party the BJP gained 282 seats out of 543 seats giving it a stunning victory. It was

also an election which saw social media being actively used by politicians along with

traditional media. The election were dubbed social media election and recalled by many

as an election in which the media was partial to Mr. Modi, the winning candidate.

Hence the role of the media is very important in understanding what caused this

massive victory of a party that was considered very politically polarized and of a man

who was known for 2002 riots which killed many Muslims in a state which he headed as

chief minister at that time. Could the media by framing the issues represented by his party

itself cause such a huge success or was there more to the party, its views and the leader’s

message? The answers to these are very important not only from the view point of 2014

but for future elections in India. Can media framing cause so much popularity for a
certain leader? Or is it that the new India is moving away from caste and community

politics and wanting to move towards more economic progress and the media just helped

the process just this once? Can social media, which does not allow gate keepers like

editors and news reporters to control ongoing topics, be the new media for success of

political parties? Can a biased media create political success?

The answers to these questions will not only decide the future of political parties

their strategies, their spending during election process and the populations understanding

of politics but also how the new leader will be elected. It is with this view I decided to

study the 2014 election, one for the mammoth victory it resulted in and the other for its

controversial media bias.

Keywords: Lok Sabha elections, media bias, newspapers, Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi,

Social Media, Indian Politics

 vii

ACKNOWLEGEMENT

This independent study has given me a great opportunity to work with many

helpful and kind people. Without the help of them, this paper would not be

completed. I would like to express my gratitude to Asst. Prof. Dr Boonlert

Supadhiloke, my advisor, for his time, suggestions, supervisions, guidance as

well as valuable support throughout the completion of this study and moving

closer towards the completion of Masters in Communication Arts in a Global

Communications. Secondly, I would also like to express my appreciation to

Graduate School staffs for their help whenever I needed their help.

Thirdly, I would like to express my thanks to Ajarn Thanongsak Chongbut

(Jack) for his time to help with the formatting of the Independent Study.

Finally I deeply wish to express my deepest thanks to my family my

parents Nirmala and Vasudevan as well as my sister Kiran Vasudevan for being

my support, and giving me their time ,their encouragement and love during the

writing of this independent study.

 viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………… vii
ACKNOWLEGEMENT…………………………………………………….. viii
LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………… xii
LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………… xiii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background……………………………………………… .…. 1
1.2 Rationale and problem statement ……………………………. 7
1.3 Objective of the studies…………………………………......... 9
1.4 Scope of the study…………………………………..…………9
1.5 Research Question…………………………………..……......10
1.6 Significance of the Study……………………………..………11
1.7 Definition of terms……………………………………..……. 11
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2 Framing Theory………………………………………………..14
2.1 A summary and synthesis of past studies
2.1.1 The Role of media in election coverage………………..18
2.1.2 Television’s effect on election coverage……………….21
2.1.3 The effects of social media and its relevance
in elections ………………………………………… 27
2. 2 Media in India……….………………………………………32
2.2.1media framing in Indian 2014 elections……………….. 33
2.2.2The Relationship between content (issue avoidance vs.
Personalities and content) especially in relation to
India…… …………………………………………….. 35
2.2.3The role of paid news on election results especially in
relation to India……………………………………….. 38
 ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS (Continued)

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW (Continued)

2.3 Main Players and their strategies…………………………….42
2.3.1 Narendra Modi and the BJP strategy…………………..44
2.3.2 Rahul Gandhi and the INC strategy……………………47
2.3.3 Arvind Kejriwal and the AAP strategy… …………...50
2.4 Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi …………………………..52
2.5 Demography of the Indian population who went to vote in the
2014 Lok Sabha elections…....................................................56
2.6 Conceptual framework……………………………………….56
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Content Analysis …………………………………………….59
3.2 Research Design ……………………………………………..61
3.3 Data Collection procedure……………………………………62
3.4 News frames definition and operation………………………..64
3.5Results from Coding ………………………………………….65
3.5.1 NaMo frame……….……………………………………65
3.5.2 Gujarat Model of development frame ………………….65
3.5.3 Corruption frame………….. …………………………..66
3.5.4 Minority Rights……….........................................66
3.5.5 Dynasty Politics of Congress ………………………… 66
3.6 Intercoder reliability………………………………………… 67
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS OF THE STUDY
Part 1 Content analysis ………………………………………….. 69
Part 2 Textual analysis…………………………………………. 74
1. Narendra Modi Frame………….................................... 74
2. Gujarat Model Frame ………………………………….88
3. Dynasty Politics Frames …….......……………………. 90
4. Corruption Frame ……………..……………………... 92
 x

TABLE OF CONTENTS (Continued)

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS OF THE STUDY (Continued)

5. Minority Rights Frame …………………………………… 94
4.1 Opinion polls ………………………………………………96
4.2 Exit polls………………………………………………… 98
4.3 Finding based on demographics..…………… ………….. 100
4.3.1 Age…………………………………………………. 100
4.3.2 Occupation…………………………………………..100
4.3.3 Education ………………..………………………….100
4.3.4 Geographical Location ……………………………...101
4.3.5 Gender ………………………………………………101
4.3.6 Religion………...........................................................101
4.3.7 Caste……………………............................................102
4.5 Finding based on Television coverage …………………....103
4.6 Finding based on Facebook and Twitter…………………..104
CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION
5.1 Conclusion…………………………………………………111
5.2 Discussion…………………................................................. 113
5.3 Personal observation (on newspapers)……………………..116
5.3 Recommendation for further research…..............................117
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………… ………………..119
APPENDIX……………………………………………………………….....135
Proliferation of programs on 2014 polls by NEWS channels…..136

Television News coverage of top political parties……………..137

Coverage of issues during the elections……………………….138

Coverage of leaders by news channels………………………...139

Coverage of the 2014 polls by news channels………..………140

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TABLE OF CONTENTS (Continued)

APPENDIX (Continued)
Results from social media…………………………………… 141
Top 7 newspapers favoring specific political parties
Directions of newspapers ……………………………..…… 146
Voter Turnout Highlights Lok Sabha 2014
Corruption perception Index of India………………………. 153

Coding Sheets…………………………………………….… 154

BIODATA……………………………………………………………..….158

LICENSE AGREEMENT………………………………………………...159
 xii

LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table 1: Distribution of frames by newspapers…………………………………..68

Table 2: Distribution of frames by English and local newspapers……………….69

Table 3: Opinion Polls conducted by ABP news Neilson………………………. 97

Table4: Opinion Polls conducted by Times Now C voting………………..…… 99

Table 4: 2014 Exit Polls conducted by Cicero for India Today……………..… 99

Table 5: National Poll projection………………………………..……………... 99

 xiii

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1: Vote Book ………………………………………….………………….7

Figure 2: Integrated process model for framing …,…………………………….15

Figure 3: Three main Candidates………………….............................................. 43

Figure 4: Word cloud of words by Mr. Modi in speeches.................................... 45

Figure 5: Word cloud of words by Mr. Rahul Gandhi in speeches………….... 49

Figure 6: Word cloud of words by Mr. Arvind Kejriwal in speeches ………… 51

Figure 7: exit polls from 2014Lok Sabha elections…………………………… 98

Figure 8: Candidates ranking based of mention in Facebook…………………. 105

Figure 9: No. of times candidate’s election terms mentioned in tweets………..106

Figure 10: Graph of which Indian leader is winning on twitter………………...107

Figure 11: Which theme dominated twitter during different phases of the
elections……………………………………………………………. 108
 1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

In countries ruled by democracy, people caste votes to elect leaders of their choice.

Elections give people the power to control their nation’s destiny but in order to make this

choice the public should be aware of what the candidate and the party they vote for represent

to make knowledgeable decisions.

The mass media played a very important role before the elections, as information about

parties and candidates were got from the second hand information in the newspapers,

television, and magazines. Many times journalists due to time and space constraint did not

publish the speech in its entirety and omitted certain parts. (How the Media Cover Election

Campaigns, n.d.). Since the media helped to shape public opinion and sometimes could be

manipulative, the media had the important task of enlightening and educating the public by

being neutral and objective (Roles the Media Play in Election, 2012).

The media’s role in election campaigns was to inform the public about competing

political parties their programs and candidates, give formal voter education material provided

by the electoral management body or their own voter education material. A fair media had to

be objective in information dissemination by allocating equal broadcasting time to all

competing parties and candidates, have (voluntary) agreements on fair news programs,

reports, and non-news programs, or debates between party leaders. The broadcaster could not

influence public opinion by differential treatment offered to candidates or party. Media were
 2

sometimes manipulated by the governing party if they were state-owned to report in their

favor. Manipulation could be in the way the program, report or news was designed.

Propaganda would be disseminated under the guise of objective public information by the

government. Publicly funded media had obligation to allow parties and candidates to

communicate directly with the electorate on an equal basis, whereas the private media had

the right to publish or broadcast statements of the parties and candidates they preferred

(Parties and Candidates, 2014).

There were many reasons for the preeminence of television advertising in politics.

Television spots and their content were under the direct control of the candidates and reached

a much wider audience. Research had shown that voters learnt more about issues from

political spots than they did from television news or television debates.

The use of television advertising in political campaigns had been criticized for fostering

drama and visual imagery, leading to a concentration on candidate’s image rather than policy

issues, though research showed television spots concentrated on issues than on the image.

The extensive reliance on television for campaign communication had also been blamed

for the rise of negative campaigning. Studies of political bias in television, which focused

initially on the 1972 American presidential campaign, concluded that there was little

evidence of such bias however recent investigations in the 1980s suggesting that there may

be unexplained differences in coverage of republican and democratic, liberal and

conservative, political candidates (POLITICAL PROCESSES AND TELEVISION, n.d.).

In 1960, television played a decisive role in the presidential race between John F.

Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. It was called the first mass media election and ‘image’
 3

ruled, and presidential elections changed forever. According to Larry Sabato, a political

scientist at the University of Virginia, television was all about image, not substance and

stated "Kennedy was elected based largely on what happened in those debates because of his

TV-friendly poise even though he was inexperienced and young”. People who had listened to

the same debate on radio thought Nixon would win but those who watched it on TV thought

Kennedy came out on top since Nixon, who was recovering from the flu looked awful on

television (Davey, 2015).

Television coverage had a powerful impact on Mexico’s 2000 presidential election.

Mexicans were put off by the corruption and economic mismanagement, political reforms of

the PRI during the 1990s that leveled the electoral playing field. Exposure to broadcasts on

the Television Azteca network dampened enthusiasm for Francisco Labastida, nominee of

the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Viewing Television Azteca was

associated with substantial increase in the likelihood of supporting victorious opposition

candidate Vicente Fox and substantial decline in the likelihood of supporting Labastida

(Lawson & McCann, 2005).

A Panel base survey conducted less than a week before the 2015 U.K general election

across a sample group of 1,013 adults in Scotland and 2,006 adults in England and Wales

showed 62% of the people were influenced and formed their opinion about the candidates

after watching TV coverage (38% were influenced by the debates, 23% by TV news

coverage and 10% by party political broadcasts on television).

Newspapers influenced 25 percent, radio 14 percent websites 17 percent and family and

friends 14 percent of the people. People were least influenced by social media and
 4

magazines, with Facebook the leading influencer for just 7%, followed by Twitter at 4% and

magazines at 2%. According to Ivor Knox, social media served as an "echo chamber" for

peoples' own views, since people were friends online with people with similar thoughts. Of

those who said they were most influenced by what they read on websites, 61% said they had

read their political information on the BBC News website, followed by newspaper websites

at 31% and Sky News at 25% (Thelwell, 2015).

The media in India is highly politicized and this fact was apparent after the Radia tapes

controversy in November 2010 where it was found Nira Radia, a political and business

lobbyist, was part of a wide nexus among politicians, businessmen and journalists through

whom news was manipulated. News had become a business in India especially as political

news was just paid advertising. Most news channels, newspapers, media houses and

publishing houses were owned or controlled by politicians of different parties (Thakur,

2013).

The 2014 Lok Sabha elections was India’s first intensively televised elections covered by

close to four hundred news networks in a bewildering variety of languages and dialects who

communicated political messages from a bewildering array of politicians and political actors

across the country but the same media created the Modi persona by talking exclusively about

him whether good or bad (Bhushan, 2014).

According to writer and lawyer Suhrith Parthasarathy there is a great deal of freedom to

report in India as compared to many Asian countries, but because of political control of the

Indian media one cannot truly say if journalists reported objectively and only the truth. An

analysis by The Hoot, a South Asian media watchdog political parties and individuals with
 5

political affiliations owned and controlled increasing sections of the press in India.

According to a 2012 report by Business Standard more than a third of news channels in India

were owned by politicians or political affiliates, who used their channels as “political

vehicles” to influence the course of local elections.

In the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu Channels launched since 2000, like Sun TV,

Kalaignar TV, and Makkal TV, were owned by local politicians or their families, and they

refrained from covering issues that cast the party with which they were affiliated in a

negative light. During the run-up to the 2009 elections Sun TV and Kalaignar TV avoided

coverage of alleged atrocities against Tamils in nearby Sri Lanka, to shield the party to which

they were affiliated from criticism, whereas Makkal TV, which was owned by a rival

politician, provided robust coverage of the events. But politicians who controlled Sumangali

Cable Vision, the dominant cable distribution system in the state, blocked telecasts of

Makkal at the time (Galhotra, 2014)

With the increasing fragmentation of Indian polity along religious, caste and regional

lines the press was not untouched. Some leaders and political parties courted and won over

journalists for favorable coverage and in the process extended favors to journalists who

accepted them. As a result many journalists had become partisan covertly but their readers

did not know about it thereby damaging the cause of true journalism. Such journalists

became promoters and campaigners of the cause of the political leader or party. The resultant

biased coverage of news and news events becomes a major distortion in political discourse

and hampered the common citizen from making informed decision (Choundary, 2007).
 6

In pursuing elected office, political candidates were likely to use every opportunity to

keep in touch with voters, raise their profile, make known their position on key issues and

claim recognition for policy success. Campaigns were about staying in touch with voters,

sharing information with them in an attempt to influence the way they voted, and actually

getting them to vote. The internet had changed the way this contact occurred because of its

dimensions and capabilities which helped frame new forms of political communication and

campaigning. The internet provided a low-cost way of communicating with constituents,

supporters and potential voters without replacing traditional media. Politicians were hence

attracted to use this new media (Cameron, Barrett & Stewardson, 2014). In the run up to the

Lok Sabha elections, attention was paid to conversations on social media, measuring which

politicians were trending in search volume and counting re tweets and followers. In India

first time voters numbered about 150 million and were part of the connected generation and

most parties tried to reach them online and on social media (Swamy, 2014).

India’s growing population and increased telephone density in urban areas led to number

people going online. A report by the IAMAI and IRIS knowledge foundation termed 160

constituencies of the 543 as high impact which meant they were more likely to be influenced

by social media in the elections. High impact constituencies were those where the numbers

of Facebook users were more than the margin of victory of the winner in the last Lok Sabha

election, or where Facebook users accounted for over 10% of the voting population. The

study also declared 67 constituencies as medium-impact and 60 as low-impact and 256 as no-

impact constituencies. The study emphasized connecting with voters was very essential for
 7

the 2014 elections without taking into fact that the 78 million Facebook users in India may

not be interested in politics at all. (Kaul, 2013).

Figure 1: Facebook users could swing the results in 160 Lok Sabha constituencies

(Jha, 2013)

1.2 Rationale and problem statement

There is ample research to show that media can play an important role in how they frame

issues prior to most elections but not whether media can create a brand out of a politically
 8

polarized leader in India. Out of the 67 years since India’s independence the Congress party

has not been in power for only 13 years. Never before the BJP had such a massive success in

number of seats won, and the Congress lost such huge number of seats. There is a lack of

research into whether the media can actually create a brand out of a politician whom the

whole country viewed as right-wing and against the secular fabric of the country. That is to

say whether the media can subdue issues and make a bigger picture out of the personality. If

so this election could help future elections in creating personalities of politicians who can

play a big role in national politics but who have limited themselves to regional politics.

Television news channels were partial to political parties. However there was not much

research to demonstrate persuasively that exposure to conventional news broadcasts during a

campaign could lead to significant, substantial changes in public opinion and voting

preferences. This study is going to use media frames to study whether the media had framed

issues in the newspapers, or whether the frames created a personality based on certain key

words during the months prior to the election. The study will also see whether the

newspapers usage of keywords was more biased to a certain party in the positive context

giving that party and their candidate an advantage. While there were many studies on social

media and their far reaching effect there was no study to link whether political information

made available through social networking sites influenced voting choices of citizens. Was

online activity an indicator of support? Does it influence election results? Is this new media

better than traditional media to reach voters? It will also study the social media strategies

used by political parties and see whether there was a connection between chatter on Twitter

and Facebook and the election results.

 9

This study will look at news channel coverage of the 2014 Indian elections for the

purpose of seeing whether they encouraged voters to make a decision; whether the

presentation had specific content that related to the specific act of casting a ballot like

amount of television time given to each party, time allotted to each candidate, topics covered

during debates, ownership of television network by corporate houses related or biased to

political parties. It also studies whether the television news channels of looking at TRP and

giving more time to a particular leader gave him an advantage?

1.3 Objectives of the studies

a) To analyze the media frames in six Indian newspapers (3 English language newspapers

and 3 local language newspapers during the seven months prior to the 2014 elections and

look for evidence to support the branding process of a leader out of Mr. Modi).

b) To analyze prime time television news channels (two English and three Hindi) to see

framing effects of the television media in the three months prior to the 2014 elections.

c) To look into social media which does not confirm to framing theory rules in its role in

creating a brand around Mr. Modi.

1.4 Scope of the study

For the purpose of this study I used information from a study titled “Role of Media in

Electoral Politics in India: A Study of General Elections 2014” done by Arani Basu and used

it to study media frames. I also used an analysis titled “ Coverage of2014 Lok Sabha Polls by

NEWS Channels ” conducted by CMS Media Lab on television media coverage of Indian

elections in 2014 to see whether the reporting affected election choices and whether rules and
 10

regulations had been placed as to what and how the media could report. I also studied the

three main political parties and how they used social media especially Twitter and Facebook.

The study will analyze the key words to see use of media frames in seven newspapers, seven

months prior to the 2014 elections.

The Study will analyze reports in the public domain on television coverage in five main

television channels during prime time (7p.m-11p.m). It will cover time allotted by television

channels to three major national political parties (BJP,AAP and Congress) and seven regional

political parties, time allotted in covering top ten political candidates and look at major

issues covered in the three months prior to 2014 Lok Sabha elections in India. Lastly the

study will also analyze whether reports from the Internet and mobile association of India and

IRIS Knowledge Foundation about how social media will affect the 2014 election results

proved true.

1.5 Research Question

There are several inter-related questions:

1. How did media frame to election have on the Indian electorate?

2. Did media frames affect different demographics differently and change the perception of

the electorate with regards to a candidate

3. Did media frame have effect if the incumbent government performed badly and lost trust

with the electorate?

 11

1.6 Significance of the study

The significance of the study will help us understand whether people make decisions based

on what they were exposed to, whether it be newspaper, television or social media. If the

study proved right it will help political parties reinvent themselves, their party mission and

their communication strategy. It will also make us look at other factors like anti-incumbency

which could have caused the defeat of the sitting party.

1.7 Definition of terms

A tweet is simply a post on Twitter, which is a very popular social network and micro

blogging service. Because Twitter only allows messages of 140 characters or less, it's likely

called a "tweet" because it sort of resembles the same type of short and sweet chirp you

might hear from a bird (What is exactly is A Tweet, Really?, 2015)

Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to

community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration (Wigmore & Rouse,

2015).

Facebook is a popular free social networking website that allows registered users to

create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch with friends,

family and colleagues. According to statistics from the Nielsen Group, Internet users within

the United States spend more time on Facebook than any other website (Wigmore & Rouse,

2015).

Twitter is a free micro blogging service that allows registered members to broadcast short

posts called tweets. Twitter members can broadcast tweets and follow other users' tweets by

using multiple platforms and devices (Wigmore & Rouse, 2015).

 12

IRIS Knowledge Foundation is founded on the premise that the creation, management

and dissemination of knowledge are critical components of a vibrant democratic society.

(IKF, 2014).

IAMAI-Internet and Mobile Association of India- is a not-for-profit industry body

registered under the Societies Act, 1986. (IAMAI, n.d.).

Indian electoral system Electoral Process in India starts with the declaration of dates by

the election commission. Publishing of electoral rolls is a key process that happens before the

elections and is vital for the conduct of elections in India. The Indian Constitution sets the

eligibility of an individual for voting as any person who is a citizen of India and above 18

years of age. It is the responsibility of the eligible voters to enroll their names. The model

code of conduct comes in force from the day the dates are announced (Elections in India,

2016).

AAP - Aam Aadmi Party Common Man's Party is an Indian political party, formally

launched on 26 November 2012, and is currently the ruling party of Delhi (Aam Aadmi

Party, 2016).

BJP-The Bharatiya Janata Party is one of the two major political parties in India, along

the Indian National Congress. As of 2016, it is the country's largest political party in terms of

representation in the national parliament and state assemblies, and it is the world's largest

party in terms of primary membership. The BJP is a right-wing party, with close ideological

and organizational links to the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayam sevak Sangh (Bharatiya

Janata Party, 2016).

 13

INC- the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 during the British Raj; its

founders include Allan Octavian Hume, Dadabhai Naoroji and Dinshaw Wacha. The

Congress' social policy is based upon the Gandhian principle of Sarvodaya – the lifting up of

all sections of society – which involves the improvement of the lives of economically

underprivileged and socially marginalized people. The party primarily endorses social

liberalism – seeking to balance individual liberty and social justice, and secularism –

asserting the right to be free from religious rule and teachings. (Indian National Congress,

2016).

High impact constituencies are those where the numbers of Facebook users are more

the margin of victory of the winner in the last Lok Sabha election, or where Facebook users

account for over 10% of the voting population (Bhowmik, 2013).

 14

CHAPTER 2

THEORY AND LITERATURE REVIEW

2 Framing theory

According to Reese (2001) frames are organizing principles that provide structure to news

stories and help audiences make sense out of complicated issues .Frames help journalists to

describe and explain events and at the same time help people to organi000.ze the

multifaceted occurrences into simple, consistent and understandable categories. Framing

involves both constructing the interpretive frames and then representing them to others in

mediated communication processes. Thus frames help to simplify complex issues by

highlighting certain dimensions of a topic. Frame advocates try to portray their views and

give their frames greater visibility as compared to that of their competitors.

They are also the sources of information in the news reports. They can also be “sponsors

of particular frames”. Vreese (2005) defines framing as a communicative process that

involves frame-building (how frames emerge) and frame- setting (the interplay between

media frames and audience predisposition). He has outlined an integrated process model of

framing that includes production content, and media use perspectives. (Figure 2)

Frame- building refers to the factors that influence structural qualities of news frames.

Frame- setting refers to the interaction between media frames and individuals’ prior

knowledge and predispositions.

 15

Frame- building Frame-setting

Framing in the newsroom

Framing in the news Framing effect
-internal factors (editorial
policies news values) - issue-specific frames - information processing effects

-external factors - generic frames - attitudinal effects

- Behavioral effects
Figure 2: An integrated Process Model of Framing

Source: Vresse (2005, p. 52)

Using Vreese’s integrated process model of framing as a conceptual framework, this study

focuses on the frame-building process by examining the generic frame in work of the seven

Indian Newspapers seven months prior to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Attempts are also

made to investigate both internal and external factors that influence the framing process of

elections by journalists, media professionals, news sources and other actors. A strategic

news frame focused on strategies and characters and distracted one from the substantive

issues and undermined political information and engagement. They were not very positive

for democracy as they reduced political information to the citizens. Some scholars argued

that they did not have negative implications but instead stimulated attention to politics

making the media coverage exciting (Aalberg, Stromback & Vreese, 2011).

Knowledge of framing theory is very important when planning media campaigns in

advertising, public relations and political sectors. Frames of stories differed depending on the
 16

media outlet that came out with the story. Framing theory helped detect media biases, frames

used by the different media regarding the same story and journalistic bias. As audiences were

exposed to continuous stream of information, the media not only created a perception of the

world but also a political opinion that was very powerful and influenced the audience

(Littlejohn & Foss, 2009).

Shanto Iyengar, professor of political science and communication studies at UCL

explained that when media covered news the news framing affected public opinion

depending on reference points pointed by the media especially on issues of poverty and

terrorism. Frames were frequently drawn from, and reflective of, shared cultural narratives

and myths and resonated with the larger social themes to which journalists tended to be

acutely sensitive. In his book “Is anyone responsible?” he evaluated framing effects of

television and found that they shaped the way the public understood news by changing the

way the populace understood the cause and solution to political problems, whereas in a

democracy the populace should be aware of who is responsible for social problems.

Television news he said used episodic news frames which made the populace less likely to

consider society responsible for the event because these episodic frames distorted recurring

issues as unrelated events and simplified complex issues and made people settle upon

solutions that fit the observed problems (London, 2016).

People used frames to organize their experience of reality, to render information in the

form of a rubric, pattern or formal structure and thus reduced a need for all available

information to comprehend things. Frames were thought to be part of human communication

and the act of framing which was the art of selecting one aspect of reality and making it
 17

salient was done by anyone who wanted to control the results. The study of framing was

considered by some to the study of power, the power to distort people’s perceptions and the

power to control or promote political goals of different groups (Elias, 2013).

Framing theory suggested that how something was presented to the audience (the frame)

influenced the choices people made about how to process that information. Frames were

abstractions that worked to organize or structure message meaning and influence the

perception of the news by the audience. They set the agenda for the audience by telling them

what to think about and also how to think about the issue (Framing Theory, 2011). They

were cognitive shortcuts that helped people make sense of complex information by selective

simplification thus filtering people's perceptions. They provided people with a field of vision

for a problem and thus helped interpret the world around them. Communications scientist

Robert Entman stated that even as journalists follow the rules for objective reporting they

communicate a dominant frame for the news that prevents most audience members from

making a balanced assessment of a situation (Framing, n.d.).

Framing could be looked at in two main ways one is frame-building which referred to the

factors that influenced the structural qualities of news frames and the other is frame-setting

which referred to the interaction between media frames and individuals’ prior knowledge.

Occupational constraints of journalists, particularly editorial policies and news values and

external factors like interactions between journalists and elites caused journalists to highlight

some issues and downplay others (Framing, n.d.).

Chapter 2 aims to provide a synthesis of the past studies on the role of news media in

election coverage, the effects of media’s coverage on the citizens and issue coverage by
 18

media during elections. The chapter explores television media coverage in India covering

the topic of issue coverage, paid news and media ownership and also the influence social

media had on the 2014 election coverage in India. It also states the demography of the

population going to vote with regard to age, religion and place of residence as these factors

had a great role in the 2014 elections. Chapter 2 also looks at the three major players in the

2014 election and how they used television and social media. Lastly chapter 2 states

Framing theory and its relevance to how media can influence the public.

2.1 A summary and synthesis of past studies

2.1.1 The Role of media in election coverage

Elections are the centerpiece of democracy because elections give people the

opportunity to voice their opinions, express their hopes and aspirations, control their

leaders, and thereby their nation's destiny. According to democratic theory, elections are

the public's source of power. For people to use democracy effectively they should have

knowledge about political candidates and parties stand on public policies (How the Media

Cover Election Campaigns, n.d.). Healthy democracy is one where the citizens can take

part in the government. Social media places all individuals on a level playing field,

allowing candidates and officeholders to communicate more effectively to a larger

audience and provided for a two way conversation which made for a healthier and more

participative democracy (Elahi, 2013).

Free and fair election include a participatory process where voters engaged in

public debate and had adequate information about parties, policies, candidates and the

election process along with the freedom to vote and the knowledge on how to cast a vote.
 19

Media acted as a crucial watchdog in democratic elections, safeguarding the transparency

of the process. Democratic elections also included media freedom. Traditionally the word

media included only print, radio and television but has now encompassed new media like

online journalism and social media especially in countries where traditional media is

controlled or regulated (“The Importance of the Media to Elections”, 2016).

The mass media had a duty to report accurately what the contestants stood for.

Campaign coverage was crucial because of its capacity to empower the electorate. What

voters knew about campaigns came mostly from what they read or heard secondhand

either from television newspapers or magazines. Journalists due to time and space

constraints did not allow speeches and rallies to be described in their entirety, mentioned

certain parts and ignored others. Choices made by journalists of including or excluding

certain sections affected voter’s beliefs and choices (How the Media Cover Election

Campaigns, n.d.). Elections helped the public make decisions, allowed citizens to

participate in the governing process and helped the government to be stable. Campaign

discussions shaped voter’s views about candidates. The mass media propagated the faith

that elections are serious by devoting a great deal of attention to election activities and

reinforced this notion with themes that they repeated throughout their accounts of

campaigns and campaign events (Kelley, n.d.)

Political coverage were not completely free of opinion or objectivity as journalists

were forced to make decisions when covering politics such as who to interview, what

quotes and facts to select and how to interpret information. For example when Jimmy

Carter ran for presidency the public ignored the point that he had very little experience
 20

since the media did not make it a big point of concern. Thus the press influenced the

criteria to be used to Judge Jimmy Carter. Negative reporting of the economy in the 1992

American elections in spite of positive economic conditions shaped public perception of

the economy and hindered Mr. Bush’s chance for reelection (Dixon, 2014).

The media help influence what issues voters should care about, the criteria they

should use to evaluate candidates and governments dictated media’s content through the

media's regular use of public officials as sources in the news. The media filtered

candidates and drew public attention away from lesser-known candidates by giving more

coverage to the better-known ones. The public did not bother with candidates who were

unlikely to win the elections and the media loved to report only on candidates who were

likely to win and thus influenced voter’s decisions by focusing their attention only on

candidates who had the best style not best skills (Dixon, 2014).

Media also affected voting behavior by framing, the process by which people

developed a particular conceptualization of an issue or reoriented their thinking about an

issue. The way in which news, an issue, or event was presented helped determine what

aspects of a problem the audiences focused on (van Spanje, & de Vreese, 2014). The

corporate sector in India propagated the construct that the UPA government was

responsible for the economic slowdown and a decisive leadership was the answer to

India’s woes. Some media houses and editors dubbed the 10 years of UPA rule as a

‘wasted decade’, completely ignoring its positive contributions in the last 60 years and

stated that voters must give Mr. Modi a chance of 60 months to transform India.

Television news channels relied heavily on the live feeds from the two leading parties,
 21

and most of it came from the Modi camp and this gave rise to the media hype as viewers

were totally unaware that the feed came from the BJP camp (Hasan, 2014).

Sometimes the media put campaign discussion into a question-and-answer format

by means of press conferences, panel shows, interviews, and other devices which all

affected the character of campaign discussion. Candidates were forced to take

responsibility for arguments made on their behalf or to disavow such arguments. Editors,

reporters, and panelists made their questions specific to get specific answers and made it

difficult for candidates to evade such questions (Kelley, n.d.).

2.1.2 Television’s effect on election coverage

In established democracies, huge amount of resources were spent on campaigns to

influence media content based on the assumption that what voters heard, saw, or read

affected their choice in the voting booth. Studies have been undertaken to see three

aspects of media coverage of political candidates namely visibility, tone, and framing.

The visibility of media coverage of candidates influenced vote choice as it enhanced the

candidate’s importance relative to others. Voters expected a very visible actor to be more

effective in terms of enacting their favorite policies after the election. This was found to

be more where many political parties opposed one another and where their relative

importance and effectiveness were potentially relevant for party choice (Smith & Searles,

2014). The persona of Mr. Modi was largely a television creation since he was covered to

saturation point for six months prior to elections. The only other person covered to the

same extent was Mr. Obama during his second term. Mr. Rajat Sharma the co-owner of

and editor of India TV said the TRP of his channel increased by more than 60 percent
 22

whenever they featured Mr. Modi. Mr. Modi had impressive communication skills which

were seen in the interactive character of his speeches whereas Mr. Rahul Gandhi and

Sonia Gandhi came across as halfhearted and timid. The Zee editorial team made features

on Modi’s mother, brother aimed to wrench hearts and portray Modi sympathetically as a

self-made chai–wallah–turned-chief minister. These features were shown on an hourly

basis on Zee net work’s prime time along with an interview with Mr. Modi along with a

tag line “the biggest interview of 2014” (Bhushan, 2014).

Because of television’s influence and wider audience many parties and their

candidates preferred to conduct election debates on television. Campaign managers tried

to get broadest possible presence and the best possible presentation on television news for

their party and their candidates. The television channels on the other hand focused their

attention not only on aspects of the election that were relevant but also on events like

drama or negativism that help them secure a broader audience (Schulz & Zeh, 2005).The

most talked about televised debates took place between Kennedy and Nixon in1960. Polls

revealed that more than half of all voters had been influenced by the Great Debates, while

6% claimed that the debates alone had decided their choice. The debates were

simultaneously broadcasted both on radio and television and those who heard the debates

on radio declared Nixon the winner whereas those who watched the debate on television

declared Kennedy the winner. With the introduction of television, candidates developed

different judging criteria. Kennedy looked directly into the camera was tanned, and wore

make-up whereas Nixon shifted his gaze to the side looked pale and sickly after

recovering from flu. Those who listened on radio did not judge candidate by body
 23

language, eye contact, charisma or appearance but by tone and speech alone (Jochum,

2015).

The media is a very important institution of democracy. The survival and success

of India’s democracy owed a great deal to the vigor and vibrancy of the media as the

information broadcasted by it had narrowed down the gap between politicians and voters.

The biggest change in India was the growth in electronic and print media and the change

in media control from government to private (Hasan, 2014). The biggest development in

Indian television since 2009 was its takeover by three kinds of investors namely

politicians, real estate, large corporations and chit funds. Coverage of the election was

driven by who had the higher ratings when featured. Around mid-2013 television

managers discovered Mr. Modi got the rating meters running not Mr. Rahul Gandhi.

Ownership of the business guided the tone and tenor of coverage. 80% of the television

news business in Andhra, Karnataka and Orissa and between 60-70% in Punjab,

Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and the North-East were owned by big

businesses (Nalin, 2015).

Surveys showed that television helped reach those voters who were generally

difficult to reach with political information, those who were less interested in politics,

those who were undecided, and those who were (potential) non-voters, or are swing

voters. Television news programs were regarded as a credible source of information

hence an authentic reflection of the election campaign in the eyes of the TV audience.

The main evening news program reached a wider audience and was an important source
 24

of information for voters. The reporting structure of the news revealed which aspects

determined and exerted influence on, the voter’s overall election picture (Schulz & Zeh,

2005).

The media presented news through a personal lens and presented campaign

propaganda in the context of materials they themselves originated, stated their opinions

about who ought to win, discussed public policy issues and reports on campaign

organization and methods and personality sketches of the candidates. The personal

attributes of candidates as perceived by voters had the greater influence in the voting

decision since many voters only remembered the personality of the candidate while

voting. Hence what newspapers and magazines said about a new candidate and the

candidate's appearances on radio and television were likely, to be major factors in

creating public image which could either damage or benefit of the candidate( Kelley,

n.d.). BJP’s Modi questionable record in protecting minority rights has been downplayed

by the commercial media and he emerged a natural choice for much of the Indian

corporate lobby because of his right wing economic policies. Network 18 owned prime

English and Hindi news channels like CNN-IBN and IBN-7, along with a plethora of

news and entertainment websites and had warned prominent senior in-house journalists

not to post disparaging tweets about Modi (Mazumdar, 2014).In India many media

organizations had no objectivity in their coverage and were unabashed in their support for

Mr. Modi while his opponents were mercilessly pilloried. One reason could have been

that the public were fed up with high food prices, tardy creation of jobs, brazen acts of

corruption, the economic slowdown under the incumbent UPA government and Mr. Modi
 25

was thought as a messiah who would rid the country of corruption and maladministration

and bring about a rapid industrial transformation as he supposedly did in Gujarat

(Paranjoy Guha, 2014)

Scholars assumed that the tone of media coverage of a candidates affected public

perceptions as most voters did not meet political candidates and relied on media reporting

for their impressions. The bandwagon effect implied voters wanted to belong to the

winning side as a result, apparent success in the campaign bred success in the actual

election. Voter expectations about election results led to strategic voting so as to

influence policy outcomes after the election (van Spanje, & de Vreese, 2014). Rajdeep

Sardesai, the editor-in-chief of the CNN-IBN said there was a sharp polarization within

the media and with almost 400 news channels and thousands of newspapers available,

politicians were looking to co-opt the media to amplify their message (Aboobacker,

2014). Media carried stories about early lives of candidates, the candidate’s wife’s

feelings about the coming elections and by dramatizing politics, reporters and

broadcasters got voter’s to pay attention to campaign discussions. To win in a

competitive two-party system the candidates also increased the enthusiasm of their

supporters, by taking stands on issues designed both to increase their appeal to the main

body of supporters and to swing groups in the population. Media was the only vehicle to

help them reach the large number of audience especially television and newspapers which

enabled them to reach maximum audiences more cheaply and directly (Kelley, n.d.).

In France the media especially the television had a huge impact on the conduct of

presidential campaign, helping to contribute focus on image of the candidate right from
 26

1965. The presidential election became a personalized contest and television amplified

this focus on the person by playing up the importance of appearance, gesture, language

and tone of voice of the candidates as they made an attempt to convey the requisite image

of competence, integrity and leadership in the hope of acquiring the quality the French

call l’e´toffe pre´sidentielle. While many voters decided how to vote well in advance of

the campaign, a high proportion of voters were still undecided days or weeks before the

polling in France and the media coverage of the candidates’ campaigns made a difference

to their choice (Kuhn, 2013).

Zee media’s boss was pro Modi and hence the channel made a documentary about

how Modi was a self-made Chai wallah chief minister and added pictures of his family

and dished out this advertisement regularly on their channel. the channel featured an

exclusive Modi interview, which was played with the tagline “the biggest interview of

2014”, every single day on Zee network’s prime-time band, right up to the day Varanasi

went to polls. The network’s news anchors became Modi cheerleaders. Mukesh Ambani

acquired control over CNBC-TV18 channel and ever since then there were several

disagreements between Network18 founder-editor Raghav Bahl and editor-in-chief

Rajdeep Sardesai after senior journalists were silenced when they criticized Mr. Modi

(Sandeep, 2014).

Even Public broadcaster Doordarshan was accused of censorship after they edited

out remarks made by Modi. Research Associate Sumit Galhotra wrote in a blog on the

Committee to Protect Journalist that Modi's rise did not bode well for press freedom in

India, stating a figure who could one day head the world's largest democracy should have
 27

a high tolerance for criticism. Qamar Waheed Naqvi, the Editorial Director of India TV,

resigned in protest against a staged Modi interview. Regional channel, Sun TV, allegedly

discontinued a talk show after its host Theeru Veerapandian urged people to think twice

before voting for Modi( Aboobacker, 2014).“Aap ki Adalat”an episode on Modi aired on

April 12, 2014, broke all TV news viewership records. According to ratings data

provided by TAM, 74 percent of Hindi news television viewers in India viewed the show

(Nalin, 2015).

2.1.3 The effects of social media coverage and its relevance in elections

Barack Obama was the first candidate to embrace and effectively utilize social

media in his campaign, and later throughout his presidency. Social media helped him

connect with people, in real time, and gave the people an easy and accessible way to

show their support for change. Candidates who do not use social media were seen as

those who had something to hide whereas voters preferred someone whom they could

trust. Social media gave candidates this opportunity. According to Erin Lindsay, a

principal for digital at Precision Strategies, social media forced candidates to show more

personality. The importance of social media in elections had been studied extensively.

One study in 2012 found that Facebook feeds had a significant impact on voting patterns

indicating certain messages increased turnout directly and indirectly by a total of 340,000

votes. Close ties were also found to be far more influential than weaker ties. According to

research from Ipsos Mori a research consultant group social media also had the potential

to impact 18 to 24 year olds. 34% of the group indicated that reading something on social
 28

media influenced their vote, second only to televised debates. This is yet another reason

why presidential candidates increased their ad spending budgets on social networks.

Another found that 41 percent of young people between the ages of 15 and 25 had

participated in some kind of political discussion or activity online. These included

sharing a video from a presidential candidate or tweeting about world events. These

individuals were much more likely to vote than those who weren’t as engaged (Green,

2015).

Social media placed all individuals on a level playing field and played an

important role in the way campaigns were run since it allowed candidates and

officeholders to create a two way conversation making for a healthier and participative

democracy. According to Sherri Greenberg the Director of the Center for Politics and

Governance at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin

seeing candidates on television did not create the same level of intimacy as a twitter or

Facebook stream. When messages where sent on social media by the candidates it was

nestled amongst those sent by close friends and the free flow of information necessitated

honest information. In 2010, the Obama campaign used an application that allowed social

media users to recruit followers to join campaigns three separate times thus amplifying a

single message. A single tweet was amplified across thousands of users, who broadcasted

the same message to each of their followers. According to Greenberg social media does

not replace traditional media but becomes an additive. New candidates faced with

campaign funding problem could turn to You Tube to spread their messages. Using

Thunderclap a politician could use other individuals with large social followings to share
 29

a YouTube video and create a social proof since on social media the number of followers

matter (Elahi, 2013).

Social media played a considerable new role in Indian democracy. Politicians

found social media to be a new way to reach out to a younger aspiring population. Social

media was first used by Indians during the 2008 Mumbai attacks when information was

shared through Twitter and Flickr between Indians and the outside world. It was used

again during the May 2009 national elections, when first time online voter registration

and transparency campaigns started and first time political parties tried to reach out to

voters (Khandoba & Guru, 2015).

There were many first time voters in the 2014 Indian Lok Sabha elections and

almost all parties wanted to keep connected with them. Hence a lot of attention was paid

to conversations on social media to figure out who was being followed and whose

messages were being retweeted (Swamy, 2014). The importance of social media in

campaigning could be seen by the fact that the Indian election commission issued

instructions to political parties and candidates on how to use social media during the 2014

elections and classified the media into five different categories namely collaborative

projects (like Wikipedia), blogs and micro blogs (like Twitter), content communities (like

YouTube, Yahoo Video), Social networking sites (like Facebook and Google Plus) and

finally virtual game-worlds (like Apps).The IEC stated that all candidates had to provide

details of their social media profile and a pre certification of political advertisements

before getting them distributed on social media. Candidates had to account for

campaigning expenditure on social media also. Moral code of conduct was applicable to
 30

contents posted on social media. All legal provisions relating to election campaigning

also were applied to social media (Varma, 2013).

The role of social media in the 2014 elections had been to help new and existing

voters to seek information, address queries and to form opinions. Prevalent conversations

helped audiences to participate in dialogues with voters, and acted as an enabler for the

undecided voter population. It was a source of information for traditional media also.

According to IAMAI increased spending on social media campaigns could have

swung 3%–4% of votes in 24 states where Internet usage was sizeable and according to

them a swing over 1% could change the outcome of elections. A Google survey of social

media in 2014 stated that the social media could have an impact on around 30% seats that

is about 160 of India’s 543 Parliamentary constituencies. Facebook and Twitter users

were the nation’s newest voting bloc as per IAMAI (Internet and mobile association of

India). Word of mouth was carried offline to peers, family and colleagues making it a

huge source of influence in the physical world. Through Face book and Twitter everyone

could become a journalist and reporter. It also became a source of influence on the female

population (49 percent potential voters) who had become active internet users (“How

Social Media Can Influence The Upcoming 2014 General Elections.”, 2013)

Anshul Tewari, founder of citizen media platform Youth Ki Awaaz, stated young

Indians debated and discussed their political preferences online and on their mobile

phones, which allowed for more immediate interactions between voters and candidates.

WhatsApp the mobile messaging service had more than 450 million users and was used

to disseminate messages, engage with voters for polling estimates, and to organize
 31

campaign volunteers and by doing so one could avoid costly SMS messaging (Ruble,

2014).

According to Facebook Mr. Modi’s fan base increased between April 7th and

May 12 by 14.86 percent and that of Mr. Kejriwal by 8.16.According to Mr. Vikas Pande

the media advisor and volunteer for the BJP social media helped them bypass the

mainstream media and reach people in two tier and three tier cities (Swamy, 2014) .

Pandhi a member of the communication team of the congress said in previous

elections the volunteers were scattered and unorganized but by using Twitter, Facebook,

and WhatsApp he connected to volunteers across the country by sending a message out to

a list of volunteers in the morning to announce, where a certain political candidate might

be hosting a rally or when a particular event might take place. The volunteer social media

coordinators worked with the campaign’s main WhatsApp channel to send out image

posts and messages in hopes that volunteers would forward them to others and create a

“human chain” of communication. According to Pandhi, gossip and attack ads were the

ones to go viral fast but images that evoked emotions also spread quickly (Ruble, 2014).

Even the mainstream media followed political parties and engaged with their

audiences on social media. Nearly all prominent journalists and their news organizations

were active on several social media platforms. During the Doordarshan interview and the

Varanasi rally controversies, politicians used the social media to communicate their

views to their followers putting the mainstream media on the back foot. Hence the

mainstream media had no choice but to follow the politicians on social media platforms

since the mainstream political parties and their leaders communicated their views and
 32

details of their election campaigns on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook

and via YouTube videos (Thorsen & Sreedharan, 2015).

2.2 Media in Indian elections

Every General Election in India since the time of Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s

first Prime Minister had an interface with media technology. Congress party used the media

during elections for the first time in 1962. Until 1977 candidates and parties communicated

with their constituents through public stage performances, visits to their constituencies and

through door-to-door campaigning by party workers which were widely reported in

newspapers. In 1983 an advertising agency was used by the then Congress general secretary,

Rajiv Gandhi for the first time. He was also known as India’s first television prime minister.

By 1988 radio, audio and video cassettes featuring party songs and leaders’ voice messages

caused the shift from party-based campaigning to the plebiscitary mode. Paid news was first

heard of in 2009 elections after revelations made by Kalimekolan Sreenivas Reddy and

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta to the Press Council of India in a report title Paid News: How

corruption in the Indian media undermines democracy”. By 2014 there were more

confrontational interviews, provocative anchors, dramatic graphics and titles, solely for

attracting an audience. The 2014 Lok Sabha elections in India was the largest and longest

polling undertaken in the world where 834.08 million registered voters took part more than

18 times the size of the electorate in the 2015 UK election (Thorsen & Sreedharan, 2015).

The first Indian media was print media started in 1780, moving pictures were screened in

Bombay during July 1895 and radio broadcasting began in 1927.Indian media especially

private media was free and independent and controlled only once during emergency rule
 33

under prime minister Indira Gandhi from 1975 until 1977.The Media of India consisted of

television, radio, cinema, newspapers, magazines, and Internet-based Web site most of

which were controlled by large, for-profit corporations in the early 2000’s. In 2014 India

had more than 70,000 newspapers with a 100 million copies sold daily and over 690 satellite

channels of which more than 80 were news channels. The traditional print media, and the

television media, were largely family-owned and did self-censorship, because of the political

ties by the owner and the establishment (Media of India, 2016).

2.2.1 Media framing in Indian 2014 election

Coverage in 2013 was driven purely by what worked on the ratings on television.

The television industry is profit based and lives through advertising and hence cynical

calculation dominated many TV newsrooms (Nalin, 2015).

The media accepted terms of debate as set by the BJP and the Sangh Parivar,

regardless of whether this conflicted with the existing norms of the democratic

framework. Media were not troubled about Mr. Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots and

never questioned him about the investigation particularly the role of the Special

Investigation Team (SIT) that led to his exoneration by a lower court. Instead, the media

believed his acquittal proved his innocence even in the face of contrary evidence (Hasan,

2014).

The media’s role in the Indian national 2014 elections could be seen as a logical

extension of crony capitalism or mercantilism. Many high profile editors were fired by

the media owners because they wrote articles against Mr. Modi which in turn earned their

owners enemies in political circles. According to Mr. Vibodh Parthasarathi, associate

 34

professor at the Centre for Culture Media and Governance at Jamia Millia Islamia

University in New Delhi during the 2014 elections the mainstream news media,

especially the television channels, knew whom they wanted to support. He also stated

that in countries like India, the media do not inform voters over substantive issues like in

parts of Europe and North America. Support for the Modi’s BJP was dictated less by

political values of journalists and editors and more by commercial interests of

proprietors. News media’s links with politicians and their parties varied across regions. In

the southern state of Tamil Nadu, minister and general secretary of the ruling AIADMK

party, J. Jayalalithaa, owned the influential Jaya TV whereas Sun TV, Sun News and

Kalaignar TV were owned by former chief minister and chief of the opposition DMK

party, M. Karunanidhi. Similarly there was a relationship between India’s leading media

group, Hindustan Times Media, and the ruling Congress Party. The vice chairman and

editorial director of the group Shobhana Bhartia was nominated as a member of the upper

house of the Parliament under the recommendation of the chief of Congress and UPA,

Sonia Gandhi (MAZUMDAR, 2014).

The Congress and the B.J.P. framed their campaigns as plebiscites on the fate of

the country. The Congress asked voters whether they wanted Mr. Modi as their next

prime minister, a man who did nothing to stop the 2002 Muslim riots and portrayed Modi

as a person with autocratic temperament, whose political education was shaped by Hindu

nationalists and compared him to Hitler. On the other hand Mr. Modi projected himself as

efficient and clean, a friend of free enterprise and of the poor, a man who knew the value
 35

of a good road and of plentiful electricity adhering carefully to issues of development,

and withheld speaking on controversial topics like Hindutva (Subramanian, 2014).

2.2.2 The Relationship between content (issue avoidance vs. personalities and image)

on media especially India

Research supported the claim that the way media covered candidate’s image and

personal attributes were important for voters when they considered who was closest to

their personal preference especially when they had to select a female candidate. Female

candidate’s features like choice of clothes, hair style were most discussed by media. For

example in 2008 a lot of focus was given to Sarah Palin the candidate for presidency in

the US. Her mannerisms, personal speaking style and poll standing were cause of

considerable public support or contempt (O'Gara, 2009).

Office seekers ducked controversies, never spoke on contentious issues because

they feared they would alienate potential voters. Instead they showed off their

personalities and images. Richard Joslyn, a political scientist found that very few

advertisements disclose candidates' stands on issues. Office seekers manipulated press

coverage for their own purpose by staging the location, timing, and context of their

appearances. Many candidates believed that the media should be used to promote and

advertise campaigns and worked with three principles namely that television exposure

outranked substance in importance and space and time constraints. This caused stories to

be told in one or two minutes and short, pitchy statements called sound bites to be aired.

Richard Joslyn analyzed 1960, 1976, and 1980 presidential debates and concluded that

policy discussions consisted of general, vague, and widely agreed upon objectives such as
 36

full employment and the elimination of government waste. The press tended to ignore

whatever programmatic issues were raised and down played those that got discussed and

analyzed how each side prepared, how they came across in the heat of the battle, and how

their future chances were affected. Campaign aides clarified or emphasized certain

points, to explain away damaging statements, and tried to insist that their candidate won

(How the Media Cover Election Campaigns, n.d.).

The 2014 Lok Sabha campaign in India was no different from the earlier

campaigns in terms of issues covered and personality focus despite the fact that the

number of news channels had more than doubled since the 2004 Lok Sabha poll and

social media and new technologies were being used (Coverage of 2014 Lok Sabha Polls

by NEWS Channel, 2014).

The questions that underpinned the 2014 poll in India were, did the media create

the Modi persona and did they cover the campaign of all parties fairly. The headlines in

The Economic Times after his electoral win read “India is Modi, Modi is India” an

inversion of the 1970 slogan “India is Indira, Indira is India” (Nalin, 2015).

Indians had a large number of newspapers and news channels from where to get

their information but it had come at the cost of accuracy, journalistic ethics and probity as

the information given by most were quite similar and raised questions about trivialization

of content. In the 2014 elections the impact of media ownership in the hands of large

corporate groups which distorted the free and fair dissemination of information were

mostly driven by profit motives. Television media covered Mr. Modi as if he had all but

won the elections. Television news channels relied on live feed from the BJP camp and
 37

relayed that information to the public which slowly generated the Modi wave. It was

stopped only when some channels started identifying it as BJP feed on-screen in an

under-sized font. Many television anchors did not probe Mr. Modi in their television

interviews neither did they critically examine the authenticity of the themes and issues of

his campaign always instead focusing on his personality. The media did not speak about

any policies for poverty alleviation announced by the incumbent party, and instead

praised the Gujarat model of development thus supporting Mr. Modi. Media painted the

country with a picture of gloom and doom even though there were positive signs of social

improvement. The media move manufactured dissent instead of consent against the

incumbent government. According to Political scientist, Zoya Hasan the media were

infatuated with one story that of Mr. Modi drowning political diversity and pluralism in

the 2014 election media and marginalized regional parties and groups and their concerns

mostly because media houses had turned into big business. Politicians, political parties

and individuals with political affiliations owned and controlled sections of the press.

Since Mr. Modi spoke about markets, reforms and investment big business houses backed

him even though the BJP had not mentioned a specific economic platform, and spoke

only about their economic performance in Gujarat under Mr. Modi. The Modi wave was

created on the basis of opinion polls which did not report ground level reports and ended

up making the elections a horse race and a media spectacle. According to many

researchers opinion polls fostered false consciousness and ended up as self-fulfilling

prophecy. The media bias could be seen clearly seen when they stopped covering the

AAP once AAP started hitting out against big business and their corruption and
 38

especially after Mr. Kejriwal went to Gujarat to inspect and asses the Gujarat model of

development and raised questions about crony capitalism in Gujarat. The media took

sides and tended to editorialize news reporting (Hasan, 2014).

The 2104 election marked a major shift in the polity of India with the BJP not

only changing the Westminster style Parliamentary elections into a US style Presidential

election revolving around personalities, but also used unprecedented amounts of financial

outlays. At the national level, this election turned out to be a referendum on the BJP’s

Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi (Basu & Misra, 2014).

2.2.3 The role of paid news on election results especially in relation to India

Politicians who had extensive financial resources advertised themselves through

the paid media. Since 1925 different kinds of paid news had been used in American

election campaigns namely documentary ads, talking heads, slice-of-life ads, and

testimonial ads and in recent years negative ads have been popular among the candidates

especially during presidential elections.

Negative ads worked because people remembered them easily so they did not

have to be repeated hundreds of times, like sound bites in radio or slogans in newspapers,

making them more cost-effective. In 1992 presidential elections another form of paid

news was used by the presidential candidate Ross Perot the half hour infomercial which

was a paid political program that promoted him as an individual with new ideas and as an

alternative to the traditional parties and candidates ( FAST US-4 Student Papers,

2005).The sheer abundance of cash corrupted Indian society. India was once known for

its ferociously free press, numerous newspapers and TV channels but now local
 39

candidates could get coverage in return for payment, a phenomenon called paid news

(Pocha, 2014)

Paid news is any news that is paid for. People with vested interests paid the

media houses to publish news in their favour, eliminate news that was not in their favour

or twist a piece of information to show them in a good light. Paid news could also be in

the form of advertisements that were made to seem like news content. Viewers could not

distinguish a paid advertisement from normal news. Such ads blurred the line between

honest reporting and publicity campaigns, thereby planting false perceptions about the

candidates and parties in the minds of voters.

Paid news struck at the fundamental ideologies of journalism, which were to

ensure objective, un-opinionated and honest reporting. Paid news was the perfect

antonym of ethical journalism and in India it breached three important Indian laws

Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 which prohibited political parties from spending

exorbitantly on publicity campaigns, Companies Act, 1956 and the Income Tax Act of

1961 which mandated businesses to show their true income (Jindal, 2014).

The manipulation of media coverage emerged as a serious electoral concern after

the 2009 general elections. Election commission kept track of instances of paid news in

state elections with the highest number of confirmed cases in Punjab (523), Gujarat (414)

and Madhya Pradesh (165).According to Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a senior journalist

paying for media coverage was done in a clandestine manner and was a common practice

among the Indian media. Since there were no evidence of any of these transactions it was

difficult to detect paid news in India. The effects of paid news on voters were detrimental
 40

but the electoral watchdog could not get the Supreme Court to outlaw paid news

coverage. Paid news could be in any format like opinion polls with statistically dubious

results, extremely flattering or soft interviews of political candidates, and stories that

were candidates’ press releases published word for word from the press release, in

multiple papers on the same day. Mr. Thakurta said putting a price on coverage was a

widely accepted practice within the Indian media, only one could not prove that money

was exchanged in that process. V.S. Sampath, the chief election commissioner of India

stated that Corruption implications made through paid news had its impact on everyone

from media to candidates and people and caused maximum damage to the electoral

process. Without an amendment to the law, the Election Commission could not prosecute

candidates who paid for either favorable media coverage for themselves or for negative

stories on their rivals. Even though parliamentary reports had recognized paid news as a

pervasive problem and had documented its impact on the electoral process there had been

no action taken against paid news in Indian election process. India’s electoral watchdog

said the effects of paid news on voters are pernicious and had tried to get Parliament to

outlaw paid political coverage during election season.

The Election Commission of India tried to get the Indian Parliament to treat paid

news as a crime under the Representation of the People Act and stated it was similar to

rigging of ballots and the registration of fake voters and even documented its impact on

the electoral process. But the EEC was unable to do anything as there was no amendment

to the law. Calls by the commission for self-regulation by political parties and media

houses were not taken seriously as a consequence they only warned candidates that if
 41

they paid for news coverage, the money spent would count toward their campaign

expense limit of $116,000.The commission set up committees at the state level to flag

news coverage deemed suspicious, like articles that were fawning in their praise of a

candidate or political stories that appeared under different bylines but with the same

content. The Election Commission sent citation letter to the candidate suspected of

paying for coverage giving them a short while to respond (Vyawahare, 2014).

Arvind Kejriwal was seen talking to a journalist asking him to highlight some

parts of his interview. Ashok Chavan, the former Chief Minister of Maharashtra was

accused of paying a Marathi newspaper to publish ads that looked like news content. A

Cabinet Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Narottam Mishra, was accused of paying for 42

news items that read more like advertisements highlighting him as a good

candidate. Umlesh Yadav, a sitting MLA was disqualified because she was not able to

account for the money she spent on advertisements during the election campaign in 2007.

The EC banned her from contesting for the next three years (Jindal, 2014). Paid news was

not a secluded event that happened now and then, but rather it had become the norm

(Thakur, 2013).

However the menace of paid news had been controlled due to the scrutiny of the

election commission and some self-regulation by the media which routinely publicized

the EC's press releases of those "confirmed" guilty of "paid news" after every poll. The

EC flagged content which it considered suspicious with its district level committees and

sent them to the Press Council of India and the News Broadcasting Standards Authority

for Print and TV respectively, for further investigation and action. EC named offenders in
 42

press releases but could not take further action against them and emphasized, that self-

regulation by the media was the best cure for this disease. The EC also went after

candidates accused of paying for news content to be written for them and initiated formal

proceedings which led to disqualification of elected politicians.

However governments owned Doordarshan and All India Radio were used by

parties as their publicity outfits. Political parties and politicians owned newspapers, TV

channels as well as cable operations. Nearly 60 per cent of cable distribution systems

were owned or otherwise controlled by politicians, who dropped or curtailed the

broadcasting of rival TV channels. Governments withdrew state advertising when

newspapers and TV channels and criticized them to get the media to toe the line (Paid

news: Clean up by the media and Election Commission pays off - Times of India, 2013).

2.3 Who were the main players?

The 16th Lok Sabha election was conducted in nine phases, from 7 April to 12 May

2014. 8,251 candidates from dozens of national and regional parties contested the 543 seats

to the lower house of the Indian Parliament. The three main contenders were the United

Progressive Alliance (UPA), led by the incumbent Indian National Congress (INC) known

as the Congress under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi; the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), based

on an anti-corruption movement led by Arvind Kejriwal; and the National Democratic

Alliance (NDA), led by Narendra Damodardas Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The people’s main concern in the 2014 elections were governance such as corruption, price

rise, slow economic growth, unemployment, terrorism, communalism and external security

challenges leaving identity politics of religion and caste which were more dominant in post
 43

liberalization phase in India. The BJP highlighted the UPA government’s failure to deal with

corruption, slow economic growth and campaigned by projecting Mr. Modi as a better

administrator and economic performer than the inexperienced Rahul Gandhi. This was

noticeable in the election campaign strategies of the three main contenders for the prime

ministerial race, the election manifestoes of the main political parties, and the BJP’s

shift in focus from Hindu nationalism to governance and economic issues (Thorsen &

Sreedharan, 2015).

Figure 3: the three major candidates of the 2014 elections

 44

The 2014 election was primarily a contest between Narendra Modi, prime ministerial

candidate for the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and Rahul Gandhi, vice-

president of the governing Congress Part (India election: World's biggest voting event

explained, 2014).

2.3.1 Narendra Modi and the BJP strategy

Mr. Modi is a lifelong member of the Rashtriya Swayam sevak Sangh (RSS), a

paramilitary Hindu nationalist organization traditionally dominated by upper-caste

Hindus. He presented himself as a humble tea-vendor, the son-of-the-soil challenger to

the Congress's haughty dynasts. He had a very good record as chief Minister of Gujarat

before the 2014 elections. His closest friends were businessmen who had enlisted their

media outlets for Modi’s campaign (Mishra, 2014). Mr. Modi became an international

pariah because of the communal riots in Gujarat and his inaction. Mr. Modi had launched

a number of nationwide programs to build smart cities, to initiate cleanliness and bridge

the digital divide, and unveiled a “Make in India campaign” which promised to cut red

tape and aimed to turn the country into a global manufacturing hub. He had been accused

of deserting his wife Jashodaben. Mr. Modi had the strong support among senior leaders

in the right-wing Hindu organization, the Rashtriya Swayam sevak Sangh (RSS) whose

clear objective was to make India a Hindu nation (Profile: Narendra Modi. November

11).

In the 2014 elections the BJP moved from their traditional hard-line ideological

agenda to a more moderate one and stressed more on economic development and good

governance. This was able to get them more support from the middle class and youth who
 45

were the floating voters. A crucial factor, in 2014 election campaign was the persona and

the leadership of Modi. When he was declared BJP prime ministerial candidate he

attracted both national and international attention for the controversies like his handling

of the 2002 Gujarat riots. Despite this Modi won three Gujarat state elections in 2002,

2007 and 2012 and was also credited with enabling Gujarat’s economic progress and

development (Thorsen & Sreedharan, 2015).

Figure 4: Word cloud of words used by Mr. Modi in his speeches

Mr. Modi was clear about what his vision for India was and was less discreet in

his verbal attack on his political rivals. He used the words development and India often in

his speeches and stated his government in Gujarat had been pro youth, pro- development

and had clean governance. He always mentioned the Gujarat model and said he would

use it at the national level and at the same time did not mention Gujarat riots of 2001. He

attacked the Congress over corruption and criticized them for holding on to the one

family (Nehru-Gandhi) running India.

 46

He stayed away from pro Hindutva of the BJP to topics like corruption-free India

and included words like better economic growth, improvements in national security and

better safety for women and spoke about his stand on foreign policy issues. He often

mentioned China and Pakistan to capitalize on nationalistic sentiments in the country

(India elections: Gandhi, Kejriwal, Modi in war of words, 2014). During the 2009 general

elections digital war room was set up by BJP and they recruited 6,000 online volunteers

to manage their campaign. Most of their workers were under 35 and mainly young who

blogged, monitored and more importantly strategized what message the party needed to

send out in the virtual world .In 2014 the BJP had special social media war rooms which

were equipped with computers where they tracked party activities across India’s 92,000

villages (Gupta, 2014). The BJP volunteers were young professionals, under 35 who

crowd-sourced Facebook for ideas, and used Twitter to communicate, provoke and

respond to breaking news and events (Thorsen & Sreedharan, 2015). Mr. Modi right from

2012 when he was the chief Minister of Gujarat engaged with citizens on social media

and used Google Hangouts to answer questions about his state but avoided contentious

issues. #ModiHangout was a top trending topic in the country and the site crashed many

times because of the number of people accessing it. Mr. Modi used Twitter to announce

his win and encouraged voters to tweet ungli with the hashtag #selfie with Modi and most

of the selfies on the site were from youngsters (Chao, 2014).

Modi learnt from feedback and criticism. According to Modi social media was a

medium for both listening and learning. He stated that he had made a lot of friends on

social media some of whom were youngsters and that he had benefitted by their thoughts
 47

and ideas. Since he used twitter people could not only listen to his speech but also receive

his tweets on the go through live twitter feed. Modi’s first foray with social media was on

YouTube and he later joined Facebook and twitter in May and January 2009 respectively.

According to Shashi Shekar of Niti Central a right wing news outlet Modi created a brand

for himself by creating a communication channel with the net savvy Indians and

bypassing traditional media. Modi’s men included both nodal workers who were central

to information on Modi and his ideology and others who were part of his tech cell

(Chopra, 2014). He was the third most followed world leader on Twitter after US

President Barack Obama and the Pope. According to Twitter Mr. Modi had been actively

using Twitter to connect with the masses making the social media platform a powerful

channel for communicating and engaging with all Indians across the country

(Correspondent, 2014).

Modi was tech savvy and had 4.3 million Twitter followers and he used the

platform relentlessly during the elections (Kalra, 2014). When Modi became the Prime

Minister of India in 2014, he advertised his victory not on standard media but on twitter

@narendramodi. Modi was also the second most-preferred government official on

Facebook. He captivated clients with critical discussions. The slogan "Stomach muscle

Ki Bar Modi Sarkar” and “Twinkle Little Star Ab Ki Baar Modi Sarkar” went viral on

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (Khursheed, 2014).

2.3.2 Rahul Gandhi and the INC strategy

In their first term during 2004 to 2009 the UPA government did well on the

economic, social and foreign policy but their second term (2009-2014) was marred by
 48

corruption, slow economy, a weak response to terrorism, an unimpressive foreign policy,

and a general complacency and lack of coordination within the government. By 2011

long before the elections the middle class showed their involvement in anti-corruption

movement and said so on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The UPA

government tried to reduce poverty by enacting many schemes such as the Mahatma

Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 and the introduction of a Food

Security Bill, but they could not curb inflation. During the 2014 campaigning, the

Congress replaced Mr. Manmohan Singh their two time Prime ministerial candidate with

a very inexperienced candidate Rahul Gandhi who failed to connect with the masses with

his speeches. They also took for granted their vote bank with Dalits and Muslims

(Thorsen & Sreedharan, 2015).

Rahul Gandhi was born on 19 June 1970 and went to the finest Indian schools and

studied economics in the US and worked in London before returning to work in Mumbai

in 2002.In September 2007 Rahul was named as the party's secretary general, and in

January 2013, he was appointed the vice-president of the party. He represented the fourth

generation of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that had led the Congress party, and India, for

most of the time since India gained independence. Many within the Congress party

thought Rahul Gandhi was elected as Congress nominee since the Congress lacked

alternatives and always relied on the Nehru-Gandhi family for leadership and direction.

Rahul Gandhi in the 2012 state elections, addressed more than 200 rallies, slept in

villagers' huts in Uttar Pradesh and even grew stubble to give himself a "man of the

people" look (Profile: Rahul Gandhi, 2014). He faced his biggest challenge in 2014 when
 49

he was appointed second-in-command of the Congress party and charged with leading it

into the elections and managing its campaign. His task was immense because the

Congress faced a bunch of problems including a slowing economy, high inflation and a

string of damaging corruption scandals (“Indian elections: The main players”, 2014).

Figure 5: Word cloud of words used by Mr. Rahul Gandhi in his speeches

A word cloud of Mr. Gandhi's speeches and statements showed that he had been

trying to highlight his own idea of "intra-party democracy" and governance. He talked

about his party's "pro-poor" policies and praised programs like the Right to Food Bill that

promised cheap food for two-thirds of the population. He refrained from mentioning Mr.

Modi's name in his speeches, but attacked Mr. Modi and stated that "one man alone

cannot solve India's problems". He mentioned his own vision for a new India that would

empower the poor and have zero tolerance for corruption thus distancing himself from

the corruption cases of the previous government. However, he also mentioned the names
 50

of his mother Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and gave them credit

for what he saw as successful10 years of his party's rule (India elections: Gandhi,

Kejriwal, Modi in war of words, 2014).

2.3.3 Arvind Kejriwal and the AAM Aadmi Party strategy

Arvind Kejriwal launched his political party the AAP on 2nd October 2012 with a

view to fight bribe taking. He had a degree in mechanical engineering and worked in the

Indian civil service He took voluntary retirement from his job in 2006 to work full time to

promote transparency in government and to create awareness about the Right to

Information movement. In 2013 Arvind Kejriwal’s party the Aam Aadmi party won in

the Delhi assembly elections and with the help of the congress party formed the

government. Mr. Kejriwal at age 46 became chief minister of Delhi. He started a few

initiatives like a hotline for people to deal with government officials who demand bribes.

Within 49 days of taking office he resigned over a row over an anti-corruption bill. His

election campaign had focused on Delhi's development needs and he promised to give the

people water, electricity, and housing for the poor and security for women and action

against corruption. He apologized to the voters of Delhi for abandoning them when they

had put their trust in him in the assembly elections. Mr. Kejriwal won the Ramon

Magsaysay award for emergent leadership for social work and initiatives to fight

corruption in 2006 (“Arvind Kejriwal, India's corruption-buster”, 2015). In the 2014

elections he announced he would stand against Mr. Modi in Varanasi and said the AAP

would field candidates for all 543 seats in the Lok Sabha (“Indian elections: The main

players”, 2014).
 51

Figure 6: Word cloud of words used by Mr. Arvind Kejriwal in his speeches

Mr. Kejriwal’s speeches were dominated by allegations of corruption against

politicians, bureaucrats, big business houses and the media, between the national parties,

industrialists and the media. He talked on problems of the common man like water

scarcity, high electricity and gas prices. He demanded the people of India to support his

"revolution" and stop the BJP and the Congress from coming to power in the general

elections (India elections: Gandhi, Kejriwal, Modi in war of words, 2014).

AAP leader Kejriwal used social media and used Twitter to challenge Modi to a

policy debate, which was retweeted and converted into a news story by the mainstream

media. Kejriwal also used Facebook for ‘live talk’ with electorates. His party’s Twitter

account grew by 119 per cent between 1 January and 12 May 2014, and his personal

followers while his personal following grew by 79 per cent during the same period

(Merelli, 2014). However, in the Lok Sabha elections, AAP’s short-lived New Delhi
 52

government (49 days) in New Delhi adversely affected their communication message of

anti-corruption and a need for good governance in the country. As a result, the AAP’s

popularity on social media did not translate into electoral success (Thorsen & Sreedharan,

2015).

2.4 Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi had a good boy image. Had the advantage of belonging to a political dynasty

and so was revered by people even though he lacked oratory skill. His was viewed as aloof

and inaccessible and unaccountable and hence the media did not like him. Also he did not

give interviews, offer clarifications nor answered questions about himself. He did not feel

the need for own website nor a mobile application to be accessible to people.

His Facebook page bore the legend “There is a work that my father had started, a dream he

had dreamt. I come to you today saying…allow me to turn that dream into reality”. His

favorite quote was, “Aam Aadmi Khe Badte Kadam,Har Kadam Pe Bharat Bulund ”Not the

kind of words which made people feel that he was approachable.

He had held no public office of importance or accountability hence people were not aware if

he had any abilities. He faced the hurdle of being a part of a party which faced corruption

scandals, poor performance in spite of which he supported the party fully which was a big

handicap (Narendra Modi V/s Rahul Gandhi - Part 2 - India Opines, 2013).

Rahul Gandhi never struggled in his career in politics as he inherited the ideas of”

Nehruvian India”. Rahul Gandhi was not very comfortable with the media and had no

ministerial experience. He only spoke on reforming systems and transforming the party but

people were not sure whether he was willing to take part in the fight in the elections. He was
 53

interested in transforming the Congress party and tried to democratize it. When he spoke he

talked about the UPA regime and what they had achieved and never attacked Mr. Modi. His

biggest hurdle was no one knew whether he was prepared for the round the clock duty of a

politician (Jindal, 2014).

Rahul Gandhi described Mr. Modi as anti-poor. His speeches were more informal and some

of his remarks were criticized. Mr. Gandhi’s rallies were conventional in terms of

technology or media coverage (Phukan, 2013).

As the scion of India's most famous dynasty, Rahul Gandhi was meant to work the family

magic over the ruling Congress party. He was not seen as politician material and lacked

charisma which his sister had. He was criticized for spending little time in his constituency

and rarely speaking in parliament. A leaked US diplomatic cable, written in 2007, said he

was "widely viewed as an empty suit ( Presse, 2014).

However, to his credit, Rahul possessed ideological consistency. Before the 2014 general

election and during the 2014 elections he criticized Modi for being left-of-center. He took

potshots against Modi for favoring big industrialists, showing indifference towards the

plight of farmers, not reining in the RSS hotheads, driving a wedge between the

communities, and ignoring the poor. Though Rahul wasn’t a member of the UPA

government he suffered, because the Gandhi’s controlled the government. As the UPA

government was seen to be morally bankrupt Rahul Gandhi also suffered (Ashraf, 2015).

Rahul Gandhi was reluctant to give interviews whereas the BJP launched a full-scale media

campaign on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook with Modi, even using 3D holograms to reach out

to undecided voters. Potential voters listened to Modi’s rally speeches real time on their
 54

phones, compared to Rahul Gandhi, who did not even have his own website or use social

media networks (Juhos, 2014). Rahul Gandhi’s first interview was on a Hindi news channel

called AAJ Tak and it did not garner any television rating Point (Chakravartty & Roy,

2015).

Before the 2014 elections the Congress grappled with allegations of massive corruption,

policy paralysis, demanding allies, a directionless government and an leader who was not

capable of inspiring. He had never taken a stand on economic issues as he had never shown

any inclination to participate in parliament debates or be clear with the media with whom he

only claimed that the poor and downtrodden were worse off in states ruled by the opposition

parties (Verma, 2012).

Narendra Modi was surrounded by colleagues who themselves wanted to achieve their own

dreams and ambitions. He faced more opposition from within his own party (Narendra Modi

V/s Rahul Gandhi - Part 2 - India Opines, 2013).He was very popular in Gujarat.

Development in Gujarat was so great it acted as an unquestionable evidence to show his

excellent in administration skills. He was a great orator inspired people, was disciplined,

hardworking and unwavering in his commitment. His pro-development policies and high

visibility at various international forums meant that he was well revered wherever he went.

However the 2002 riots was a thing people did not forget and it became a permanent blot on

his image. He never apologized for the massacre under his government. The difficulty faced

by Mr. Modi was that his track record in Gujarat could not easily translate into votes in other

states as it was difficult to predict the Indian voter. Initially he himself did not have the full

support of his own party (Narendra Modi vs Rahul Gandhi Part 1, 2013).
 55

Modi was a good orator who sometimes went overboard speaking. In his speech he attacked

the Congress leadership and the Gandhi family especially Rahul Gandhi. Modi had to

struggle to get to the position he was in as he was not popular among the RSS because of his

dictatorial style of functioning. His big difficulty was trying to be seen as pro-growth and

not someone responsible for the Gujarat riots (Jindal, 2014).

Mr. Modi said Rahul Gandhi did not know poverty as he was not born in one like him. Mr.

Modi was always seen as making personal attacks but he had great oratory skills and

engaged with the crowds. His rallies were planned to the last detail and were hi tech and

innovative. His party provided hi end footage to channels, relayed his speeches on cell

phones (Phukan, 2013).The Narendra Modi persona was largely a television creation which

was amplified by the coverage of the leader 6 months prior to the election. Televisions also

had a great impact on print media especially Indian Express and Times of India. The print

media tried to replicate the speed of news coverage on television with video clips of news

items in their online version (Bhushan, 2014).

In the early part of his career Mr. Modi had courted the media but only after the 2002

massacre of Muslims in Gujarat he changed his friendship with the media particularly the

English media. In the 2014 elections the BJP tried to change the image of Modi by focusing

only on the success of the Gujarat model. Modi campaign joined hands with the sympathetic

Hindi media channels and claimed to be a victim of English news channels. He even gave

his first television interview on a popular Hindi language news channel where the compare

was his longtime friend. The interview was a massive success and garnered a high TRP for

the channel. The increase in TRP shaped the volume of television coverage of Mr. Modi and
 56

the BJP. The networked ownership structure of the Hindi language news media allowed the

BJP to successfully maneuver tensions between competing sets of elites. The English

language television news media lost its ability to set the news agenda as the Hindi media

found commercial success with Mr. Modi (Chakravartty & Roy, 2015).

2.5 Demography of the Indian population who went to vote in the 2014 elections

Around 930,000 polling stations were set for the month-long election and electronic voting

machines, first introduced in 2004 were used. Uttar Pradesh had the most eligible voters

(134 million); Sikkim the lowest (about 362,000). Male voters constituted 52.4 percent of

the electorate but women voters outnumbered men in eight regions namely Puducherry,

Kerala, Manipur, Mizoram, Daman & Diu, Meghalaya, Goa and Arunachal Pradesh. About

23 million eligible voters had enrolled in the 18 to 19 age group, and made up nearly 3

percent of India’s voters. Of India’s 814.5 million eligible voters, 28,314 identified

themselves as transgender and their gender was listed as “other”. There were 11,844 non-

resident Indians registered to vote in the election (Chouhan, 2014). 50 percent of India’s

populations were below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35. It was

expected that by 2020, the average age of an Indian would be 29 years, compared to 37 for

China and 48 for Japan.41.03% of the Indians spoke Hindi while the rest spoke Assamese,

Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telegu, Urdu and a

variety of languages (Demographics of India, 2016).

2.6 Conceptual framework

For the purpose of this study framing theory was used as it had relation to the topic under

study which was to see whether media with its framing could influence people’s choice of
 57

political candidates. Framing create frames which are abstractions that work to organize or

structure message meaning. They influence the perception of the news by not only telling

the audience what to think about as in agenda-setting theory but also how to think about that

issue (Framing Theory, 2011).

Concept of framing was added to the agenda setting theory in 1998 by McCombs who stated

that media can not only direct people on what to think about but also how to think about an

issue. For example, agenda setting theory might describe water scarcity of a place but

framing theory talked about how the government was causing water scarcity defining the

issue to be the government's fault (Agenda-setting theory, 2015).

The major premise of framing theory was that an issue could be viewed from a variety of

and be construed as having implications for multiple values or considerations. Framing

referred to the process by which people developed a particular conceptualization of an issue

or reoriented their thinking about an issue (Chong & Druckman, 2007). Framing was based

on the assumption that how an issue was characterized in news reports could influence

audiences. Framing had roots both in psychology and sociology. The psychological origins

of framing were in experiments carried out by Kahneman and Tversky for which Kahneman

received the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics. Kahneman and Tversky examined how

different presentations of identical scenarios influenced people’s decision-making choices

and their evaluation of the various options presented to them. The sociological foundations

of framing were laid by Goffman and others who assumed that individuals could not

understand the world fully and constantly struggled to interpret their life experiences and

tried to make sense of the world around them. Therefore in processing news information
 58

individuals applied interpretive schemas or primary frameworks to classify information and

interpret it meaningfully. Framing therefore was both a macro level and a micro level

construct .As a macro construct, framing referred to modes of presentation that journalists

and other communicators used to present information in a way that resonated with existing

underlying schemas among their audience. Framing is a necessary tool for journalists, given

the constraints of their respective media related to news holes and airtime so that they can

reduce the complexity of an issue, and present it in an efficient way so that it can be assessed

by a lay man. As a micro construct, framing described how people used information and

presentation features as they formed impressions (Scheele & Tewksbury, 2007).

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CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The study takes De Vreese’s (2005) Integrated Process of Framing as a conceptual. This

study on the 2014 Indian Elections on how Modi secured a win focuses on frame-building

process, rather than frame-setting by examining generic and editorial frames as used by the 6

newspapers(Times of India, The Telegraph ,The Hindu , and Local newspapers (Hindustan

Dainik , Anandabazar Patrika and Dainik Jagran). Attempts were also made to investigate

both internal and external factors that influenced the frame –building process by journalists

and media professionals. Framing in News rooms must undergo the test of both internal and

external factors as they play an important role since frames sponsors make sure that the

stories are slanted and framed in a way that is consistent with their preferred framing.

Finally the result of the election was used as a criterion in comparison with the media

frames.

3.1 Content Analysis

My sample was from secondary sources whether it was studying news frames, prime

time television or social media. For the news frames I used a secondary source and got 300

news stories related to the 2014 elections in India from Times of India, The Telegraph and

The Hindu and local language newspapers(Hindustan Dainik , Anandabazar Patrika and

Dainik Jagran) published within a period of seven months between November 2013 and mid

of May 2014 (till election happened ).The sample yielded 560 news frames and I searched

them for terms such as NaMo ,Gujarat Model of Development, toffee model ,Corruption

Chai pe Charcha (Debate over Tea) Hindutva ,Personal Profile of , common man ,Dynasty
 60

Politics and Rahul Gandhi names, Minority Appeasement ,Gujarat Riots, Aaj ki Baar/ Modi

Sarkar and caste. These news frames had been identified by the secondary source through

secondary analyses of six newspapers in terms of their circulation, territorial significance and

linguistic relevance. The news stories were coded based on where they appeared in the

newspaper whether on the front page or the nation page or as a headline, lead, paragraph or

somewhere else in the newspaper .The first newspaper was The Times of India which had the

largest circulation amongst English newspapers all over India and was owned by Bennett and

Coleman. The Telegraph, was the most widely circulated English newspaper in Eastern

India, and Ananda Bazar Patrika, was the highest circulated Bengali daily in the country and

were owned by ABP Group, headed by Aveek Sarkar as the Chief Editor, a business person

from Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal. The Hindu had the highest readership in southern

India and was owned by the Iyengar family who started the newspaper in 1978. Dainik

Jagran had the highest nation-wide circulation as a Hindi daily in India and was started by

Puranchandra Gupta, a freedom fighter, in 1942. Later it was headed by his son Narendra

Mohan, who joined the BJP and became a Minister of Parliament and today, headed by his

son Sanjay Gupta, the Chief Executive Officer and full-time Director of the Jagran Group.

Hindustan Dainik had third largest readership among the Hindi-speaking population in India

and was headed by Amit Chopra as the Chief Executive Officer.

All the newspapers considered in the study came into being during the British rule in

India. Media houses have had close structural association with the economy and politics in

India.
 61

3.2 Research design

Most citizens are unable to meet party representatives in person and therefore use the

media’s tone as an important clue to know about the party and the candidate. Zaller

demonstrated that the tone of elite and news messages, under certain conditions, can provide

an information flow affecting voters’ attitudes and voting behavior (Hopmann, Vliegenthart,

De Vreese, & Albæk, 2010).

In order to find the connection between news frames and the voting pattern of electorates

I used a secondary source. The Electorate in the secondary source had a sample size of 250

and had been categorized according to age, gender, occupational category, educational

qualification, religion, caste as identity, and geographical locations. The study dealt with two

types of data sources namely primary sources which involved direct interactions with the

subjects through interviews and secondary sources which included identifying news frames

potential for impacting the electorate.

In order to establish a direct link between political media content and individual

exposure to this content on television, I utilized CMS media Labs who had tracked prominent

NEWS channels in India for nearly a decade and analyzed their contents. After round the

clock monitoring of broadcasts for a couple of years, they concluded prime time coverage (7

to 11 PM) was sufficient to reflect the priorities of the day in view of unique nature of NEWS

channels, repeat and replay coverage, including the visual footage shown often during the

day. This relationship was used because national news channels devoted around fifty percent

of their prime time for politics (including the impending polls), which became 94 percent of

prime time once the election campaign gained momentum ( Coverage of 2014 Lok Sabha
 62

Polls by NEWS Channel, 2014).The central dimensions of the content analysis was to see

whether there was any relationship between the amount of time granted to each candidate,

amount of time given to each party and the issues covered during the debates in their

television coverage and its influence on election result. The other objective was to see

whether the high impact seats mentioned by the IAMAI surveys had candidates who were

active on social media and if so did they win their seat. Lastly I used secondary sources to

study social media data

3.3 Data collection procedure

The methods of data collection from secondary sources were mainly through

identification and analysis of news frames which appeared in the newspapers seven months

prior to the 2014 elections and had also been used and referred to by journalists, politicians,

electorate and academicians in their interviews in terms of terms and coinage. These news

frames were identified in terms of frequency of appearance in the newspapers, popularity

among the stakeholders, time of dissemination, and location in the newspapers and then

through secondary analyses was carried in terms of their circulation, territorial significance

and linguistic relevance. I then categorized the news frames as NaMo, Gujarat development,

dynasty politics of Congress, minority rights, corruption Also the newspapers had been

selected in terms of circulation, regional significance and linguistic relevance ( Basu, 2014).

In order to establish a direct link between political media content and individual exposure

to this content, we utilized CMS media Labs who have been tracking prominent NEWS

channels in India for nearly a decade and analyzing their contents. CMS analyzed the

periodic reports of five news channels (two English and three Hindi), namely NDTV, 24x7
 63

Aajtak, ABP NEWS, Zee NEWS and CNN to reflect the scope of coverage of NEWS media

in general and of NEWS channels in particular.

The CMS media lab tracked the top ten important political candidates Narendra Modi,

Arvind Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi , Priyanka Gandhi ,Sonia Gandhi ,Manmohan Singh

,Mulayam Yadav , Amit Shah ,Raj Thackeray and Mamta Banerjee and covered election

issues like Campaign against corruption and Election Commission’s functioning ,opinion

polls, public policy, governance, development and local issues. The labs also followed the

coverage of ten parties namely BJP, Congress, AAP, SP, Shiv Sena, BSP, MNS, CPI(M),

TMC, JD (U). The coverage of polls by national channels was looked into from four

different time phases of poll schedule, with nine different dates of polling, starting April 7,

2014. Before the final announcement of poll schedule (March 5), the first fortnight of

campaign began with revealing the names of candidates for five phases, second fortnight

with three phases of polls, third phase, and the last leg of polls (May 1 to 11). This phase-

wise analysis of campaign coverage by channels gave insights into the coverage (Coverage

of 2014 Lok Sabha Polls by NEWS Channel, 2014).

I used the results from Indiaspend the country’s first data journalism initiative where

open data was used to analyze a range of issues and analyzed the social media presence of

candidates in the high impact states as mentioned by the IAMAI and IRIS report to check for

correlation between presence on social media and winning by computing a social media

index
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3.4 News Frames definitions and operations

The generic or editorial frames have been used to study both content and textual analysis

on selected news stories which provide insights into socio-cultural factors underlying the

2014 Indian elections. Articles were coded of the based on the 6 news frames in this study

which are namely NaMo, Gujarat Model of development, Corruption, dynasty politics of the

Congress Party, and Minority Rights. The following are the news frames and their

operational definitions:

1. NaMo: The news stories related to Mr. Modi with words such as, Hindutva, Chai Pe

Charcha, Modi’s popularity, Aab Ki Baar Modi Sarkaar, common man, caste and

personal profile of politicians in the newspaper articles.

2. Gujarat model of development: The news stories that contained all stories positive or

negative related to development of the state of Gujarat with words like development,

toffee model and brand Modi in the newspaper articles.

3. Corruption: News stories that related to the many scams during the UPA led rule

with words like 2G, CoalGate, black money, and Mr. Modi’s relationship with top

businessmen in the newspaper articles.

4. Dynasty politics of the Congress: News stories that spoke about the Gandhi-Nehru

family hold on the Congress party leadership and contained issues like Rahul Gandhi

nicknames and dynasty politics of the congress party.

5. Minority Rights spoke about the problems faced by the minority in India and had

issues like minority appeasement and Gujarat riots.

 65

3.5 Results from the Coding

I conducted the coding of the news items from the 6 newspapers as they appeared

between the Months of November 2013 to May 2014 for each of the frames selected by me

namely the NaMo frame, corruption frame, minority rights frame and dynasty politics of

Congress frame.

3.5.1 NaMo Frame:

In the four months prior to the election and after I can see that Times of India has

much more articles portraying NaMo frame that contained Hindutva, Chai Pe Charcha,

Modi’s popularity, Aab Ki Baar Modi Sarkaar, common man, caste and personal profile

of politicians at 116. Times of India is followed by Dainik Jagran at 79, Hindustan Dainik

at 59, The Hindu at 43, Telegraph at 40 and lastly Anandabazar Patrika at 25.

3.5.2 Gujarat model of development frame:

In the seven months prior to the election and after I can see that Times of India

has much more articles portraying Gujarat model of development frame that contained

development, toffee model and brand Modi. Times of India are followed by The Hindu

and Hindustan Dainik equally portraying the Gujarat Model of Development at 10 each

followed Telegraph at 8, Dainik Jagran and Anandabazar Patrika equally portraying at 7

each.
 66

3.5.3 Corruption Frame:

In the seven months prior to the election and after I can see that Dainik Jagran had

stories that related to the many scams during the UPA led rule like 2G, CoalGate, black

money and to Mr. Modi’s relationship with top businessmen at 26. Dainik Jagran is

followed by The Hindu at 23 and Times of India at 21 Hindustan Dainik at 15, telegraph

at 10 and finally Anandabazar Patrika at 6.

3.5.4 Minority Rights Frame:

In the seven months prior to the election and after I can see that Hindustan Dainik

has much more articles portraying Minority Rights frame that contained problems faced

by the minority in India and had issues like minority appeasement and Gujarat riots .

Hindustan Dainik is followed by Telegraph at 10 The Hindu and The Times of India both

portraying the Minority Rights issue equally at 7 and Dainik Jagran and Anandabazar

Patrika equally portraying at 5 each .

3.5.5 Dynasty politics of Congress:

In the seven months prior to the election and after I can see that Dainik Jagran has

much more articles that spoke about the Gandhi-Nehru family hold on the Congress

party leadership and contained issues like Rahul Gandhi nicknames and dynasty politics

of the congress party at 24 . Dainik Jagran is followed by The Times of India at 11 and

Telegraph at 10 The Hindu and Hindustan Dainik equally portraying the Dynasty politics

of Congress at 8.Anandabasar Patrika did not portray the issue of Dynasty Politics of

congress at all in their news papers

 67

3.6 Inter coder Reliability

To calculate inter coder reliability, the researcher served as a first coder and a

communication graduate was chosen as the second coder and she/ he was given training

about the coding scheme. According to Wimmer and Dominick suggested that between 10 %

and 25% of the body should be tested. Accordingly, the researcher randomly selected 10 %

of the news articles for calculating the inter coder reliability. Using Holsti’s (1969) formula

also cited in Wimmer & Dominick, 2006) it was found that the inter coder reliability for

news frames was 0.90, which showed substantial agreement.

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CHAPTER 4

RESULTS OF THE STUDY

The results of the study is divided into 2 parts: Content analysis and textual analysis of the

newspaper coverage

Table 1: Distribution of frames by news papers

Frames Times of India Telegraph and Local Language Total

The Hindu Newspaper

Raw % Raw % Raw % Raw %

NaMo 126 65.3 71 50.4 133 50 330 54.9

Gujarat 16 8.3 19 13.4 37 14 72 12.0

Model

Corruption 14 7.3 22 15.6 35 13 71 11.8

Minority 16 8.3 16 11.3 33 12 65 10.8

Rights

Dynasty 21 10.8 13 9.2 29 11 63 10.5

Politics

Total 193 100 141 100 267 100 601 100

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Table 2: Distribution of frames by English and local news papers

Frames English Language Local Language Total

Newspaper Newspaper

Raw % Raw % Raw %

NaMo 197 59.0 133 50 330 54.9

Gujarat 35 10.5 37 14 72 12.0

Model

Corruption 36 10.8 35 13 71 11.8

Minority 32 9.58 33 12 65 10.8

Rights

Dynasty 34 10.2 29 11 63 10.5

Politics

Total 334 100 267 100 601 100

Part 1 Content Analysis

The result of the content analysis of Modi win in the 2014 elections is presented in Table

1 and 2. It shows the distribution of frames according to the main players and actors from

news stories in the newspapers namely Times of India, The Telegraph and The Hindu, and

Local News Papers Dainik Jagran, Hindustan Dainik and Anandabazar Patrika.

The frames were taken from the newspapers during the seven month period prior to the

2014 election between November 2013 and mid of May 2014 (till election happened),

through secondary analyses of seven newspapers in terms of their circulation, territorial

 70

significance and linguistic relevance. The frames covered by The Telegraph and The Hindu

during the 2014 elections were fewer than those related to the frames covered by the Times

of India and Local Language News Papers. News stories from the Times of India

outnumbered those from the other newspapers because it had the biggest circulation amongst

the English daily in India and outnumbered those from the Local News Papers. For the

exercise I have used approximately 300 news stories which yielded 601 generic frames out of

which 193 news frames was related to Times of India, 141 news frames was related to the

Telegraph and The Hindu and 267 news frames were related to Local language News Papers.

Table 1 revealed that among the five frames chosen for this study (Gujarat development,

Dynasty Politics, Minority Rights, NaMo and Corruption) the NaMo frame dominated the

scene at 55 % followed by Gujarat Development at 12 %, corruption at 12 % and Minority

Rights and Dynasty Politics at the bottom with 10.8 and 10.5 respectively. Narendra Modi

frame contained words like NaMo, Chai Pe Charcha, Hindutva, and Narendra Modi was very

popular. NaMo frame was the most popular frame generated prior to 2014 election which

could have been remembered by the public prior to elections.

The appearance of the NaMo frame 55percent of the time in newspapers seven months

prior to the elections showed the newspapers ability to circumvent issues relating to the

negative connotation around Mr. Modi as a radical right wing leader and created a brand out

of a politician considered a right wing leader. The BJP could never have fought the elections

based on Hindutva even though the majority of the Indian populations are Hindus. The nation

was as it is tired of corruption scandals of the previous Congress government and instead of

focusing more on corruption issue the NaMo frame managed to give the population an
 71

answer to their woes by creating a brand that they could trust. Mr. Modi was highly focused

in his campaign right from the beginning intending to prove himself a leader of the whole

country not just of Gujarat state but it was the media which carried his ideas and created the

brand around his image. The NaMo frame spoke about Chai pe Charcha wherein Mr. Modi

had direct connection with the population in different parts of the country and answered

questions posed to him. This was an extension to his media appearance with people whom he

could not access through social media. Thus the media created a leader who was more

accessible to the public. The media developed a brand NaMo which had Mr. Modi as a

product who had consistently showed development in a state where he was elected chief

minister three times in succession. The frame popularized the word NaMo which quickly

started having a linkage with Mr. Modi and spoke mostly about his vision for India based on

economic development in his Chai pe Charcha conversations. Modi gave an inclusive

philosophy of taking whole of India forward not just the Hindu population by stating. “sab

ka saath, sab ka vikas”. The media focused only on his conversation about his vision for

India which included interlinking rivers, introducing bullet trains, modernizing railways and

building gas grids, optical fiber networks and a hundred smart cities. NaMo was a name that

could be easily understood and remembered by people speaking different languages in India.

There was no mention of Rahul Gandhi or the Congress party. Even the frames that were

mentioned 12 percent of the time only helped Mr. Modi. Gujarat development frame only

helped to second the NaMo frame by talking of Gujarat state and its achievements when

compared to the other states of India. This could have wooed the younger generation who
 72

were more interested in economic development of the country and whose main interests were

in getting jobs.

Gujarat model of development frame pictured Gujarat as a very business friendly state

and talked about the development of Gujarat under Mr. Modi and was the second most

popular frame. Gujarat under Mr. Modi had developed a good relationship with the business

class of India, and thus became one of the most investor friendly states in India. Not only had

it developed into a business friendly state there was good infrastructure and good

governance. Coverage of this news frame could have helped to create Brand Modi. The topic

of corruption was covered by the local language newspapers at 13% frequency and by

English language newspapers at 11% frequency and came in third.

The frame which occupied an equal percentage with Gujarat Model of development was

corruption. Compared to charges on Mr. Modi as being corrupt the congress government

faced innumerable charges of corruption. Corruption scandals rocked their second term and it

had been the main issue a year prior to elections. However it seemed to have not been the

issue most talked about taking a back seat when compared to NaMo frame. Corruption was

the main issue during the second term of UPA rule. It reflected strong anti-establishment

sentiments for the ruling party Congress-led UPA-II which was the then ruling party and

increased support for the BJP its biggest opposition. India ranks 85th out of 175 countries in

the scale of corruption. Corruption also made headlines and linked Mr. Modi to big corporate

houses. It caused an enormous bad reputation for the Congress because of the Congress

defense of Robert Vadra the son in law of Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, the 2G scam, Coalgate scam
 73

and many other scams under their rule. The Coalgate scam was widely covered by the Times

of India.

The fourth frame was minority rights and consisted of Buzz words like minority

appeasement and Gujarat riots. This frame was covered more by local language newspapers

than English newspapers. The Hindu Muslim communal politics has been a long standing

crisis in India. Muslims had a poor socio economic and education index in India. The

Gujarat riots took place in 2002 Feb –March. Mr. Modi was the chief Minister of Gujarat at

that time and many felt he did not respond well to the situation. Minority rights topped

issues covered by Dainik Jagran at 16%.Even though this was the only frame that could

have rocked Mr. Modi’s participation in the election there were many newspapers who

spoke of

The 5th frame was Dynasty Politics of the Congress party and consisted of Rahul

Gandhi’s nickname like Shehzada, teddy bear, candy kid, childish, raga, comedian, mere bird

vs. Modi tiger, Google hangout vs. Modi’s Chaiwallah image and dynasty politics of

congress party.

In the Times of India the NaMo frame topped the list with 65 % followed surprisingly by

Dynasty Politics at 10.8%, Gujarat Model and Minority Rights tied at 8.3% and corruption

at 7.3%. In the Telegraph and The Hindu NaMo again topped the list with 50 % followed by

corruption at 16 %, Gujarat Development at 13%, Minority rights at 11.3 and lastly by

Dynasty Politics at 9 %. Amongst the local language newspapers NaMo topped the list with

50 % followed by Gujarat model at 14 %, corruption at 13 %, minority rights at 12 % and

lastly by Dynasty politics at 11 %.

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Table 2 revealed a comparison between English language newspapers and local language

newspapers. Narendra Modi frame dominated the scene with 67%. Mr. Modi was praised by

English language newspapers 70% of the time in the seven months prior to the elections as

compared to 64% of the time by local language newspapers. Coverage by local and English

language newspapers focused on NaMo frame more suggesting that news frames from

newspapers had a hand in creating brand Modi. Three frames out of the five generated by

The Times of India (NaMo, Gujarat Model of Development, corruption) were pro-BJP and

pro-Modi. We draw the conclusion that Times of India was pro Modi and Telegraph was

also pro Modi but to a lesser extent. The Hindu did not favor any side and remained neutral.

The local newspapers put together seem pro BJP. However, while they disseminated Modi’s

popularity, they also popularized SnoopGate on the other hand.

Part 2 Textual analysis

Following are some textual analysis of the 5 frames covered by newspaper prior to the

2014 Indian Election to help us understand how media framed Modi win in the 2014

Indian Election.

1. NaMo Frame

The word NaMo was coined from the first two initials of Mr. Narendra Modi’s name

and was one of the most popular words that was circulated by newspapers around the

middle of 2013 until the elections in 2014 May. It appeared more consistently towards

the last three months prior to elections. It was also the first time something like this was

done in Indian politics. The BJP and its mother body the RSS stood for protecting
 75

Hinduism and were strongly anti-Islamic. Mr. Modi tried to separate his identity from

this strong Hindutva feeling and this catchy name NaMo did it for him. It was a name

easily remembered by Indians who spoke a multitude of different languages. Between

November 2013 and May 2014, NaMo appeared 76 times in the seven newspapers under

review and had the highest presence and was consistent throughout the period. NaMo

appeared 25 times in 7 months in The Times of India. NaMo appeared on its pages every

month except for February and November. It appeared seven or eight times in the

months of March and April, just two months before the elections of which it appeared

twice on the first page in March and once in April, at other times it appeared on the

Nation page. Even when he was criticized Mr. Modi was referred to as NaMo and not

Mr. Modi. After Times of India, NaMo appeared twenty two times in Hindustan Dainik

and appeared five times in the months of March and April. NaMo appeared 2 times in

each of May and December, 4 times in January, thrice in February, and 1 time in

November.

In Dainik Jagran, NaMo appeared 15 times altogether, thrice in May, four times

each in March and April, three times in February, twice times in January, and once in

November. Like the other two newspapers it appeared the most in March and April and

did not appear in December. In April, it appeared once in the front page along with a

strong visual imagery of Modi wearing a regional headgear which aimed at identifying

him with region-specific voters. In March it appeared on page one with the headline

Bhagirath along with NaMo. Bhagirath is the Hindu mythological God who got the river

Ganges to earth.
 76

In the Telegraph, NaMo appeared 9 times in 7 months mostly in February and

December and did not appear in November. The Telegraph published a news report

mentioning Modi as NaMo with a headline “After Modi Who? If not PM What? NaMo

appeared 4 times on the front page of The Telegraph three times in Anandabazar Patrika

once each in the month of May, April, March and February and had the lowest frequency

of appearance in The Hindu. It appeared only once in each of March and February on the

first page and was in context of Modi’s innovative ways of political campaigns like

NaMo-themed mobile ringtones and fish stalls. One with a negative connotation since

NaMo as the ringtone campaign was a failure and the other one with a positive

connotation which stated that the fish stalls modeled after NaMo-themed tea stalls had

gained huge popularity.

The word Hindutva appeared 64 times before the general elections of 2014 along

with another word Har Har Modi both of which had similar religious undertone. Hindutva

was coined by Vinayak Samovar Savarkar, and Hinduism was an ideology that sought to

establish the supremacy of Hindus in India as a common nation, common race, and

common culture. The term Hindutva was reinstated back by the media when it linked

Hindutva to the Gujarat riots. Hindutva stood next to NaMo in number of times spoken

about in the media. The word Hindutva appeared four times in the month of May in The

Times of India when Mr. Modi equated poll campaign with sadhana a term which meant

relentless practice and five times in April when it was linked with Mr. Modi’s displeasure

towards ghuspet or illegal migrants and the BJP’s agenda to recreate Ram mandir. This
 77

term appeared once in March in reference to chants of Durga mantra by Modi supporters

and once in January when Modi supporters had decided to build a temple for Modi.

In The Hindu it appeared once in May 2014 and four times in April and twice in

March and February. In most cases it appeared on the front page and was in reference to

attacks on Mr. Modi by opposition who stated, Modi’s hidden agenda was Hinduism and

most of them denounced him on communal lines. It also appeared on the front page when

the BJP offered an apology to Muslims for mistakes in the past.

In the Dainik Jagran it appeared twice in May when it was referred by opposition

leaders who stated that Mr. Modi would bring in Ram Rajya when elected to power. It

appeared three times in April in reference to statements made by Mr. Modi that Varanasi

would be made the religious capital of India. It was on the front pages in March when the

people of Varanasi chanted NaMo. It appeared three times in January when Mr. Modi

objected to the communal disharmony bill and also when he made a trip to Kashi

Vishwanath temple before he commenced his election campaign. It appeared nine times

in Hindustan Dainik where it referred to Mr. Mod’s hidden agenda for making India a

Hindu dominated country. It appeared on the front page of Anandabazar Patrika in April

where it referred to Mr. Modi distancing himself from Hindutva and in March where it

referred to Mr. Modi meeting religious leaders. It made it to the front page in January

when it referred to Mr. Modi putting aside the religious card and concentrating on

Development. In December it appeared with the headlines which stated “polls predict

saffron storm”. It appeared on the headlines of The Telegraph in May under “Ram Naam

& Rahul Badnaam: Name Game Draws Poll Panel Glare” which stated positive stories
 78

for Mr. Modi and negative ones for Rahul Gandhi. It also stated that Mr. Modi invoked

the name of God Ram and asked the crowds to Jai Shree Ram. Mr. Modi was also sated

as drawing parallels with Gandhi who he stated defined good governance as Ram Rajya

and tried to instill communalism through Mahatma Gandhi. Such headlines intensified

Hindutva. The term Hindutva made it to the headlines three times in April with headlines

like “Modi Targets ‘Pink Revolution’. In January his name was linked to riots in the

headlines although the BJP said all these talks were baseless. Hindutva was a big term

which lurked in Indian politics. Words linked to Hindutva and those that made headlines

along with it were Har Har Modi/Har Ghar Modi.

Har Har Modi/Har Ghar Modi was a slogan raised by BJP during the 2014

Parliamentary Elections to state Mr. Modi was BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and to

link his identity with Hindu God Shiva. It meant Mr. Modi is like the God and should be

in every house. It also promoted Hindu sentiments across India. It made headlines four

times in May, twice in April and once in February where it was criticized by other parties

as a communal slogan.

In India tea is a popular drink and many political discussions take place over a cup of

tea. Hence two words Chai pe Charcha and Chaiwallah became two highly popular

stories before General Elections 2014 in India. It had also been known that Mr. Modi had

been a tea seller a young man and hence these words made great impact during the

elections. Mr. Modi hence planned a discussion over a cup of tea in many states and

where he could not be personally present. He made his presence felt through DTH,
 79

internet, and satellite TV. There was always a massive turnout for ‘Chai pe Charcha’ and

this was covered extensively by the media.

The word appeared a total of 64 times in the seven months prior to elections in the

said newspapers of which it appeared 34 times during January and April the main

campaigning period. It appeared through Modi’s pan-India campaign from Trichi to

Haryana, his conference calls conducted through wireless technology at tea stalls, his

discussions that were focused on women’s issues and through free Modi tea at selected

tea stalls holding the campaign.

The words Chai Pe Charcha appeared maximum number of times during the peak

campaigning season in The Times of India followed by Hindustan Dainik and The

Telegraph. It appeared three times in April and February twice in march and it made it to

the headlines in January in Hindustan Dainik. It appeared twice in march where it

mentioned Mr. Modi in connection with women’s empowerment in North eastern part of

India in The Telegraph. Women’s empowerment had been a big part of Mr. Modi’s

campaign discussion. The word Chai pe Charcha appeared only in February and March in

The Hindu. In March when it appeared in The Hindu it referred to AAP doing a Chai pe

Charcha fashioned after Mr. Modi’s campaign. It covered Mr. Modi’s Chai pe Charcha in

Kolkata and stated that Mamta Banerjee found such discussions irrelevant. In February it

was mentioned that Mr. Modi was selecting fish stalls to do his Chai Pe Charcha. It also

appeared in Ananda Bazar Patrika in February and March where it referred to Mr. Modi’s

use of 3D technology to reach to voters at tea stalls. In February there were references to

the RJD imitating Modi’s tea stall political campaign strategy after it showed positive
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results. Chai pe Charcha appeared three times in the Dainik Jagran of which it appeared

twice in March and once in January. In March it was referred to in connection with

women’s empowerment and Rahul Gandhi’s answer to Chai Pe Charcha on Google

hangout. It made an underhand assessment on Mr. Modi’s reach to the common man with

the use of technology and pointed to the subtle difference in the case of Rahul Gandhi’s

elitism with the use of technology. Google Hangout was popular among young urban

middle class but lacked the pan-India appeal of tea stalls. Such reports thus undermined

Rahul Gandhi’s campaign. Word connected to chai Pe Charcha in the newspapers was

Chaiwallah. Mr. Modi successfully branded himself as Chaiwallah to attract the common

man. His father had been a tea vendor at a railway station and Mr. Modi had followed

that path in his youth. In a country where most top politicians like Nehru and Gandhi

came from a rich background the portrayal of Mr. Modi as a Chaiwallah’s son made a

great connection to the common man. The term Chaiwallah appeared consistently from

January to April in The Times of India during the entire campaign period. It featured on

the headlines and front pages and was referred to in news about Mr. Modi’s modest past

and his rags to riches entry into Indian politics. Such news promoted self-identification of

the common man with Mr. Modi. It made headlines in The Telegraph in May, April, and

January where it referred to news stories where Mr. Modi discusses crucial issues of

national concern and where it emphasized the fact that Mr. Modi was an assistant to his

father at the tea stall.

Between November 2013 and May 2014, a number of stories like Modi Wave and

Modi Tsunami appeared in the newspapers though much less in frequency than NaMo,
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these stories were significant in their dissemination by the newspapers. Modi Wave was

coined by Mr. Amit Shah and it was around this term the election campaign revolved. All

the newspapers reviewed had used the term ‘Modi Wave’ in the entire duration of the

study and was one of the highlights of 2014 elections. It signified a victory for Mr. Modi

even before the elections and also a huge mandate. The term Modi Wave appeared 21

times in the newspapers under review with it appearing the maximum number of times in

The Times of India, followed by Dainik Jagran, The Hindu, Ananda Bazar Patrika, and

The Telegraph. It did not appear in Hindustan Dainik between November 2013 and June

2014.It appeared consistently nine times in The Times of India between May and March,

the most crucial months before the election and once in November. It appeared in relation

to news on Modi’s 3D campaign strategy in May on the front page and through a news

item by the Congress blaming BJP of playing the caste card by using the term Modi

Wave in April. In March, Brinda Karat from the CPI (M) denounced ‘Modi Wave’ as a

creation of the money-laundering BJP and in November, ‘Modi wave’ appeared in news

item where the congress claimed that Modi Wave would disappear as it was a term

created by the media. It appeared five times in Hindustan Dainik out of which it appeared

twice in each of May and April and once in February. In May it referred to a story where

the opposition stated that there was nothing called Modi wave. In Dainik Jagran, it

appeared 4 times and in the months of May and April, it appeared once each where the

headlines were quoted as stating that there was no ‘Modi Wave’. In contrast in March, it

appeared in the Nation page with the headline ‘Modi Wave to become Modi Tsunami

after April 15’. This had significance because of its timing before the elections. In
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January, ‘Modi Wave’ became a part of the headlines as it joined hands with another

strategy of the Modi camp ‘Chai pe Charcha’. The term Modi Wave appeared three times

in The Hindu, twice in April just a month before the election, and once in March. It

appeared in news which referred to the opposition parties negating the existence of ‘Modi

Wave’. In Anandabazar Patrika, it appeared only three times. It appeared with a negative

connotation in April stating there was no such thing as a Modi wave and in January it

appeared twice where it had a positive connotation.‘ Modi Wave’ appeared twice in The

Telegraph both in the month of May. Though it did not appear during the peak election

campaign period it appeared with a positive connotation for Mr. Modi on both occasions

along with other punch lines like ‘Narendra Modi Hawa’ and ‘Narendra Modi Leher’.

Modi masks were freely distributed in many places and Modi was made into a larger-

than-life figure in Gandhinagar and Varanasi, two of his constituencies, where Modi

masks were distributed the most. The term Masks appeared 8 times altogether in The

Telegraph with news that stated Modi masks were distributed in Varanasi during one of

his rallies, and in news that stated Modi fired at the Third Front as a possible alternative.

In The Times of India, Modi Mask appeared 11 times, including two front page headline

appearances.

Aab ki Baar modi sarkar was also a very popular slogan for BJP to portray

Narendra Modi as the next Prime Minister of the country during 2014 Elections. This

slogan meant the upcoming government would be Modi’s Government. This was also a

slogan where BJP tried to make Modi’s image larger than the party. The main allegation

was that the slogan made the entire campaign look like a one-man show, and BJP as the
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party that Modi belonged to, took a back seat. An indirect message was also given to the

voters that if Narendra Modi gets elected, then it would act as relief balm for them from the

clutches of misery. This kind of political cult during elections was last seen during Indira

Gandhi’s campaign in the 1970s when ‘Indira is India and India is Indira’ did rounds.

In The Times of India, It made headlines with Amit Shah claiming Modi’s clean

sweep, keeping Congress way behind in the election. In The Telegraph, it appeared twice

in May with reference to Sensex shooting up with a welcome mark for the economy, and

also with the overall developmental projects initiated by Modi. In Dainik Jagran, it

appeared 8 times in relation to Modi’s campaign in Varanasi and how business associates

geared up to meet him in the hope of development.

Electoral politics involved money and power that alienates common people or the

voters the immediate political process. In India, the largest representative democracy in

the world, indirect democratic representation further alienated this process and hence

reaching out to voters was a priority for any political party in India. R. K. Laxman, one of

the finest political cartoonists in India created an iconic depiction of the ‘common man’

who represents an average middle-class Indian. Aam Aadmi Party brought back this

image of the common man in the mainstream political process by naming the party after

the former. Aam Aadmi party with its leader Arvind Kejriwal stormed into the Indian

political system with his common man image. A former employee of the Income Tax

Department represents the commonest of the common India. With his common man

image he came, he saw, and he won the Delhi Legislative Elections of 2013. As

Kejriwal’s common man image worked in his favor, other parties, especially the BJP,
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tried to cash in on that same image and exploited Mr. Modi past as a tea seller, together

with his ‘Chai Pe Charcha’. Also, Congress leaders like Rahul Gandhi strived to win over

the voters portraying a ‘common man’ image. ‘Common Man’ as a social icon had

already been a media favorite in India, and after AAP’s win, it started selling like hot

cakes which the other parties just took forward during their electoral campaigns for

General Election 2014.

Common Man’ appeared 15 times in the newspapers under review, except for The

Telegraph. It appeared 7 times in The Times of India. In most of the occasions it

appeared in relation to Modi’s Chaiwallah image and ‘Chai Pe Charcha’ campaign, and

even made headlines when Rahul Gandhi interacted with porters at the railway stations. It

appeared twice in The Hindu in December and March, with reference to how Modi was

cashing on his modest background as a tea vendor. In Dainik Jagran, it appeared 4 times

in April through Mr. Modi’s attempt to reach out to common people through his tea

campaign. In Hindustan Dainik, it appeared once in relation to Rahul Gandhi meeting the

poor people in Uttar Pradesh and staying with them for few days. In Ananda Bazar

Patrika, it appeared once in March in relation to Rahul Gandhi trying to reach out to the

common people.

Rahul Gandhi was called the ‘Prince of Indian Politics’ by various non-Congress

parties due to his dynastic blood. In last few years as MP, particularly while challenging

Narendra Modi, son of a tea vendor, he tried to portray himself as a common man. He

travelled across India and spent nights in mud huts, ate a common man’s food of daal-roti

to create a common man’s image. Once in the Parliament he tried to describe the misery
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of a village woman named Kalabati in his speech, which made him popular among the

rural mass within a very short time. However, in spite of Rahul’s hard efforts, he was

never viewed as a common man by a wide section of people in India. This difference

between him and Modi could have gone against the Congress in the Elections of 2014.

Issues appeared in newspapers that related to personal lives of the prime ministerial

candidates, mainly Narendra Modi, with reference to caste and marital status. One of

them was called Snoopgate and it revolved around Modi allegedly stalking a young

woman in Gujarat. At the age of 19, Narendra Modi married Jashodaben, a school

teacher, but within a very short time deserted his wife in search of God and later joined

RSS at a very young age and started to preach Hindutva. His public life had been open

but his personal life especially his marital one was obscured until the 2014 elections. The

fact that he abandoned his wife and never indulged in domestic life was speculated upon

by the media and opposition parties. It became sensational news for the Congress who

attacked Modi on grounds of obscure marital status and doubted his credentials as a

responsible public servant because he had deserted his wife. In November 2013,

snoopgate scandal made headlines when two websites Cobrapost.com and Gulail.com

obtained audio recordings of telephone conversations between Modi and his right-hand

man Amit Shah in which Mr. Modi asked for an illegal surveillance of a young woman.

The BJP admitted that Modi had used the state government machinery to monitor the

young woman, but it was done at the request of the girl’s father but without her

knowledge, which still makes the case illegal. This led to reports that the Modi

government often spied upon its officials in Gujarat. A judicial panel stated there was
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evidence of rampant state-sponsored phone tapping by the Narendra Modi government

against political rivals, journalists, and private citizens. Even Wiki leaks claimed that

Modi as the Gujarat Chief Minister ruled with a small group of advisors and used fear

and intimidation than inclusiveness and consensus.

The news related to his wife appeared thrice in The Times of India in the month of

April when it referred to news which stated that the Congress demanded Mr. Modi to

recognize his wife formally; and in another occasion when the congress stated that Mr.

Modi’s wife be presented with a civilian honor Bharat Ratna for being so patient. In

November it was mentioned in relation to news which stated that the congress asked Modi

about his marital status and asked him to reveal it in public. It appeared twice in The

Hindu, once in May and once in March. In the month of May both Modi’s wife and his

mother casted their votes and this received massive media coverage. A senior congress

minister Digvijay Singh made a dig where he claimed that he did not believe in hiding his

personal relationships like Narendra Modi. The news appeared in Dainik Jagran in

November 2013 when Mr. Subramaniyam Swami claimed that Mr. Modi was married and

in April the same accusations appeared against Mr. Modi when the Congress attacked

Modi in terms of his marital status, and in May the news was in focus when Jasodaben

casted her vote. Snoopgate appeared 4 times in Dainik Jagran in May, including twice as

front page news, the Congress insisted to conduct investigation against Mr. Modi. In April

the news appeared again in a news context where Priyanka Gandhi implicated Modi for

stalking. In November, it made headlines 4 times, including twice on the front page when

Mr. Modi asked Congress to go ahead with an investigation and when the Congress
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referred it to as a national concern. It appeared five times in the front pages of Hindustan

Dainik in news context where the Congress upheld this issue against Mr. Modi. In The

Hindu, it appeared once in February when the Gujarat government claimed that they had

no information on the probe, and once in December when there was a news item which

talked about the Centre initiated investigation in the case. It appeared once in The Times of

India, when the Congress attacked Modi as prime ministerial candidate. In The Telegraph

it made it to the front page news in relation to an article which talked about Mr. Modi’s

surveillance system on his citizens as the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Lastly, Modi’s caste became a popular through personal lives of the candidates. In

Indian politics and caste play an intermingling role. The Constitution of independent

India safeguards the interests of lower castes by granting them reservations in education,

employment which pits the upper and lower castes at odds with each other. Caste

being one of the strongest tenets of identity politics in India, political parties have always

cashed in on it with many parties based only on caste politics.

BJP being a party of upper caste Hindus, Modi’s caste became a massive point of

discussion as Mr. Modi belonged to Modh Ganchi community a backward caste. Mr.

Modi played his low caste identity in his speeches. Modi’s Caste made appearances

mostly in Dainik Jagran, The Times of India, and Anandabazar Patrika for 7 months.

In the Dainik Jagran where it appeared once it was in relation to news where the

Congress accused Modi of playing the caste card to woo Dalit voters. I appeared in the

peak election period April in The Times of India in news in which the Congress accused

the BJP of playing the Hindutva card along with the caste card in Uttar Pradesh. Uttar
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Pradesh being the biggest state in India in terms of population, caste is the most crucial

identity of its voters. It appeared once in Ananda Bazar Patrika in May in relation to a

news item where the Congress attacked Modi for hiding his caste identity.

2. Gujarat model frame

In 2007 Mr. Modi coined the word Gujarat model of development during the

assembly elections. Words that gained popularity along with words like Development,

Brand Modi, and Toffee Model. The frequency depicted the appearance of all the four

words as they bore direct relation to the Gujarat Model and appeared in the newspapers

along with the Gujarat model. The word Gujarat model appeared in December 2013 as

was used more often as the election neared. It stood for industrial development and social

growth all only under chief minister Modi rule and was used to depict the fact that Mr.

Modi had made it an investor friendly state.

Another feature of the Gujarat Model of development was the balance between

industrialization and agriculture. This model was called the Toffee model by the

Congress led UPA government. The state of Gujarat showed remarkable development at

a time when India’s overall growth rate had not been good under the UPA’s second term

and it was thought of as due to Mr. Modi’s good governance.

The term ‘Gujarat Model of development’ appeared 50 times in the 6 newspapers

under review between November 2013 and May 2014 and had the highest frequency after

NaMo and Hindutva. The term appeared in all 7 months, except January. It appeared 19

times in the Times of India and 10 of them in the month of April 2014 alone and thrice as
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front page news. Most of the time it was attached to the success story of Mr. Modi and

his candidature in the elections and at other times the word was criticized by the

Congress government especially by Mr. Gandhi who stated a backward state like

Haryana scored better than Gujarat in development index. It appeared two times on the

nation page where the AAP called it hogwash and 18 times in Dainik Jagran (8 times in

April alone) and twice in May 2014. In May when it did appear it was referred to as a

suicidal and the Congress called it reality drowned in debt while Rahul Gandhi and

Priyanka Gandhi, termed Gujarat Model as not farmer-friendly.

In Hindustan Dainik, Gujarat Model appeared 12 times, twice in May, three times in

April, thrice in March and once in February. Mostly it was attacked by the Congress or

used by Mr. Modi to lure voters. In The Hindu, Gujarat Model appeared 11 times

altogether, 4 times in April where Jaya Lalitha also criticized the model along with the

Congress. In March, it appeared twice where the AAP and CPI (M) called the Gujarat

Model fake .The term Gujarat Model appeared 8 times in The Telegraph once in May on

the front page news with the tagline ‘Super-Modi Mix’. In April, it appeared 5 times,

once as front page news mostly it appeared in relation to being criticized by the Congress

or where the model suggested that Modi would make it to the Prime Minister’s post. It

appeared once because a Muslim voter was all praise for the model where he stated he

would vote for Modi because of it. It appeared 6 times in the Ananda Bazar Patrika, twice

each in April, March, and February and in the paper, Mamta Banerjee quoted twice that

West Bengal was doing better than Gujarat and once the Gujarat riot was implicated with

the state of Gujarat to implicate the model as a lie.

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In connection to the Gujarat Model other stories disseminated by the newspapers

were Development, Toffee Model, and Brand Modi. The word Development was a major

issue in India since the UPA government had failed to deliver and Indian voters thought

Mr. Modi would deliver. Development appeared five times in the Times of India when

the BJP stated words like development, decentralization and secularism is development.

The word development appeared 6 times in Dainik Jagran where Rahul Gandhi stated

only the Congress could bring about development and where Modi urged the people to

vote him in and assured people the stock market would go up. The word development

appeared once in Hindustan Dainik when Rahul Gandhi questioned Modi’s development

plan and stated that Mr. Modi’s agenda was only Hindutva. ‘Toffee Model’ was coined

by all other parties as a sarcastic metaphor to free land donated to rich industrialist Adani

at a low price by Mr. Modi. The word appeared four times in the Hindu and once in

Dainik Jagran where Rahul Gandhi and Kejriwal called the Gujarat model Toffee model

as they claimed it was a policy only for the rich industrialists. The BJP created the word

Brand Modi and it was reported in Times of India especially with reference to his

technological engagements in the poll campaign. In Dainik Jagran, it referred to Modi

being called a Tiger due to the fact that his face appeared on the cover of mobile phones

and clothes. It appeared twice in Hindustan Dainik in April in relation to the fact that

industrialist admired Mr. Modi for his pro-development agenda.

3. Dynasty politics frame

Even seventy years after Independence the Congress party has been led by a

member of independent India’s first prime minister Nehru. His daughter, and later his
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grandson and recently his great-grandson Rahul Gandhi headed the party. The word

Dynastic politics appeared 13 times in Dainik Jagran when Mr. Modi and the BJP

targeted Rahul Gandhi as incompetent and as a person who lived under the shadow of

his mother and sister. It appeared 11 times in the headlines in The Times of India when

Mr. Modi accused the mother son duo of making their own government and sister

Priyanka Gandhi of not visiting the congress constituency Rae Bareilly. It appeared nine

times in the Telegraph When there were accusations of Sonia and Priyanka protecting

Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka’s husband Mr. Vadra. There were accusations of the two

cousins Rahul and Varun Gandhi being in opposite parties and Mr. Rahul being called a

Shehzada someone who does not work but yet is the prince. It appeared seven times in

the Hindustan Dainik where it referred to mother son duo government of the Congress

and also when there was talk about Mr. Vadra’s wealth and Congress protection of Mr.

Vadra. There were accusations of the BJP that Mr. Rahul Gandhi was under the

dominance of his mother. Rahul Gandhi is the present Congress leader who epitomized

the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty. the Indian media, depicted him as a person not interested in

politics and only did so because of his mother and hence seen mostly as a prince rather

than as a politician. He also gave very few interviews before the 2014 elections and

when he did so gave politically incorrect comments. Politicians called him teddy bear,

candy boy, and childish and the media called him RaGa similar to NaMo it had coined

for Mr. Modi. RaGa portrayed him with a softer image and never became popular as

NaMo. Modi was termed a Tiger whereas Rahul Gandhi was called a Shehzada. Rahul’s

Google Hangout was compared to Modi’s tea stalls and identified Rahul Gandhi as elitist
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and Mr. Modi as a Common Man. Dainik Jagran called Rahul Gandhi a mere bird, kid,

comedian and Sehzada and Modi a lion and these attributes positioned Rahul Gandhi as

less of a political contender than Modi.

4. Corruption frame

The biggest problem India faced under UPA government’s second term was

corruption and words like CoalGate, 2G Scam and Black money were three stories that

were high lightened and led to the fact the UPA government was enmeshed in corruption.

It appeared 20 times in the Dainik Jagran. In The Telegraph it however related to Mr.

Modi’s links with big industrialists and the Congress party’s defense of Robert Vadra,

Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law, demand for Lokpal Bill, and Kejriwal’s claim that all parties

were corrupt. It appeared consistently in The Hindu between January and April when Mr.

Modi’s questioned Mr. Vadra’s rise to the top and when the AAP claimed zero tolerance

to corruption. Corruption appeared 4 times in April 2014 in Dainik Jagran when AAP

promised corruption free India, in reference to Mr Vadra’s corrupt businesses, and when

Rahul Gandhi claimed Modi was corrupt. In February and December the word

Corruption made it to the front page when Kejriwal called Gandhi corrupt, and when Mr.

Rahul Gandhi acknowledged corruption as the biggest challenges in Indian politics. It

appeared as headlines when Modi claimed all black money from Swiss bank accounts

would be got back to India. In Ananda Bazar Patrika it appeared three times twice when

Mr. Modi promised to get black money back to India and when Mr. Vadra was defended

by Priyanka Vadra. It appeared on the front-page of Dainik Jagran, in December when

Rahul Gandhi acknowledged it as a political menace in India. In Hindustan Dainik, it

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appeared once in March when Mr. Modi promised to get back black money to India.

Words synonymous to corruption were 2G Scam, CoalGate, and Black Money. CoalGate

being a scam related to the allocation of coal which took place between 2004 and

2009.The word was coined by the Times of India. Many top politicians and business

tycoons were believed to be involved in the scam. The word appeared twenty times

altogether, five times in the Times of India, six times in The Hindu six times in Dainik

Jagran. The other major scam was the 2G scam a major telecommunication scam and it

involved the UPA government and the DMK. The highlighting of this issue by the media

during the elections was a big blow to the Congress. It appeared 15 times in the

newspapers between November 2013 and June 2014 in the newspapers reviewed and was

mentioned in all corruption debates. It appeared three times on the front page of The

Times of India.

It appeared four times in Dainik Jagran, between February and May and once to the

front when the BJP demanded the Prime minister should be interrogated. It appeared four

times in the Hindustan Dainik, two times in The Hindu. The last corruption issue reviewed

was Black Money which was a huge loss to the state exchequer and also a big obstacle to

the country’s development. Mr. Modi picked it up as one of his major agenda and it

appeared 8 times in the newspapers under review in 7 months, 7 times in Dainik Jagran

during the peak election campaign period when Mr. Modi attacked the Congress of having

black money and when Mr. Kapil Sibal stated Mr. Modi has more black money. It

appeared once in the Hindustan Dainik with reference to SEBI trying to identify the black

money holders.
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5. Minority Rights frame

In 1947 when India got independence, it got divided on communal lines. A report

called Sachar Committee Report in 2011, stated Muslims have poor socio-economic and

educational index in India. As a result minority appeasement had always been a crucial

agenda of any political party. The Indian constitution declared India to be secular one,

whereas a major section of the Hindus claimed that the Muslims should go back to

Pakistan, on the other hence the minorities play a crucial role in which way the vote will

swing for a party. Congress had always supported the Muslim community but the BJP did

so because of the Godhra Riot BJP’s Hindu vote bank came from the Hindi heartland that

included states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisghar, Rajasthan, Bihar,

Jharkhan, and Haryana.‘Minority Appeasement’ appeared 41 times in 7 months in the

newspapers under review, making it one of the most popular stories before the election. It

appeared once in May in Dainik Jagran in reference to an article where the Congress

claimed that Muslims would be in danger if Modi came to power. In April it appeared 4

times when an article referred to Modi reaching to minority voters and being confident

they would accept him with open arms. In March the word Minority appeasement

appeared, in a various articles. The news from stories that stated Congress accused

Kejriwal of playing the minority card, Muslim business men went to Varanasi to meet

Mr. Modi, Modi demonstrated Muslim emancipation in Gujarat, and Modi hoping that

Muslims would make a difference in his constituency Varanasi. The word appeared again

in between February and December in an article which talked about Rahul Gandhi paying

a surprise visit to riot inflicted Muazaffarnagar and Modi inviting Maulana Madni to be
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his guest. It appeared eight times in Hindustan Dainik between January and April in

articles which talked about Congress demanding that Modi offer an apology to Muslims

for the Gujarat Riot, Modi trying to reach out to Muslim voters in different states, and

BJP accusing Aam Aadmi Party of playing with religious sentiments of the voters. In The

Times of India, it appeared twice in May once in an article where Modi was quoted as

saying he did not know how the minorities would accept him and in another where Rahul

Gandhi was said to have reached out to the minorities It appeared five times in April in

reports related to an octogenarian Islamic scholar rejecting Modi as a potential Prime

Minister, Modi fearing that minorities would not accept him, Aam Aadmi Party being

accused of playing the minority card, Modi claiming that he could teach Sonia Gandhi

how to reach out to minorities, and the Congress claiming that Modi had no takers among

the Muslim voters. In March, it appeared thrice with reference to Modi wooing

Telengana Muslims and in January it appeared once when Congress geared up for their

Muslim vote bank in Uttar Pradesh.

It appeared six times in The Hindu 5 times in April alone in various articles. Some

stated that the cleric backed Modi for not wearing the skullcap, Omar Abdullah taunted

him for it, Modi denied that he took special efforts to reach out to the Muslim voters, and

another article that stated Congress leaders demanded an apology from Modi for his

inability to protect Muslims during the Gujarat Riot. In Ananda Bazar Patrika, it appeared

only once where it referred to Modi playing the Muslim card The Gujarat riot referred to

the thousands of Muslims killed between February and March 2002 when a train carrying

Hindus caught fire in the Gujarat state and in retaliation the Muslim population was
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attacked. Many stated Mr. Modi the chief minister of Gujarat was involved and Mr. Modi

was even denied US visa. Many cases were filed in the Supreme Court and Mr. Modi was

targeted during the 2014 elections for his role in the riots. The Gujarat riots appeared six

times in The Times of India when Mr. Modi attacked congress for their accusations and

did not apologize for the riots. The word made headlines in December when Mr. Modi

said that there were no riots in Gujarat in the past ten years under his rule. It appeared

five times in the Telegraph when the congress made accusations against Mr. Modi. It

appeared consistently between December and March during the entire stretch of the

campaigning period. It appeared in the headlines in The Hindu when Mr. Modi was

termed mass murderer in the Gujarat riots. Other parties claimed Mr. Modi could not be

exempted of the charges. It appeared four times in the Hindustan Dainik, once in May,

January, and December, and twice in April when Mr. Modi denied all charges against

him. It made headlines in Anandabazar Patrika when Congress claimed the Gujarat riots

were the biggest impediment for Modi in 2014 elections. In Dainik Jagran, it appeared

only once in December when Mr. Modi lashed out against people who accused him.

4.1 Opinion Polls

Opinion poll results also influenced the way in which a candidate’s campaign was

framed by the media. If a candidate had a low opinion poll rating the candidate would be

marginalized by the media and if not covered extensively by the media. This was seen in

France between 1965 and 2012 when candidates integrated the results of polls into their

campaign strategies by finessing their political messages so that they were attuned with

the expectations of particular target segments among the electorate. In 1965 only 12
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opinion poll surveys were published whereas in 2012 there were around 400 with eight

polling companies competing to be the most accurate and the most influential (Kuhn,

2013).

Table 3: Opinion poll conducted by ABP News-Nielson

Alliance / Party 2009 Actual February 2014 Survey estimate

UPA 259 92

NDA 159 236

Left 125 29

Others 186

The Opinion Polls conducted by ABP News – Nielson found the NDA would win

236 seats out of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha while the incumbent UPA would win just

92 seats. The BJP without the help of its alliances would win 217 seats while the

Congress would win 73 on its own. The opinion poll also stated that the BJP would win

in the big states especially those that decided the fate of the polls.

Table 4: Opinion poll conducted by Times Now-C voter national poll projection

Alliance / Party 2009 Actual February 2014 Survey estimate

UPA 259 101

NDA 159 227

Others 125 215

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According to the Times Now-C voter national poll projection the BJP led NDA would win

227 seats (Aseem, 2014).

4.2 Exit Polls

Figure 7: exit poll results conducted by various groups during 2014 Lok Sabha elections

It was seen from the exit polls that the BJP led NDA would cross the 272 mark whereas

the Congress Led UPA would get between 110 to 148 seats and that the BJP would perform

better in Northern India especially in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar but not so well in

the Southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala where regional parties would perform better.

The polls also showed that the Congress would be removed from 9Rajasthan. It also

predicted that AAM AADMI party had not much hope except in the state of Punjab.

The Chanakya Exit polls showed BJP would win and that Mr. Modi will be prime Minister

and that the Congress would win only 57 seats whereas the BJP would win 279 seats. The

Times Now exit poll stated 210 states in all and the Congress would get between 105 to 120
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seats and also predicted that Mr. Modi would lead the BJP led NDA government and have

249 seats in the Lok Sabha whereas the Congress led UPA government would manage only

148seats. The poll also said the AAP would not win any seats. The ABP-Nielsen survey

predicted the BJP led NDA would win 233 seats whereas the Congress led UPA would win

119 seats and the BJP on their own would get 209 seats whereas the Congress on their own

would gain 91 seats. Poll conducted by Cicero for India Today Group showed the BJP led

NDA would win 261-283 seats. Survey by Research Group C- voter stated BJP led NDA

would win 289 seats and the Congress led UPA 101 seats. Thus all the exit poll suggested

that the BJP would win in most states and form the government, except in the Southern state

of Tamil Nadu. The big gains for BJP came from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Madhya

Pradesh (Kaur, 2014).

Table 5: 2014 Lok Sabha exit polls conducted by Cicero for India Today group

CHANNEL BJP+ CONGRESS+ OTHERS

ABP-NEWS 281 97 165

CNN-IBN 270-282 92-102 150-159

INDIA TODAY 261-283 101-120 152-162

INDIA TV 289 101 153

NEWS24 340 70 133

TIMES NOW 249 148 146

(Aseem, 2014).
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4.3 Finding based on demographics

According to the researcher different groups were affected by the stories in a different

way because of their socio economic and political conditions and future aspirations and

hence divided them according to age gender, occupation, education, geographical locations,

religion and caste.

4.3.1Age

The younger generation those between 18 -40 as the media depicted Mr. Modi as a

creator of a robust economy and showed Gujarat as a state with a good economy as

compared to other Indian states and were impacted by the stories that supported Modi

like NaMo, Gujarat model of Development and were not impacted by UPA in their

second term since the UPA government in their second term was filled by a slow

economy, zero job creation.

4.3.2 Occupation

Even Highly Skilled workers were affected by stories that contained words like

Gujarat model, Dynastic politics and Technology because they were tired of the slow rate

at which the economy progressed under the Congress and also because they had a love

for technology and also the purchasing power. The low skilled workers were affected by

price rise, Chaiwallah whereas the middle class were affected by Hindutva, NaMo and

minority as they were a group with limited funds and hence religion was handy for them.

4.3.3 Education

The educated groups especially those who completed, Master’s degree were

affected by stories that contained words like price rise whereas this did not affect the poor
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as they could not educate themselves and hence their purchasing power was low. Those

who attended school needed jobs and were affected by Ab ki bar Modi Sarkar. Also it

was found there were a lot of high school dropouts.

4.3.4 Geographical locations

Rural areas were affected by Chai pe Charcha, price rise whereas in suburban India

NaMo, Hindutva and corruption were popular because people here were semi poor and

mediocre. Religion became a identity with them since this group also belonged to the

middle income group. The urban voters were affected by Gujarat model of development

and technology since they were the ones in need of jobs.

4.3.5 Gender

Many words affected men rather than women as many political parties did not high

light women issues like safety and hence they were not concerned with political issues.

Women were more affected by social and gender specific factors like marriage and

family and interest in politics and voting decision were determinants in women’s voting

behavior according to a study conducted by Praveen Rai from CDS.

4.3.6 Religion

Stories with words like NaMo, Hindutva and minority affected people who followed

different religions whereas stories with words like Chai pe Charcha, Dynastic politics and

Gujarat Model vote bank politics and third front were popular among the agnostics.

NaMo was popular among Hindus in a positive way, Muslims identified with it

negatively whereas the agnostics identified with it for its promise of economic

development and not for its religious undertones.

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4.3.7 Caste

The high castes did not all show caste consciousness whereas lower castes exhibited

more caste consciousness. Caste conscious people were affected by NaMo, Hindutva and

minority because of their by religious and caste connotations. Gujarat model of

development and Lok pal affected both caste liberal and caste conscious people equally

because these words had no connection with caste based issues but with issues of

development and people’s participation in politics. High castes were affected by stories

that contained words like minority, Hindutva and Vote bank politics whereas lower castes

were negatively affected by Minority and Vote Bank politics. The lower caste thought

Hindutva imposed upper class attributes.

4.4 Issues underplayed by the media

The electorate identified issues which the respondents thought should have been more

focused. They were women’s issues (48.5%) governance (39.5%), U PA government’s

failure in improving indo Pak relationship during their second term(38.5%), potential

Alternative politics beyond Modi (36%), VHP-BJP bond (34.5%), Congress’s political

future (30%) and Modi’s communal past (27%).Violence against women was growing in

India and the electorate thought the election manifesto did not high light this. Many of the

electorate found that stories were confined to NDA-UPA binary and did not offer any

alternative for India. Lastly Mr. Modi’s communal past and VHP-BJP link were totally

underplayed by the media.

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4.5 Findings based on television coverage

According to Mr. Prabhakar of the CMS Media lab which followed the election

coverage of 5 different television channels prime time coverage there was an unprecedented

skew in media coverage towards the BJP. The BJP got 10 percentage points more prime-

time coverage than the Congress in the two months before May 16, an unprecedented gap

whereas there had only been a percentage point or two in 2009 coverage (Deshpande &

Mehta, 2014). The results showed coverage had moved from party centric to personality

centric which gave a big advantage for Mr. Modi as he was a great orator, whereas Mr.

Gandhi did not wish to face the camera. The ratings of the TV shows also increased when

Mr. Modi was featured and television channels made full use of this fact which in turn

benefitted Mr. Modi. Coverage of campaigns by channels was personality-centric all

through and leaders received coverage depending on the emerging poll scene. Arvind

Kejriwal had a lot of coverage initially but soon lost media focus when the campaign picked

up with names of many candidates being made known. Corruption was expected to be a

determining issue of 2014 elections of Lok Sabha, but only five percent of primetime

broadcasts of channels were to do with corruption. Advanced software technology caused

fictional or comical or satire capsules/ programs to be taken by all channels to reflect the

campaign based around individual leaders. Personalities and parties were the major focus of

the 2014 election coverage in TV NEWS accounting for more than half of (57%) of the

primetime election coverage. Election Commission (2.79%) and development (2.23%) got

fifth and sixth positions respectively. The seventh spot went to NEWS on Governance

(2.12%), followed by public policy (2%), which came eighth.

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Potential of creating controversy, leaders’ activities and movement during campaign

period all mattered in the election coverage. Mr. Modi travelled far and wide and had many

more public meetings which helped him gain and sustain higher coverage. Rahul Gandhi,

leader of incumbent party, received same level of coverage until the last phase of poll

schedule (May 1 to 11), where his own election was included (Coverage of 2014 Lok Sabha

Polls by NEWS Channel, 2014).

4.6 Findings based on Facebook and Twitter

Results from twitter and Facebook do support our research question that Mr. Modi’s use

of social media helped to get him closer to the public. It also helped to remove the negative

image that had initially existed prior to the elections when most media had covered Mr.

Modi in a negative light and may have led to the creation of Brand Modi working hand in

hand with newspaper media. Though the social media did not work wonders for other

candidates as can be seen by the fact that many losing candidates used this media a lot , we

have to study social media some more. Also whether social media works hand in hand with

other media and cannot be studied in isolation. Mr. Narendra Modi’s campaign was

extremely visible on digital surfaces, and fueled conversation about politics in the country.

Modi had over four million followers on Twitter and over 14 million “Likes” on

Facebook making him the second-most-liked politician on Facebook after U.S. President,

Barack Obama. Vikas Pande, a media advisor and volunteer for the Modi’s Party, the

(BJP), was of the view that social media helped the BJP bypass the mainstream media and

played an important role in reaching out to people. Even in places like Gorakhpur, where the
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reach of the internet was limited, it helped voters obtain information, not only about

Narendra Modi, but the elections in general.

Arvind Kejriwal, leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (Common Man Party, AAP), had 1.79

million followers on Twitter. Though less popular than Modi, there was a 79% increase in

followers since the beginning of the year. While the Congress Party leader, Rahul Gandhi

did not have an official Twitter account (Gardezi, 2014). A greater percent of Modi’s

followers were first time voters in the age group in 18-34. . Mr. Modi’s engagement was

most in Delhi, UP, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat and the number one issue talked

about by BJP on Facebook was jobs as it related to the youth. (Rajan, N.,2014).

Figure 8: candidates ranking based on number of times mentioned on Facebook

(Ramanunni, 2014).

Facebook data revealed that 29 million people in India made 227 million election-related

interactions in the form of posts, comments, shares, and likes from the day elections were
 106

announced to the day polling ended. Of these, 13 million users made 75 million interactions

regarding Modi over the social networking site. Modi’s Facebook page now had 14,316,374

followers (Ramanunni, 2014).

Twitter's election strategy in India was to bring the elections to the people. According to

data provided by Twitter, Modi added a record 1, 04,861 followers on Election Day. BJP was

the subject of 322,596 tweets while 118,717 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) related tweets were

sent on Friday. Since January 1 2014, over 58 million election-related tweets were sent and

Narendra Modi has been mentioned around 11.85 million times.( Manve, V.,2014).

Merelli, A.2014).

Figure 9: Number of times candidates’ election related terms were mentioned on tweets
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Figure 10: graph of which Indian leader is winning votes on Twitter

The Total number of Tweets mentioning @NarendraModi on counting day were 0.75

Million while the Total number of Tweets mentioning @NarendraModi since Jan 1st were

11.85 Million which meant 1/5th of tweets around elections since Jan 1, 2014 were around

only one man.

On the day of counting Narendra Modi added the highest number of followers in a single

day. Starting his day at 3986878 followers and ending at 4091739, he added more than a lakh

of followers in just one day (“Twitter Releases Data Around Indian Elections - 58 Million

Tweets & 11 Million Mentions for Modi”, 2014).

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Figure 11: which themes dominated twitter during different phases of the elections

Analysis of the content of tweets from four phases between February 2009 and

February 2015 showed that Mr. Modi’s social media message had changed over time. Youth

and Development were consistent themes in all phases. Hinduism theme was dominant in the

first two phases but was dropped closer to the elections. In terms of word count it was found

use of the word Gujarat dropped significantly after the first two phases showing the fact that

Mr. Modi was making the transition from regional to national politics. In the third phase,

election rallies and political confrontation dominated twitter (Bansal, 2016).

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Indiaspend is the country’s first data journalism initiative where open data is used to

analyze a range of issues with the objective of fostering better governance, transparency and

accountability in the Indian government (About IndiaSpend, 2012). Indiaspend analyzed the

social media presence of candidates in the high impact states as mentioned by the IAMAI

and IRIS report to check for correlation between presence on social media and winning by

computing a social media index.

They found that of the 320 candidates which included both winner and runner-up in 160

high-impact constituencies, 221 (71 per cent) had no or minimal social media presence.

Amongst the winners from these high social-media impact constituencies 70 percent had no

meaningful social media presence inferring that social media had no relation with a

candidate’s ability to win. In more than 60 percent of the constituencies where both the

eventual winner and runner-up had an active social media campaign, the losing candidate had

a much more significant presence on social media than the eventual winner. From social

media sources it is very difficult to say whether Mr. Modi’s presence on both Twitter and

Facebook granted him the overwhelming victory because one finding shows that there was

no correlation between being active on Facebook and winning the elections. Also among

leaders who were active on twitter from the BJP. Just the presence of one man Mr. Modi who

had a social media index of 25 million compared to others in his party who had about 10

thousand could have led to the false reality that social media played a role in the election win.

Also constituencies identified as high impact were based on data gathered of numbers of

Facebook, Twitter and other social media users in India, categorized by their geographical

location and hence all the urban cities, towns and districts appeared in this list of high-impact
 110

constituencies. Social media agencies started giving advice to new candidates and it was

assumed that tweets and re-tweets were proxies for rallies and crowds. Further, in the very

urban constituencies of South Mumbai, Amritsar, North West Mumbai and Pune, candidates

with large social media followings lost to candidates with almost no social media presence.

According to IAMAI and IRIS report Maharashtra and Gujarat were the top two states with

38 high-impact constituencies. In 31 of these 38 constituencies, the winner had either zero or

lower social media index than the runner-up (Chakravarty, 2014).

Many people in the study also noted that it was not clear people active on social media

were politically active or not. Voter turnout in the elections is 60 percent and people who

turn up to votes are mostly from lower income classes and hence difficult to assume whether

the middle class which uses social media contributed to Mr. Modi’s victory or not (Gupta,

2013).
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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

5.1 Conclusion

This independent study leads to the conclusion that in the months prior to the Lok Sabha

elections media in India were more focused on Mr. Modi and his party the BJP. Amongst

the five news frames, four were pro Modi and the NAMO frame dominated the scene at 55

percent in the seven months prior to the election. This showed that the newspapers used

framing theory, not only did they project Mr. Modi as a prime ministerial candidate but also

showed people to think of Mr. Modi as a harbinger of economic development of future India

if he was elected as prime minister. By transforming people’s attention from the Godhra

riots to his consistent delivery on his promises by featuring Gujarat development.

The NaMo frame created by the media and the coined word NAMO made from the

alphabets of Mr. Modi’s name helped to create a brand around the image of Mr. Modi

removing any nasty doubts about his link to the Hindutva politics of the RSS, BJP’s parent

organisation. Topics that were of major interest to the public like corruption a year before the

election had moved down the list. One cannot conclude whether this was due to the media or

people’s lack of interest in the issue. I can assume here since media houses have more of a

business leaning they choose only certain news frames. Even tacit preference of the media

houses could have had an impact on election results; among the five news frames only one

news frame, ‘ Minority Rights’ could have done damage to Mr. Modi or his party. Instead it

also contained articles which instead of criticizing Mr. Modi on his inactive role during the

Godhra riots talked of his role in the development of the State of Gujarat as its Chief
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Minister. The news frames from the newspapers showed a great leaning towards Mr. Modi.

Television news channels could have been responsible in creating Brand Modi. Mr. Modi

was covered 36.38 percent times whereas Rahul Gandhi was covered 4.98 percent of the

time. Also the coverage was personality centric which helped frame Mr. Modi in a better

light because there was more to talk about Mr. Modi who had already led Gujarat state as

compared to Rahul Gandhi who had no role in any official capacity. It shows how they

helped people to think that there was only one candidate who was good enough to lead the

country. Even the BJP party was covered 38 percent of the television prime time news. Due

to the high level of television news media focus of the BJP and its leader Mr. Modi as a

prime candidate the television media could have created the brand Mr. Modi but one cannot

say whether they followed framing theory. This still needs to be studied.

Since the elections were nearly three years old at the time of presentation I have had no

time to do primary research, for example, to find out through a questionnaire which frames

appealed to the electorate. I could only conclude that from opinion and exit polls people had

greater faith in the fact that the BJP party would form the government with the help of its

allies. The opinion pools and the exit polls also do not support the framing theory since I

could not conclusively reach a conclusion from them that the BJP would win with an

absolute majority as would have been the case if framing by the news media would have

worked. They exit and opinion polls only helped me understand that the population had a

feeling that the BJP would perform better than the Congress. However the results in the

elections were very different from what we could expect from the impact of the media, i.e.
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the BJP won with an overwhelming majority and could form the government without the

help of its allies, something not seen in Indian elections in a long time.

The exit and opinion polls also did not help to support the fact that the Congress party

lost miserably, to the extent that they could not form an opposition party without the help of

allies.

The social media results especially in regard to Mr. Modi helped us understand that Mr.

Modi’s popularity on these channels could have created brand Modi but since social media

does not follow rules of framing theory we can only say that it is a medium if used well could

have an effect on election results.

News frames have an immediate impact on the electorate but the amount of impact depends

on many demographic factors like age, literacy, caste, education, economic level, gender etc.

One last thing about the research was that the media frames were studied only in a few states

which were considered to be important.

5.2 Discussion

The overall picture of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the winning candidate Mr. Modi and

the number of seats won by his party cannot be seen just in the frame of coverage by news

frames, television and social media but by taking the overall picture of the election results

and the pattern of voting by the different communities, classes demographics of the electorate

in India. Further studies should be conducted to see whether media can create brands out of

politicians and if so where do issues relating to people and politics stand. One should not

purely go by the results of the study and the numbers as to whether media played a role in the

elections because elections are more complex depending on psychology and demographics of
 114

the population. So we should try to replicate these studies before we can conclude whether

media can create a brand out of a politician who was once totally boycotted by them in 2002

and viewed as polarized by the population. India’s demographics have undergone a sea

change with the present population having no loyalty towards the first family of the country.

The population is more educated and more economically improved. They have moved from

villages to cities and their demands are more different from a demographic which was more

class oriented a few years ago. A primary research could have helped to see whether people’s

views had been pro Modi even before the elections or was he a creation of the media. In the

findings I have used secondary sources for research whether it is newspapers frames,

television or social media as the election took place two years ago and peoples’ sentiment

about issues and leaders would have changed since. My findings from secondary sources say

that news frames were more partial to Mr. Modi especially in the months prior to the election

where stories with positive connotation for Mr. Modi were circulated. The television media

also granted the winning candidate Mr. Modi and his party more coverage. Most of these

channels were also owned by business houses that had a leaning towards Mr. Modi’s ideas.

The other media (Social media) I studied, which is still in the nascent stage in India,

could have had a slight influence on the elections. The younger demographics in India are

active on this media and prefer direct modes of contact rather than second hand news. Many

may not trust media to give them the news verbatim. This could have played a big advantage

for Mr. Modi as he was a great orator and caught the mood of young India whereas Mr.

Gandhi had kept himself his activity on social media low key. This way Mr. Modi could

circumvent the traditional media (newspaper and TV) which had boycotted him previously.
 115

Though social media results show that many losing candidates used social media one needs

to study this in depth in the future elections to see whether circumventing traditional media

and answering the questions of the common man verbatim helps a candidate. It will help to

answer the question as to whether people have lost faith in traditional media. However it is

yet to be conclusively determined whether social media will have more relevance in the

future as this media is till new to India, especially as the study showed that more candidates

who lost in the elections had used social media as compared to those who won; Mr. Modi is

an exception to this, he used social media extensively and he won the elections for himself

and his party with great majority. It is therefore difficult to draw and definite conclusion as to

how social media could in general have a positive influence on election results, since this

media seems have helped only Mr. Modi.

Another part of the elections which I’ve not studied was Mr. Modi’s attempt to reach a

wider audience through internet (or satellite television). For example, if Mr. Modi could

actually be present in one particular village to speak to the voters there, he addressed the

same audience through giant television screens on which his speech was broadcast over

internet, using programs like SKYPE, etc. This was a new method and he kept in touch with

the public nearly at all times, and this was outside of traditional media used by politicians.

As stated above, Mr. Modi used social media a lot to stay in touch with the masses and it

was his way of bypassing the traditional media who had boycotted him previously. Also the

message carried by him had been modified through the different phases of the election as if

coordinated with what the people were discussing and wanted to hear. The extent to which
 116

elections should be conducted like advertising campaigns and focusing on tweaking

messages, are important has to be further studied.

Another point to remember was that the incumbent party (Indian National Congress) had

not been performing well in their second term leading to a bad economy in a country with a

greater younger population looking for better future. The UPA government was also

enmeshed in many scandals. The incumbent prime minister was seen as a puppet and many

did not believe he made his own decisions. Many media houses had turned into business

houses. Mr. Modi was more supportive of business and development. It could have been in

their interest to support him.

5.3 Personal observation based on content of newspaper

There could be a number of reasons for the spectacular outcome of Mr. Modi and his

party’s performance in the 2014 elections. One was it was unexpected that the BJP would

win the elections but the numbers it finally received was what was amazing about this

elections. That a party that was considered not so secular could win with such majority in

most states was unthinkable. The media could have had a hand but the electorate should not

be considered stupid and that they cannot make a decision as to who can lead them for the

next five years.

Mr. Modi’s win could also be because of the weak performance of the incumbent

Congress party in their second term, the number of corruption scandals they were involved

in, their prime ministerial candidate Mr. Rahul Gandhi who could not connect with the

masses or the people’s frustration with them and wanting a change. For younger generation
 117

including people like me, the Nehru Gandhi family connect seems irrelevant when

considering the fact as to who will lead the nation and so I think it needs to be seen whether

the Congress party should start selecting and training a suitable candidate for the next

election not just someone with the family name and check whether Mr. Modi is voted with

the same majority.

But one cannot discount the brilliant campaign Mr. Modi ran and how well his message

resonated with the public. In spite of having to grapple with the fact that he belonged to a

party which was very Hindutva and not seen as secular he tried to move himself away from

such topics and capitalized on development and economy two issues which he thought would

appeal to the people. It is very difficult to know whether all the reporting granted Mr. Modi

the remarkable victory or whether his message was what appealed to the masses. What would

have been the scenario if both the top parties running for the elections were not up to the

mark, could the media have succeeded in pitching one above the other? What would have

been the electorate’s decision had the incumbent party performed well during the past few

years. Would they have reacted to how Mr. Modi was presented by the media or would the

media have presented the incumbent party in such a negative light? However this can only be

found out now if a survey had been taken by me to see whether it was the message, the media

or the persona that appealed to the people.

5.4 Recommended further research

I would recommend that a research be conducted about demographics and issue appeal.

If that matches with that of the media one can to a certain extent say media had got the mood
 118

of the people right and helped swing the elections. One should study more elections where

one party wins the elections which such a strong majority backed only by their leader’s

popularity that has been created by the media.. To figure out why people voted for BJP and

especially Mr. Modi one has to wait for the next elections. One has to wait for an opposition

party that shows some interest in people and has a leader who stays in touch with the public

and at the same time have Mr. Modi who exhibit good governance and then study if the

media can influence people to choose and create exactly the opposite. Also the fact that this

was an election where many first time young voters took part credit should be given to this

new bunch of youngsters who could see through political ideologies and select a government

which will help them in getting better jobs.

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Appendix
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Appendix

Proliferation of programs on 2014 polls by NEWS channels

AAJ TAK: Raj Tilak, Panchayat, Election U La La, Election Express Chunavi Baat,
Third

Degree, Andolan, Satyagrah Political Stock Exchange, Shweta Patra, So Sorry

NDTV 24*7: Road To 2014, The Battleground, The Final Word, Truth Vs Hype

CNN IBN: A Billion Votes, India Decides, vote India Vote, Kings & Queens,
Campaign Trail,

Follow the Leader, The Election Tracker, The Election That is Not, Open Mike

TIMES NOW: India 2014 – Live Report India 2014 – Politics, India 2014-Politics
Central,

India 2014- Blueprint, NEWS Deck, The Flip, Political Juice, Access, India’s

Watershed Elections, REAL POLITIK, SHOWDOWN, YOUR VOICE & YOUR

VOTE, POLITICS NOW

Coverage of 2014 Lok Sabha Polls by NEWS Channel. (2014).

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Television NEWS Coverage of top 10 political parties

Figures are % of total coverage given to parties in 5 NEWS channels (8-10 pm).

March - May-2014

Parties Time In % of Time

Minutes

BJP 1796 38.91

Congress 1338 28.98

AAP 781 16.93

SP 207 4.49

Shiv Sena 72 1.56

BSP 62 1.35

TMC 48 1.05

CPI(M) 46 1.0
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MNS 41 0.89

JD (U) 35 0.75

Coverage of issues during the Election

Mar-May-2014

Issues Time in Minutes % of Time

Personality 9402 38.24

Party 4615 18.77

Satire/Comic/Fictional 1133 4.61

Programs

Corruption 872 3.55

Election Commission 686 2.79

Development 548 2.23

Governance 522 2.12

Public Policy 499 2.03

Opinion Polls 488 1.98

Local / Regional Issues 390 1.59

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Coverage of leaders by NEWS channels during prime time 8-10 PM March- May-
2014

Leaders Time in Minutes %of time

Narendra Modi 3415 36.32

Arvind Kejriwal 879 9.35

Rahul Gandhi 468 4.98

Priyanka Gandhi 289 3.07

Sonia Gandhi 168 1.79

Mulayam Yadav 162 1.72

L K Advani 155 1.65

Amit Shah 153 1.63

Manmohan Singh 148 1.57

Mamta Banerjee 121

1.28
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Coverage of 2014 Lok Sabha Polls by NEWS Channel. (2014).

http://www.mapsofindia.com/parliamentaryconstituencies/
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The MTS Election Tracker crunched numbers and built a graphical representation of the
use of social media by the three parties. Konnect Social was used to track the data along
with support from our knowledge partner, Social Rajneeti

The results on Facebook

Results showed that On Facebook, BJP has the highest number of fans with INC
following second and AAP third. Apart from the official page, there are a number of other pages
(Narendra Modi, India 272+, CAG, Friends of BJP to name a few) which assist the party in the
endeavor of connecting with maximum number of people on Facebook.
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Results on Twitter

On Twitter, the BJP4India twitter handle lagged behind the Aam Aadmi Party, with 374k
followers .The Prime Ministerial Candidate Narendra Modi’s official twitter handle has 3.5
million followers while AAP’s Convener Arvind Kejriwal has 1.47 million followers.

Results of You Tube

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On YouTube, BJP led with 44,685 subscribers and over 6.2 million views. The YouTube
channel also took feeds from the official channel of Mr.Narendra Modi which had some 1,27,715
subscribers.

BJP had a dedicated Internet TV Channel which showcased videos about the party’s
ideology, glorifying the past, live streaming of rallies and campaigns. The initiative was linked
with the YouTube Channel and Narendra Modi’s personal website. The initiative had received
2.5 million likes and 50k tweets.

On Google+ also Mr. Narendra Modi, was way ahead in the race with 1.22 lakh people in
circles. The posts on Google+ were usually in line with the communication on Facebook and
Twitter. The party used Google Hangouts judiciously by organizing live chats with Narendra
Modi, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Rajnath Singh.

BJP were the first to use WhatsApp for their election campaigns. The party has a
dedicated number- 7820078200 the- where people pledged support by giving a missed call,
verify their voter id, ask/share/suggest their views and opinions with the party. With this, the
party reached out to 450 million WhatsApp users based in India

The party was also proactive in case of other mobile marketing initiatives like ‘Dial 022-
4501-4501 to hear live speech of Narendra Modi’.

Bharatiya Janta Party reached out to the new and existing voters population through
digital and social media platforms. Their social media strategy was seamless and their messages
were consistent across all platforms. Each post had a logical connect and extension which
propeled the party’s proposition towards growth, development and good governance.

The party has launched some exceptionally innovative campaigns and initiatives like
Mere Sapnon Ka Bharat, NaMo Number, Chai Pe Charcha and registered their presence
synonymous with Growth, Development and Good Governance. The brilliant Offline-Online
Integration of the party’s activities has definitely helped the party in expanding their reach.
Overall, the party’s approach towards the digital and social media has been outstanding and
impressive (Rajwani, Surti, Harihar, Samosa, Hingwala, Kanchwala…Bhargava, 2014).

Top 7 newspapers known to favor specific political parties in India.

7. The Tribune

The Tribune has always been a centrist

newspaper covering the regions of North India such as Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and
 144

J&K. It’s been known to have a pro-congress attitude when it comes to choosing which news to
print on the front page and which news to hide in small columns. It is rumored that Manmohan
Singh only reads The Tribune and so doesn’t know what all is wrong with the government.

6. The Pioneer

The Pioneer is the second oldest English

newspaper to be printed in India. It has always shown a pro-BJP, right wing, nationalist ideology.
Chandan Mitra, owner and editor in chief of The Pioneer is a BJP member of Rajya Sabha from
Madhya Pradesh. The Pioneer has focused on pro-right movements emerging out of the urban
middle classes.

5. The Statesman

The statesman has always been a left wing,

anti-establishment newspaper. The only saving grace being that it has never pretended to be
anything other than that. It has long been the newspaper of the left wing communists out of
Kolkata. In recent times its circulation and power has seen a decline but there is no denying where
it takes its ideological stand.

4. The Hindu

The Hindu too has been open about its ideologies

and doesn’t shy away from being declared an organized left newspaper. It is controlled by the
Kasturi family which has been sympathetic to the CPM.
 145

N Ram, the editor in chief of The Hindu till January 2012, is known to be a card carrying
communist. The newspaper has attempted to hold a high level of journalism and maintained its
cerebral nature, but it has not stopped readerships in recent years falling dramatically.

3. Indian Express

The curious case of the Indian Express is really

interesting. Ramnath Goenka, who founded the Indian Express Group was a member of the RSS
and so the newspaper was always right wing in its nature. After his death the group has split in two
and now there are two newspapers with opposite loyalties. While The Indian Express now supports
congress, The New Indian Express continues to support NDA and right wing ideologies.

2. Hindustan Times

This newspaper is probably the worst case

of partisan media. It can easily be mistaken for a Congress published newspaper as it has become
nothing but a mouthpiece for Congress propaganda. It has roots in the Indian freedom movement
and since then it has been a partner for the Congress party. It has a good strong hold in Delhi. It is
managed by Shobhana Bhartiya who is the daughter of industrialist KK Birla and was a Rajya
Sabha member of the Congress Party till 2012.

1. Times of India

The Times of India is the leading English language newspaper in India. It tries to present
an image of being a nationalist newspaper but has not been able to shed it bias towards the UPA
government, now and then. The Times support for the Anna Hazare campaign against the congress
led government did bring it out to be counted as the leading voice of the Indian middle class, a
 146

strategic move for business gains. However, any thoughtful reader of the Times of India would
know that it’s not really the voice of the public that it claims to be.

Segregates the newspapers in India according to their political ideology and

their allegiance to political parties.

Political View: Centrist

1. The Times of India:

Often called the Numero-Uno amongst the Newspapers in India, Times of India
is India’s largest selling daily. It works on composite of local editions. Times of
India has been a centrist newspaper since its inception. It effectively tries to
portray itself as a ‘nationalist’ newspaper but a very visible bias for The United
Progressive Alliance can be seen in it. It also is a big critic of the right wing
causes. The bias against BJP and other right wing parties can be gauged from
the fact that it has often come up with misinformation about the Narendra Modi
government. However, TOI is always ready to make up with an apology. The
font size difference between the misinformation and apology is startling. “Err
big-Apologize small” is a tried and tested technique in the Times of India Camp.
 147

2. Indian Express:

When the Indian Express was founded, it was a leading voice of the right wing
in India. Ramnath Goenka, the founder of the Indian Express Group was a
member of the RSS. Indian Express divided into two factions after the demise of
Shri Goenka. We’ll discuss about the second faction later in the article. Indian
Express can be called a Hitman in the print industry, it comes up with scathing
critique of the government it doesn’t like. Indian Express is (in) famous for
doing a series of slating articles. The current Indian Express is again largely
centrist and is known to have a Pro-Congress stand.

3. The Tribune:
 148

It’s a famous rumor that Manmohan Singh only reads the Tribune and why not?
The Tribune is a complete centrist paper with strong preference for the
Congress Party

4. Hindustan Times:

More of a tabloid than a newspaper, the Hindustan time is blatantly centrist and
unapologetically Pro-Congress. HT had its origin in freedom movement and ever
since India got free, the HT has been a leading propagandist for the Congress
party.

5. Deccan Herald:

Deccan Herald is a strong player in the Karnataka region and the leading
competitor of The Hindu in terms of ‘intellectual’ content. Deccan Herald is a
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Centrist newspaper but not blatantly so. Deccan Herald is Pro-Congress but not
unapologetically so. Deccan Herald is like the Hindustan Times with better
content and weaker biases. A good read any given day.

Political View: Center-Left

1. The Hindu

For a novice and the uninitiated, the name of this newspaper paints the image
of it being a hardcore right wing newspaper but it is completely the opposite.
The good thing about the Hindu is that it doesn’t shy away from admitting that
it is an organized left newspaper. It is a favorite of IAS aspirants as The Hindu
Editorials are counted as the best intellectual content on the internet (however
far off from the realities they may be). The Hindus is as center-left as it can get
and it has a strong bias for the Left parties along with the Congress. Prominent
right wing parties like the BJP and the Shiv Sena are condemned frequently in
different pages of it.
 150

2. The Telegraph

The Telegraph is a hardcore leftist newspaper that oscillates between glorifying

the communist traditions to eulogizing the prominent left wing leaders. The
paper is brazenly anti BJP, though it features articles from Swapan Das Gupta
time and again. While being married to the leftist cause, the Telegraph is also
known to clink a few pegs with the Congress party.

Political View: Center-Right

1. The New Indian Express:

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The New Indian Express is the splinter group formed after the dissociation of
the original Indian Express group. This paper follows the traditions upon which
The Indian Express was founded. Although the paper is known to be close to
The BJP, it doesn’t shy away from taking a dig or two on the saffron party.

2. DNA

It is a joint venture between Dainik Bhaskar and Essar Group and is a leading
voice in the Mumbai area. It features well researched opinions on different
matters concerning the nation. DNA has a center-right flavor is known to have a
softer stand on the BJP.

3. The Pioneer:
 152

Known for its impressive papers and opinion pieces, the Pioneer is the elite club
of prominent right wing voices in India. The nationalism is evident from its
pieces while sincere efforts are made to avoid Jingoism. It is often called the
leader of the right wing voices in India.
 153

Ranking: corruption perceptions index of India (transparency international)

C C C C C C C C C C C
Ran Count PI PI PI PI PI PI PI PI PI PI PI
king ry 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

8 I 2
8 India .9

7 I 3
0 India .3

7 I 3
2 India .5

8 I 3
5 India .4

8 I 3
4 India .4

8 I 3
7 India .3

9 I 3
5 India .1

9 I 3
4 India 6

9 I 3
4 India 6

8 I 3
5 India 8

7 I 3
6 India 8

Coding Sheet (1st person)

 154

1. Coder : Tejasvi

2. Newspapers :
a. Times of India
b. The Hindu
c. Telegraph
d. Anandabazar Patrika
e. Hindustan Dainik
f. Dainik Jagran
3. Frames

News Frames Operation Definition Number of Articles(

Frequency)

1.Namo Hindutva, Chai Pe a) 116

b) 43
Charcha, Modi’s c) 40
d) 25
popularity, Aab Ki Baar e) 59
f) 79
Modi Sarkaar, common

man, caste and personal

profile of politicians.

2. Gujarat Model of Development, a) 18

Development b) 10
toffee model and brand c) 8
d) 7
Modi. e) 10
f) 7

3. Corruption 2G, CoalGate, a) 21

b) 23
black money and to Mr. c) 10
d) 6
e) 15
f) 26
 155

Modi’s relationship with

top businessmen.

4. Minority Rights Minority a) 7

b) 7
appeasement and Gujarat c) 10
d) 5
riots. e) 13
f) 5

5. Dynasty politics Rahul Gandhi a) 11

of Congress b) 8
nicknames and dynasty c) 10
d) 8
politics of the congress e) 8
f) 24
party.
 156

Coding Sheet (2nd person)

4. Coder : Nirmala

5. Newspapers :
a. Times of India
b. The Hindu
c. Telegraph
d. Anandabazar Patrika
e. Hindustan Dainik
f. Dainik Jagran

6. Frames

News Frames Operation Definition Number of Articles(

Frequency)

1.Namo Hindutva, Chai Pe g) 116

h) 43
Charcha, Modi’s i) 40
j) 25
popularity, Aab Ki Baar k) 59
l) 79
Modi Sarkaar, common

man, caste and personal

profile of politicians.

2. Gujarat Model of Development, g) 18

Development h) 10
toffee model and brand i) 8
j) 7
Modi. k) 10
l) 7
 157

3. Corruption 2G, CoalGate, g) 21

h) 23
black money and to Mr. i) 10
j) 6
Modi’s relationship with k) 15
l) 26
top businessmen.

4. Minority Rights Minority g) 7

h) 7
appeasement and Gujarat i) 10
j) 5
riots. k) 13
l) 5

5. Dynasty politics Rahul Gandhi g) 11

of Congress h) 8
nicknames and dynasty i) 10
j) 8
politics of the congress k) 8
l) 24
party.
 158

Biodata

Name: Tejasvi Vasudevan

Address: 168/18 Sukhumvit Soi 23, Prestige Towers #10-F, Bangkok 10110, Thailand
Email: tejkiran21@hotmail.com

Educational Background:
Bangkok University International College, Bangkok, Thailand
Master of Business Administration, 2012-2014
Cumulative GPA: 3.66

Bangkok University International College,Bangkok, Thailand

Bachelor of Business Administration
June2012
Cumulative GPA: 3.29

The American School of Bangkok, Thailand

High School Diploma
Cumulative GPA: 3.28

Practical Work Experience:

MECOMB (Thailand) Limited, Bangkok, Thailand
Trainee-Assistant to Office Manager Nov 2012 – Jan 2013

Great Circle Shipping Agency Limited, Bangkok, Thailand

A/P Accountant July 2016 – July 2017