The Aryan Khan Case and the Anatomy of a Twitter War

A recent study led by researcher Lalitha Kameswari at IIIT-Hyderabad examined the Twitter activity around the arrest of Aryan Khan, son of actor Shah Rukh Khan, and found that overall, the volume battle was won by the pro-Aryan Khan camp.

Fans of the actor mobilised, an inordinately high number of journalists covered the case favourably for the young detainee, and a small number of public figures also spoke up in favour of the actor.

The case raises a few important elements around how online attacks and counter attacks happen.

First, a look at the timeline of Twitter activity helps understand the peaks of social media activity. This is typical with trends in any major virtual event: certain real-world incidents will drive and drop social media activity. The Aryan Khan case also followed this pattern – most of the activity was on the days when major real-life incidents took place in the case.

The drivers of overall pro-Aryan Khan messaging, such as objections to the denial of bail despite the facts of the case, support for his family, and a general decrial of the state of the Indian judiciary, found widespread appeal. The drivers of anti-Aryan messaging included claims of drug abuse and an excessive lifestyle, and accused the other side of contempt for a justice system that treats VIPs and common citizens equally.

The spikes of activity around key events also show that a significant amount of content was in fact neutral, driven by the news cycle, which was heavily influenced by the story throughout October.

But beyond the major events, the weeds of how the social media activity unfolded highlight the structure and networks that drive Twitter activity.

First, the case highlighted ‘war room’ strategies of two battling parties, where one is a loosely stitched group of fans owing allegiance to a star, and another is an amorphous but well-oiled infrastructure of accounts antagonistic to Bollywood, Muslims and social liberals. The latter, while not represented by a single entity such as a political party or media organisation, is more a collection of journalists and social media influencers who capitalise on an active Twitter ideological collective during outrage moments.

Second, the case allows a unique insight into the structure of trolling and engagement. On the pro-Aryan side, we see a few forms of engagement. First, widespread retweeting of sympathetic stories on the news by journalists and commentators. Second, hashtag activism, driven by a small number of accounts pushing content, and coordinated through a small number of dedicated fan accounts. This has elements of textbook online activism, where a group decides through periodical coordination, such as daily emails or a shared doc, on the cause, its tenor, and the messages that are to be sent. This is then coordinated and done through the accounts coming alive throughout the day.

The hashtag activism on the anti-Aryan side follows the same structure, but with one important distinction. The seeding of the initial message does not come from an influencer account, but the subsequent retweeting comes from important accounts. This is a very useful tactic for offensive content, since there is plausible deniability – an offensive message can be seeded, it can be “liked” by a major influencer (in which case it does not appear explicitly on their feed), but this will make the message gain momentum among their followers. Similarly, a message can also be retweeted, which can be “un-retweeted” by the influencer after the damage is done.

Top 5 positive and negative hashtags

Table 1: Ten most engaged polarised hashtags with reference to Aryan Khan in the study period

Structurally, this works like a pyramid. There is typically a practically unknown account which is followed by Twitter accounts with mid-range influence (3,000-20,000 followers) and have some status within an IT cell infrastructure. These mid-range influential accounts in turn are followed by accounts with major influence 2,00,000 and above following, which add the actual value to a troll attack.

Second, the case highlights the distinctions between real-world influencers and digital influencers in their ability to take positions. Despite Shah Rukh’s immense status as a star, a relatively small number of big-ticket stars made open appeals on behalf of the actor. The celebrities who did – like Pooja Bhatt, Swara Bhaskar, Mika Singh, Raj Babbar – already have a history of being slotted as liberal-leaning or opposed to the government on one or a few issues. These celebrities are already commonly targeted by the pro-establishment side, and have little to lose by throwing their lot in. A number of congratulatory messages came through when Aryan was released. However, while the bail pleas were ongoing, at least two major messages went out from celebrities who typically fall on the side of the government – Rajat Sharma and Shekhar Suman.

The issue that influencer engagement highlights is that Indian Twitter has now hit a point where influencers are separated based on whether they have some celebrity status outside of social media or whether they derive their legitimacy from social media alone. If the former, they either throw in their lot with one or another side – such as Anupam Kher who is typically almost always on the side of the government, and Swara Bhaskar who almost always leans against – whereas those who don’t explicitly take sides mainly sit it out except when a cause that most people can coalesce around without significant trolling emerges. An example would be the trolling of Mohammed Shami, which saw a large number of otherwise reserved influencers speak out, since the ‘cause’ allowed a certain kind of gentile legitimacy to all that engaged it.

A real-world public figure deals with real-world consequences for their online activity – a sportsperson may face calls to withdraw their place in a team, a filmmaker may find their work being rated poorly, a public figure may start losing product endorsement contracts. A digital influencer, on the other hand, lives by their online activity alone, thrives on continuing the trajectory they live by.

The key influencers in this case – Sameet Thakkar, Anshul Saxena, Ankit Jain, Rahul Roushan, Swati Goel Sharma – were all able to get significant interaction for their material online. Each of these accounts has significant reach, and high engagement metrics – meaning when they put out material, it spreads, especially when the material is aggressive.

Table 2: Engagement ratios by polarisation, or messages with reference to Aryan Khan in the study period

Here, the role of news anchors is also critical. Suresh Chavankhe and Pradeep Bhandari, two of the most influential voices on Twitter in the Aryan Khan case, have both made their reputations through aggressive rhetoric and innuendo online, but both also hold the ‘legitimacy’ of running news, rather than ‘just’ being digital influencers. They are extremely popular among the Indian right. Journalists who feature prominently on the other side the debate are Rohini Singh and Rana Ayyub, who are both very popular among liberal social media users. For all sides concerned, content like the Aryan Khan case, which triggers outrage, is valuable to engagement.

The Aryan Khan case had a somewhat unusual Twitter content pattern in that there were equally well-stacked armouries on both sides of a debate. Incidentally, the brewing battles between followers of actor Suriya as well as anti-caste activists on one side, and the Vanniyar community on another side is a similar case in point. The first indicator that an online fight is being orchestrated is a flood of hashtags, specially handcrafted hashtags. In this case, it started with the generic #AryanKhan and #SRK, but soon moved to #Nashedi #नशेड़ी.

Also read: ‘Muzlim, K2A, Jih@DI, Mull@H’: How Right-Wing Trolls Bypass Hate Speech Filters on Twitter

Old wine in new bottle

In orchestrated social media wars, one also sees the repeat of existing tropes – attacks on Bollywood and drugs, which have grown consistently since the Sushant Singh Rajput case, are seen here in the framing of the hashtags and derive their online momentum from existing communities who find resonance in this. Indeed the ‘SSRians’, a motley crew of profiteers and genuine conspiracy theorists dedicated to finding justice for the deceased actor, has fast emerged as a powerful umbrella for right-wing mobilisation.

The research on this incident found that hashtags were crafted for effect, but also often had equal and opposite hashtags created and trended within 30 minutes. Thus for #boycott_srk_related_brands there was trending hashtag #even_modi_needs_brandsrk or for #ReleaseAryanKhan there was #NoBailOnlyJail. There were several more examples of this, suggesting clearly that not only was there organised activity on both sides, but that both sides were closely clued into each other, and prepared to react quickly.

Aryan Khan photographed outside the NCB office in Mumbai on October 4. Photo: PTI

In these proxy wars, influencers play an important, but fleeting role. Jan Ki Baat and Sudarshan TV news may seem marginal compared to Republic, but Jan Ki Baat had a bigger footprint than Republic on this issue. Likewise, Anshul Saxena and Sameet Thakkar have replaced Rishi Bagree and Tajinder Bagga as the key influencers in this case. In a nutshell, for an influencer to stay relevant, and ahead of other influencers, they need to continue to feed the aggression.

What is happening on social media in India is not different from what is happening elsewhere in the world. People who deviate from any valued group narrative on an issue are mercilessly trolled in the Philippines, Ethiopia, the US and any number of countries. It may appear that Aryan Khan came out on top because the Twitter war went overwhelmingly in his favour, to a large extent because there were social media armies loyal to his father who came out in support. But did that get him out of jail sooner? Did it make more A-list celebrities come out in his support? If anything, there’s now a cottage industry of people who will help celebrities protect their near and dear ones online and offline, legally, physically and emotionally.

A couple of decades ago, the military conflict DVDs being sold on the streets of post-war West African nations saw a new and ghastly pattern. First, footage of casual war scenes were filmed and sold as entertainment. But as time went by, they became more and more graphic. At traffic lights in Freetown, Sierra Leone, vendors would promise the most incredible machine gunning, stabbing, or decapitation, caught in raw footage. The casual death scene was already too boring for the seasoned viewer.

Here is the bigger concern for the Indian media environment. In the US, Fox News was affected by the arrival of unfettered far-right commentators like Alex Jones and Glenn Beck. In India, we now see Suresh Chavankhe and Pradip Bhandari are making Arnab Goswami seem like a centrist. The influencers are in the same game. The moment they drop their aggressive edge, their audience moves to the next screamer.

Aryan Khan is out on bail, but our collective imprisonment is here to stay.

Joyojeet Pal (@joyopal) is an associate professor at the University of Michigan, where his research focuses on social media use by political leaders.