The BJP's use of online Authoritarian populism to advance an Ethnoreligious Nationalist agenda in the 2019 General Election poses a threat to Indian Democracy.

Abstract

Abstract

With a landslide victory in 2014 and reelection in 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi has been a pioneer of technology enabled authoritarian populism. However, there are still significant unanswered concerns regarding the prevalence of authoritarian populist and ethnoreligious nationalist themes as well as the mobilisation around these ideologies in India's online authoritarian populism, which is understudied. This study looks at a representative sample of pro-BJP tweets from the last week of the 2019 election cycle. The BJP was found to have advanced an ethnoreligious nationalist agenda by employing authoritarian populist tactics. We didn't include conventional media. Social media facilitated a personality cult centred on Modi by enabling direct leader-to-follower communication. Online opinion leaders promoted the most extreme ethnoreligious nationalism, including divisive false information about religion, which are frequently ignored in studies of political campaigns. The democracy in India is at risk from these ideologies and tactics.