Modi’s Instagram growth pegged at 2.2L by Congress, but analysis shows 5.3L gained in 30 days.
YouTube views undercounted by 15 millions for Modi; Gandhi’s views inflated by about four million.
Congress omitted timeline of increase; Outlook relied on fact-checkers that use 30-day data from Social Blade, InsTrack.
Pawan Khera, Chairperson of the All India Congress Committee’s media and publicity department, took to X on August 30 to share the increased social media presence of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi because of his recent Voter Adhikar Yatra.
"#VoteChori is the most viral topic on social media with billions of views”, Khera, through the post, claimed. His post analysed Gandhi's social media growth compared to that of Prime Minister Modi across platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
According to a fact-check by Outlook, discrepancies were found in some of the statistics. A major undercounting was observed in the case of Modi’s Instagram followers. While the Congress post detailed the increase in Modi’s Instagram followers to 2.2 Lakh, Outlook found the account to have gained around 5.3 Lakh followers in the last 30 days. As of September 2, Modi’s account has a total of 96.8 million followers.
Modi’s YouTube channel viewership was also underreported in the post, with the number given being 76 million. However, fact-checking proved the actual viewership to be around 91 million. A discrepancy of 15 million views.
Rahul Gandhi's YouTube viewership was pegged at 124 million. Upon fact-checking, Gandhi's current viewership was found to be 128 million, thus 4 million views higher, not lower, than the party has claimed. At the same time, this can be considered quite minor, as Gandhi's YouTube channel sees an average of 4 million views daily.
Procedure of Fact-Check
Khera’s post, despite detailing the growth, did not provide the time period within which the statistics were calculated.
Outlook has made use of websites like InsTrack and Social Blade to observe the growth of the two’s Instagram and YouTube presence. Due to the fact that the standard 30-day period was allowed for fact-checking, which makes it susceptible to minor discrepancies from current statistics.
Rahul Gandhi’s Instagram base was reported by the Congress to have gained a grand 13 lakh followers. Outlook observed it to have grown by around 10 lakh followers in the last 30 days. Thus, it can be established that, despite the Congress post not detailing the timeline for calculating its statistics, a period of roughly one month was taken into consideration.
Parties and their followers often use social media to make claims about their popularity. While this can often be a harmless exercise, it is equally important for readers and viewers to know exactly where the facts lie. That has been the attempt in this effort.
