ABSTRACT
In an increasingly digital world, right-wing Indian mainstream media are taking an increasing interest in incorporating SNS as a standard communication strategy in an attempt to instil their muscular Hindu nationalism onto wider audiences. In particular, an adaptation of Twitter—a popular microblogging service—by right-wing news media outlets is noteworthy. While many of the Indian right-wing news channels use Twitter on a regular basis to spur audiences to stay in tune with any potentially breaking news, to get engaged with them and/or to follow the regular updates, Twitter is being increasingly used to amplify Hindu nationalist propaganda. In this chapter I argue that the two prominent Indian English news channels, Time Now and Republic TV, have co-opted Twitter to install the political project of Hindu nationalism within Indians. Monitoring the Twitter handles of these two channels, I intend to explore the relationship between right-wing Indian news channels and Twitter, and how this congruence helps them to spread the Hindu nationalist project and Muslimophobic/Muslim Othering agenda further. Using a case study of “Love Jihad,” this chapter posits that the nexus of both media technologies (i.e., mainstream media and Twitter) gives rise to the proliferation of hatred against Muslims and results in Hindu–Muslim polarization, which may lead to an extreme Islamophobization of India. In other words, the main motive of these channels in co-opting Twitter into their debates, I suggest, is to create a strong and wide base of audiences both offline and online who succumb to the channels’ Hindu nationalist and Islamophobic viewpoints. The co-option of Twitter seems to be beneficial to Republic TV and Times Now to produce, amplify, and circulate anti-Muslim rhetoric in a subtle yet effective way. Furthermore, by using Twitter these channels perpetuate fear and anxiety against Muslims, thereby polarizing Hindus and Muslims and mobilizing Hindu voters to bring “Hindu” parties into power.
