It’s undeniable that social media mobilise public opinion. And it’s equally true that it breeds digital influencers who, admit it or not, shape our outlook towards people to a large extent. This was confirmed by a new research that cited the case study of social media attacks on Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, “presenting him as an internal enemy, a foreign agent, and a threat to democracy”
Chandrachud’s “judgments and positions are presented as an immediate threat leading into (the 2024 general elections) which his tenure extends to,” wrote Joyojeet Pal, an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, in a summary on social media. The paper is co-authored with Sheyril Agarwal, a researcher at the same institution.
Pal and Agarwal studied Twitter activities between January 1 and April 20. They identified digital influencers sparking no digs at Chandrachud, for example projecting him as a spokesperson of the ISKCON religious group. They studied the timeline of attacks on the chief justice and concluded that they peaked around critical developments in court. “So, while these influencers don’t initiate attacks against the CJI, they can be seen piggybacking on the sudden public interest, and influence the discourse with their inflammatory content,” the researchers were quoted as saying.
According to a certain section of the media, Pal has said that Chandrachud’s critique claim that he is “driven by globalist interests, indoctrinated by liberal thought, institutions like Harvard, globalists like Soros, and that in turn, he is a puppetmaster in Indian politics”.
“The second line of ‘Globalist’ attacks is to undermine his positions, especially on gender, and present them as disconnected from mainstream Indian reality,” he was quoted as saying.
According to the research, influencers are triggering aggressive methods to undermine Chandrachud, which is different from other trolling situations in which “politicians and mainstream media play active parts.”
It may be noted that Chandrachud’s father had been a chief justice between 1978 to 1985. It’s thought that this has created a perception of nepotism. “The narrative behind these claims is that Chandrachud is unelected, and a law unto himself,” Pal said on social media. “Not just the CJI, but the institution of the Supreme Court itself as seen as something that needs to be reined in.”
Chandrachud has been attacked online for his alleged “anti-Hindu bias”, the researchers concluded. “There are multiple ways in which Chandrachud is presented as anti-Hindu, but the two most common approaches are through direct attacks on his judgments as antithetical to Hindu values, or by calling out his support from liberal or Opposition quarters as evidence of his being anti-Hindu,” they said.
“(Such) tweets … vary on a spectrum from dog-whistling to explicit islamophobia,” the researchers added.
“Similarly, there is a spectrum of misinformation in these messages, extending from innuendo to explicit and known falsehoods,” they added.
It’s thought that Chandrachud has also been attacked for promulgating liberal values and has been typecast as a puppet master.
