India’s air strike, Pak response step up heat on Twitter

NEW DELHI: Escalating tensions between India and Pakistan dominated Twitter with 17.39 million conversations about the issue shared on February 26 and 27, according to Bengaluru-based digital marketing agency, Autumn Grey.

India has an estimated 30 million Twitter users but the corresponding number for Pakistan is not independently available.

With 13.74 million conversations ( 77.4% of the total), India made up the bulk of these conversations. Users in Pakistan shared 3.9 million conversations using hashtags such as #pakistanarmyzindabad. In India, the peak was seen on Tuesday between 9.45 am and 10.30 am. Celebrities such as cricketer Virendra Sehwag and actor Ajay Devgn tweeted about the airstrike between 10 am and 10.15 am.

In Pakistan, conversations about the air strike started at 5.12 am on Tuesday with a tweet by Major General Asif Ghafoor, a spokesperson of the Pakistan Armed Forces. The peak volume of conversations took place around 12 pm on Wednesday with over 85,000 tweets shared with the hashtag #PakistanStrikesBack.

On Twitter in India, there were 1.8 million mentions about the air strike alone, while the same has 732,100 mentions in Pakistan.

Top hashtags in India were #Surgicalstrike2 and #IndianAirForce, which were tweeted around 670,000 and 600,000 times, respectively. In Pakistan, the top hashtags were #PakistanArmyZindabad and #PakistanZindabad, which were shared 130,000 and 120,000 times, respectively. There was a smaller group of users – 37,298 in India and 30,700 in Pakistan — who tweeted with the hashtag #Saynotowar.

The data was collected using social listening tools.

SMALL GROUP OF USERS – 37,298 IN INDIA AND 30,700 IN PAKISTAN — TWEETED WITH THE HASHTAG #SAYNOTOWAR