These are the 3 Indian journalists most followed on Twitter by fellow journalists

The study conducted by University of Michigan also found that historian Ramachandra Guha was the most followed ‘public intellectual’ by journalists.

File image of journalist Rajdeep Sardesai | Twitter | @sardesairajdeep

New Delhi: Shekhar Gupta, Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt are among the most followed on Twitter by Indian journalists, a study has found.

Conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, the study “plotted” the friends of journalists in India to understand who they most “listened to” among Indian journalists on the micro-blogging site. 

Gupta, founder and editor-in-chief of ThePrint, has the highest following. Sardesai, consulting editor at India Today, comes a close second, while independent journalist Barkha Dutt comes in third.

In the other categories, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the “clear leader” as the politician most followed by Indian journalists, while historian Ramachandra Guha is the most followed public intellectual.

Joyojeet Pal, associate professor at University of Michigan who was among the researchers, tweeted the findings of the study, which were released on 2 March.

We map Twitter following behavior of Indian journalists for a sense of what the nation’s media has its ears on

A first step towards mapping influence the media landscape on Twitter. Thread with results

Details on the data, methodology here:https://t.co/KGy6AETsJa pic.twitter.com/XIReWInlnJ

— joyojeet pal (@joyopal) March 3, 2020

The methodology of the study included using a “seed set of journalists most retweeted by politicians”, then finding the friends of those journalists, and then hand-annotating each of them to confirm if they were journalists.

The initial set included 2,170 Twitter accounts, of which 1,899 were identified as “ground truth journalists” and 271 as “media collectives” (new organisations, newspapers, etc.).

However, the study excluded journalists who do not have much of a network — i.e. are not friends with other journalists.

All the data was collected using Twitter Public API.

Most followed journalist by journalists 

Data visualisation revealed that even though Shekhar Gupta is more popular within the community of journalists, Sardesai is relatively popular on Twitter generally. 

Journalists who have high following “among other journalists relative to their online following” were Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor, The Wire, and Naresh Fernandes, editor, Scroll.in.    

Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal also popular 

While PM Modi emerged as the most followed politician by journalists, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi came in second and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal third.

Even though AAP MLA Atishi and Congress leader Manish Tewari have relatively small following, it was found that they have “a reasonably strong footprint among journalists”. 

Here is a list of 50 politicians followed by journalists. @NarendraModi is by far the most followed.https://t.co/HqNEnSiA2G pic.twitter.com/Y4luh7XrX1

— joyojeet pal (@joyopal) March 3, 2020

Public intellectuals 

Apart from Ramachandra Guha, lawyer Prashant Bhushan and former vice-chancellor of Ashoka University Pratap Bhanu Mehta were also found to be popular among Indian journalists.

The study referred to lawyer Gautam Bhatia and author Akshaya Mukul as “public commentators” who are “heavily followed by the professional press” and thus have “important spheres of influence in the public discourse”. 

Foreign journalists 

The study found that some of the most followed global journalists like Anderson Cooper, CNN news anchor, Ezra Klein, founder and editor, Vox, Nate Silver, editor-in-chief, FiveThirtyEight weren’t of that much interest to the “typical Indian journalists”. 

However, foreign correspondents for Indian news and Indian-origin journalists were more popular.  

Here is a list of 50 global journalists (located outside India) most followed among the journalism fraternity in India. https://t.co/chVcgsYvIy pic.twitter.com/QBASnFZ9Nx

— joyojeet pal (@joyopal) March 3, 2020

Celebrities 

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan may have the overall highest following, but relatively he is not highly followed by Indian journalists.

Celebrities who are politically engaging, such as actor Swara Bhaskar, comedian Kunal Kamra and lyricist Javed Akhtar, were more popular among journalists.