Mr. Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption fast was planned for 16th August, 2011. He was arrested on the morning of 16th August and sent to Tihar Jail on the same day. This was the day on which traction started on the Facebook page related to this movement facebook.com/IndiACor (data for 16th August,2011):
17.8 million page impressions for news feed
209194 active users
28108 new likes
159053 likes of news feed
35041 comments
These numbers grew as Mr. Hazare was later released and continued his epic fast at Ram Lila Maidan in Central Delhi. As the days passed by, active users count kept rising and reached the peak on 27th of August, 2011 – when government agreed to the demands of Mr. Hazare and the fast was ended (data for 27th August, 2011):
25 million page impressions for news feed
280017 active users
530683 active users for last seven days
168209 likes of news feed
28294 comments
As the entire nation stood up with Mr. Hazare and team, Indian users on Facebook were on fire. For the entire period of the movement which can be considered from 14th August to 31st August, 2011 – the numbers were mind blowing:
304 million page impressions for news feed
1.9 million likes of news feed
0.33 million comments
4.3 million active users(non-unique)
These numbers were unprecedented for a 16 day period for Facebook in the world. And this is just the data for the IndiACor page, the protest was widespread on Facebook and that engagement was 10 times bigger than the data we have.
For the whole August month as per booshaka.com, IndiACor page got 3.3 million booshaka points. This made it the leader among almost all the Facebook pages in the world for August’11. IndiACor was ahead of Facebook pages for Manchester United, WWE, Joyce Meyer ministries, Cristiano Ronaldo and Barack Obama.
Another good metric to judge engagement in Facebook is EdgeRank. EdgeRank is a collection of algorithms which define the likelihood of reaching (or doing well) of Facebook page updates on fans newsfeed. The EdgeRank score for IndiACor was 23 for the entire month of August, which is more than “excellent” as per edgerankchecker.com definitions. The score for September-2011 was 21, which continued to be excellent.
Below is drill-down of the data to understand and appreciate the kind of engagement IndiACor was able to generate during the anti-corruption campaign:
Trend of post views from 14th August, 2011 to 27th August, 2011 (when the fast closure was announced):
The total post views for the period was around 300 million.
Trend of Likes of posts from 14th August, 2011 to 27th August, 2011(when the fast closure was announced):
The total Likes for the period was around 1.8 million.
Trend of comments on posts from 14th August, 2011 to 27th August, 2011 on Facebook when the fast closure was announced.
The total comments for the period was around 0.32 million.
Trend of Enagement on Likes of posts (average Like/post/day) from 14th August, 2011 to 27th August, 2011(when the fast closure was announced):
The highest average was for 27th August with average of 786 likes per post for that day. For the entire period the average number of likes per post was 536, which means there were an average of 536 likes on each post made by IndiACor. As the total number of posts was 7501, 536 likes per post is an amazing average.
Trend of weekly active users from 14th August, 2011 to 27th August, 2011(when the fast closure was announced):
As the Indian citizens came out in the streets, Facebook active users hit a peak of over 0.5 million users. These are just the users affiliated to IndiACor page, but the protest was much larger on Facebook and may have hit over 10 million users joining the protest in one way or another on Facebook.
Break-up of likes percentage based on countries:
The majority of likes are from India (86%) followed by US (7%).
Break-up of likes percentage based on cities in India:
The likes are lead by Mumbai(35%) followed by Delhi(25%) and Bangalore(22%).
Break-up of likes percentage based on demographics:
The data concurs with Mr. Hazare and team’s claim of youth being the main driver of the campaign. 53% of likes were driven by users under the age of 25.
The movement categorized by many as the “second struggle for independence” was truly an awakening for the entire nation. As most of the citizens contributed in their own ways – some people reached Ram Lila Maidan, some people joined protests on streets and some people came out and offered to get arrested. Similarly Indian users on Facebook followed IndiACor – they shared, liked and commented on posts from IndiACor, from news sites, from other users and participated in this momentus campaign.
A big section of news media agreed that social media played a big role in promoting the movement. Especially when Mr. Hazare was being moved from one police station to another – the updates from social media guided protesters to reach at the right locations. The government claimed that the protest is driven by the Facebook and Twitter generation and no one will come on the street. Well, they were wrong – from Facebook to Twitter to India Gate to Ram Lila maidan – people reached out everywhere to stand up against corruption.
(The article was written by Sandeep Amar, Head, Marketing and Audience, Indiatimes and published on India Digital Review.
Facebook handle owner Shivendra S. Chauhan from India Against Corruption. For more details please contact him @ 9971900424.)
