Hindi may topple English as most popular language on social media

new delhi — Hindi is set to topple English as the most popular language on social media in India in 2017 but this comes with a negative, a study on the occasion of International Mother Tongue Day has revealed.

The negative: The trend also suggests that critical issues are overshadowed by nationalistic themes in highly-shared Hindi stories on social media.

Hindi news stories received higher shares in social media compared to English news in the last six months, according to a study conducted by Storynomicx on the “Most Shared 5000 News Stories in India in 2016”.

Storynomicx, a leading consulting firm that specialises in business storytelling in traditional and digital media, analysed social sharing for 870,000 news stories by 135 leading Indian media in ten languages -- English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu.

Indian media witnessed more than 2.25 billion shares in 2016 on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn with an average share of 2,587 per story, the study reveals.

However, the Most Shared 5000 News Stories identified by the study attracted a significantly higher average share of 71,494 per story with an aggregate of 357 million shares. Facebook accounted for more than 98% shares across languages.

“We tracked the social trajectory of the most shared 5000 news stories to understand what drives engagement for different audiences. Though English retained its leadership in 2016, Hindi may topple it in 2017 due to the increased penetration of the internet and a strong resurgence in nationalis”,” Ajay Sharma, Founder and CEO of Storynomicx said.

The study observed a “distinct divide in news preferences” of Hindi and English readers. Hindi readers, according to the study, prefer to share “stories on nationalistic, religious and political themes” while “stories on entertainment, human interest and consumer-focused” dominate sharing amongst English readers. —