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Crisil's portraiture analytics revealed that individuals were the single-largest category active on social media, representing 75% of the profile population and 63% of mentions. Influencers (people with a large following) emerged as a significant voice, accounting for close to 14% of the total mentions on various platforms. The media (channels, journalists & media houses) accounted for 12% of the total mentions.
Roopa Kudva, Managing Director & CEO, CRISIL, said: "Our sample of 36,000 profiles showed up 814 politicians and activists, reflecting a good engagement by this segment. Economy experts, though relatively few in number, had amongst the most to say - averaging 10 mentions per profile. 14% of the mentions were from outside India." Investors and businesses, for whom the Budget mattered the most, made up less than 1% of the total mentions in Crisil's analysis.
In terms of interest, individuals were most concerned about education. Almost half their mentions were about education. This reflects the demographic of individual social media users - young individuals looking to their future, said the report. Influencers focused on tax and defence the most - or my money, my country. Politicians and social activists had an opinion on most topics. Media focus was on taxation, followed by housing, banking, defence and education.
Dicing the data by geography also revealed unique mindsets. "Tax was the prime topic in Karnataka and Maharashtra, while it wasn't even in the top five mentions of people from the National Capital Region. In NCR, the centre of attention was FDI and defence, reflecting the influence of proximity to the corridors of power. The East had the least mentions at just 8%," Kudva said.
Twitter was the clear winner among social platforms. "Our study covered diverse social platforms comprising Twitter, Facebook, blogs and the web. Twitter was the most preferred by a wide margin, with nearly 87% of the people using it to talk about the Budget followed by Facebook with 7% and news channels with 3.5%. Discussion boards, blogs, videos, Google Plus and Tumblr constituted the rest," said the findings.
In all, Crisil analysed 36,000 unique social media profiles and 1,75,000 relevant comments or mentions' (out of a total 3.28 lakh made) on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and the web for 24 hours - 12 hours before the Union Budget and 12 hours after.
