Motivational Framing in Networked Publics on Indian Social Media: A Case Study of #HindusUnderAttack

Abstract

Social movements employ various strategies to disseminate information, build support for their cause, and mobilize masses to take specific actions. One key tactical tool is framing. We utilize grounded theory to identify narrative, motivational, and issue-specific topical frames used in a digital networked public propagated by Hindu right-wing groups using #HindusUnderAttack on Twitter. We leverage pre-trained, finetuned RoBERTa models to identify the occurrence of each frame in the corpus. Relying on past works on the Hindutva movement, we build three hypotheses rooted in the use of motivational frames (i.e. calls to action). Our findings illustrate three critical insights into framing around #HindusUnderAttack: 1) politically aligned users deployed the motivational frame more frequently, 2) tweets about Bangladesh are more likely to contain motivational framing, and 3) motivational framing is associated with higher audience engagement through retweets. We also report important patterns of frame combinations. Finally, we situate our findings in the political economy of the region and extant literature of digital publics around the world.