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Handles Apart Election wit-bits kind of jostle for a real world retreat @japokh Abstract In the last quarter of 2013, tweets were talking about Nepal’s bid to elect the Constituent Assembly. As in real life, a few authors dominated the social conversation: one in every 100 handles created the most buzz, sharing doubts, fears and hopes about the elections. The last 82 sent one tweet or two each in the entire election period. The remaining 17 were active somewhere in between. These tweets were capable of carrying the campaign messages among urban and rural voters. Undertaking a visual exploration of more than 39,000 tweets, archived over two months around the Election Day, that is, 19 November 2013, this article sheds light on who the talking handles were, what they were sharing, when, with whom, and eliciting what in response from their friends and followers. Rather than predict the election outcome, as several studies of tweets have tried to do, this after-event exploration makes sense of the manifest characteristics of Nepal's election tweets with the help of numbers, words and visuals and suggests the need for further research in this new frontier of human behavior. Keywords: election tweets, nepal, politics, second constituent assembly, social media, twitter 1. Introduction In the last quarter of 2013, tweets were generating a daily dose or two of wit, gossip and gaffe on Nepal’s fresh bid to elect the Constituent Assembly (CA) and install a political government. As

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Page 1: the complete draft about the CA election time tweets -- awaiting final weeding and fine-tuning

Handles Apart

Election wit-bits kind of jostle for a real world retreat

@japokh

Abstract

In the last quarter of 2013, tweets were talking about Nepal’s bid to elect the Constituent

Assembly. As in real life, a few authors dominated the social conversation: one in every 100

handles created the most buzz, sharing doubts, fears and hopes about the elections. The last 82

sent one tweet or two each in the entire election period. The remaining 17 were active

somewhere in between. These tweets were capable of carrying the campaign messages among

urban and rural voters. Undertaking a visual exploration of more than 39,000 tweets, archived

over two months around the Election Day, that is, 19 November 2013, this article sheds light on

who the talking handles were, what they were sharing, when, with whom, and eliciting what in

response from their friends and followers. Rather than predict the election outcome, as several

studies of tweets have tried to do, this after-event exploration makes sense of the manifest

characteristics of Nepal's election tweets with the help of numbers, words and visuals and

suggests the need for further research in this new frontier of human behavior.

Keywords: election tweets, nepal, politics, second constituent assembly, social media, twitter

1. Introduction

In the last quarter of 2013, tweets were generating a daily dose or two of wit, gossip and gaffe on

Nepal’s fresh bid to elect the Constituent Assembly (CA) and install a political government. As

User
Typewritten Text
DRAFT WORK
User
Typewritten Text
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the Election Day approached, authors of motley hues posted their take on assorted topics,

including politics, on Twitter, a popular micro-blog. They were sharing what they might have

thought would be interesting, important, witty, funny or silly about some news, personal update,

idea or cause they had in mind for their followers and friends to discover. Eavesdroppers leaned

on the micro-blog wall to tap into the short bits of conversation, each within 140 characters, as

they erupted, reverberated, sent ripples jostling for attention over the rim of the digital dungeon

or simply disappeared without inspiring much ado.

Each tweet identified its author, the text the author sent online, and the time it was posted. Pulled

into archives over two months and put together, the tweets featured some people, place,

organization, assertion, and description more often than others, suggesting an exploration of the

collection might yield patterns with implications for the conduct of election.

These social media texts were capable of traveling fast among millions of real people. In its

report for the last quarter of 2013, Twitter boasted about 241 million average monthly active

users, showing an increase of 30% year-over-year, and timeline views of 148 billion (Twitter,

2014). In May 2013, a survey of Twitter users (Acharya, 2013) suggested some 7 in 10 handles

posting Nepal related tweets were based in Nepal with the remaining three posting from Canada

(20%), Europe (16%), India (12%), and Arab

countries (12%). Of the seven, four would be in

Kathmandu. The remaining three would be in less

urban Lalitpur, Bhaktapur, Chitwan and Kaski.

Hence, a safe bet would be to expect their tweets

could travel among many urban and some rural

Nepali voters.

Strangely, however, given the typical disconnect

of tweets with the touchy-feely world of humans,

who were living long hours of #loadshedding, the

messages were equally poised to get lost forever.

Even in the United States with far greater access

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to electricity and Internet, a Pew study found, only a few adults used Twitter for news as the

adjacent chart showed.

Nevertheless, the handles and texts, appearing on and vanishing from the Twitter wall over the

campaign, campaign blackout, voting and vote counting periods, created an ongoing buzz,

available for public search, view, download and close reading. As if peeping for a while through

a window into a bunch of tweets had brought a rare view in sight to share with colleagues, this

article explores the manifest characteristics of 12,071 unique authors and their 30,134 unique

texts about Nepal, archived over 62 days, from 24 October 2013 till 25 December 2013.

Recent efforts have assessed the predictive power of tweets in the elections of USA, UK,

Germany, Australia and India. Yet the findings are far from conclusive or generalizable (Gayo-

Avello, 2012). Unlike in the case of snap polls, critics have pointed out flaws in the sampling of

tweets as undermining the veracity of election predictions. To survey the tweets, instead of

people, to be able to say who will win or lose vote, all studies, by deduction, boil down to

suggesting this: we would need a lot of preparation, including skill, resource, tool and time, way

before the beginning of the election campaign.

In Nepal, few instances of public research had examined the election tweets, erupting around the

clock thanks to the work of many humans and automatons, making even a modest effort to

understand the engagement of social media with electoral politics urgent as well as novel.

1.1 What this article is up to doing

So, instead of assessing the predictive ability of tweets, this after-event reading of the social

media texts attempts to make sense of which talking handles, in which phase of the second CA

election, were trying to reach which followers and friends, with what fears and hopes, for the real

world to take notice. It will transform the texts into numbers and visuals to support an

exploratory narrative of the election communication as it unfolds over the key phases of the CA

election of 19 November 2013 and immediately after that.

The use of visuals -- scatter plots, bars, charts, network graphs, etc-- will answer the following

specific questions about some visible features of the tweets.

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Who authored the tweets and re-tweets about Nepal and election in the last quarter of

2013?

What did they talk about mostly?

o Other people: Who were the people appearing in the tweets?

o Places: Which places did they talk about?

o Organizations: Which organizations received the most mentions?

o Topics: What topics prominently figured in the tweets?

o Descriptions: What action or description did the tweets suggest mostly?

What was the story about the election that these tweets suggested together?

1.2 Coming up in a while, the findings

The findings will show, in certain respects, the tweets reflected an aspect of the real world -- a

few authors, about 1%, dominated the talk, while thousands of others, more than 82%, sent just a

tweet or two each and mostly heard themselves alone in the digital echo-chamber. The study

found:

More men, women and machines clustered in the tiny Nepal corner of the Twittersphere as the Election Day approached, sending the

highest number of tweets on that historic day compared with the number for every other day of the monitoring period

The size of the handles in terms of followers varied widely, but most had several hundred to a few thousand followers

The top hundred authors sent the most tweets, with the next 500 sending fewer than the most, and another 1,600 sending still fewer.

Together, these 2,000 (18%) plus authors sent more tweets than some remaining 10,000 (82%) did

Interactive handles were far fewer than the active handles

They were talking about other tweeple, real people, places, organizations, assertions, descriptions, festivals, sports, travel and politics

They shared some fears, yes, but these fears were challenged, overcome, and replaced by expanding hopes over time

1.3 Why explore the tweets: The context review

Any systematic effort at understanding the use of social media in relation to people, place and

organization, topic of interest and description of entities and action in Nepal's politics would

potentially shed light on the nuances of our expanding digital citizenship, participation and

political engagement. Specifically, who our tweeting men, women and machines were and what

they were sharing in their texts during a crucial democratic exercise of the nation would be

interesting to know for its own sake.

A survey of the Nepali public (Media Foundation Nepal, 2012) had found social media networks,

like Facebook and Twitter, were growing popular among Nepal's young and urban people. The

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number of blogs and micro-blogs by individuals and professionals had gone up drastically.

Online journalism, another facet of the new media, had also seen a surge. Most traditional

publications or broadcast outlets, the report said, had their online presence. Scores of online

news portals, which included those operated from outside the country by members of the

expanding Nepali diasporas, enabled readers and users to directly post their comments and

feedback, making participation and engagement a reality.

In the first quarter of 2014, a web information company, Alexa, placed facebook.com on top of

the websites people visited the most in Nepal. It ranked Twitter 11th, after Google, Youtube,

Onlinekhabar, Yahoo, Ekantipur, Blogspot, Wikipedia, and Nagariknews, among others (Alexa,

2014).

Prominent social and political leaders, such as Devendra Raj Pandey, @DRP39; and Nilambar

Acharya, @nilacharya; and election candidates Baburam Bhattarai, @brb_laaldhwoj; Ram

Sharan Mahat, @ramsmahat; Kamal Thapa, @KTnepal; and Gagan Thapa, @thapagk; among

others, for example, were posting tweets during the election time. Former prime minister

Bhattarai had made some important announcements and offered clarifications through tweets

before he resigned for Chief Justice Khil Raj Regmi, @KhilRajRegmi, to take over. Bhattarai's

handle, @brb_laaldhwoj, was among the top gainers of followers in Nepal for a good while.

Journalists and tech enthusiasts were also swelling the Twitter lists by the day.

In the ten years of Facebook and seven years of Twitter, as the Internet penetration rate grew

(Nepal Telecom Authority, 2013), these social networks were assuming increasingly central

place in the daily life of urban Nepalis and played a role in fermenting the public opinion. It was

commonsense knowledge that the social media had supported the fight to end violence against

women, with many Nepali users active in the recent campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. They

also played a role in mobilizing public opinion in favor of a well-meaning doctor, who went on a

series of fast-unto-death protests for reforms in a teaching hospital of Kathmandu

(SolidarityForProfGovindaKc, 2013).

Barely two years old in 2008, Twitter had only a few local authors sending tweets on Nepal's

first CA elections. Among the early adopters, Nepalis, if the names of the few handles found in

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that regard, lama_2b @lama_2b, Deelip Khanal @deelipk, and harikarki @harikarki, etc.,

suggested nationality, were apparently very few. In 2012, a newspaper editorial (ekantipur, 2012)

waxed eloquent about Twitter saying that the platform could put you directly in touch with those

that were shaping the news and views—you no longer even had to rely solely on the traditional

media. "It gives you breaking news, often straight from the horse’s mouth. And particularly in

Nepal, where journalism is so centralized, it’s become a great medium to find out what’s going

on far away from the centre, not just from journalists, but anyone who has access."

Twitter was clearly beginning to drive some portion of news and social conversation. Nepali

print and broadcast outlets were increasingly referring to social media in their news and

comments. Some online 'newspapers', such as Setopati, (Setopati, 2013) routinely sampled what

the social, political and government leaders were saying on the new media platforms and

published their views on a daily basis.

Monitoring or archiving the tweets of the election time also made sense because the people

tended to share a quick hint through the platform about what they had in mind. A little while

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earlier, as Election Commission Nepal prepared its mainstream media monitoring framework, an

important donor organization had posted a tweet in a casual manner saying that the Election Day

in Nepal coincided with the Toilet Day. Before it deleted the tweet in the next breath, a

prominent lady author commented in this thread, "but Nepal's election day, Nov 19, is still World

Toilet Day", bringing the human folly to the fore through what critics have also dubbed is a kind

of 'pointless babble', a coinage generally bandied about in describing much of the social media

content.

Several users, however, were seriously making their business or politics better by employing the

social media. Reputed organizations, including the UN and World Bank, ran their social media

sites, Facebook and Twitter, among others, competing with other organizations and individuals

for attention and followers. Almost all daily newspapers, several television channels and FM

stations had online presence, with Facebook and Twitter serving their need for news tips or as

platforms to share scoops. The ECN was also gearing up to inform the candidates and voters of

its electoral education and preparations through the use of several media, including Facebook

and Twitter.

"Whether you are on Twitter or not, the messages you will be hearing from politicians will be

shaped by it," said a noted PR man and blogger (BBC, 2012).

Nepalis, the CMR survey suggested, were on Twitter for news and information (85%), to

understand public opinion on current news (59%), for gossiping (56%), to express feeling (50%),

for networking (46%), for professional works (31%) and to spend leisure time (30%).The survey

reported they tweeted anything they found okay to tweet, although their most popular topics

comprised social issues (44%), interesting news (42%), politics (37%), profession (26%) and

media (23%).

The most popular inspirations behind sending political tweets, another study showed, were to

support (26%), to ridicule (15%) and to provide information without any emotional content

(13%). A computer scientist and his team at Canada’s National Research Council had started

with a million tweets related to America’s 2012 election, analyzed hashtags like #gop, #Obama

and #RomneyRyan2012 and, with the help of crowd sourcing, classified a sample of about 2,000

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tweets, with multiple readers assigning one of 11 purposes to each message. Mostly, they found,

the tweets showed: negativity–criticism, venting, charges of hypocrisy (Mohammad, 2013).

The social media manager of one Independent Voter Network said there were now more tweets

sent every two days than had ever been sent prior to 2008. Since its creation, Twitter had

impacted the news cycle considerably. Suggesting the reasons why Twitter mattered in elections,

the voter network manager said tweets meant: return to retail politics, real time reaction,

#trending topics, debates, fact check, voter participation such as by way of re-tweeting,

acceleration of the news-cycle, personal engagement, inclusion of voters, and real time

journalism (Susskind, 2012).

On top of all, in a country where the penetration of social media among the people was

expanding, it was necessary to make some modest beginning in the direction of exploring or

gauging the pulse of public opinion about the CA election on social media, starting, perhaps,

with Twitter.

1.4 Scope of present work: Setting the limits

During Nepal's election campaign of 2013, parties, politicians, their supporters and the general

public were using Twitter. The main line of interest that delineated the search, collection and

analysis of the tweets was to see how the authors were using the platform to talk about the

election. Done after the vote counting was over and an elected government of politicians

replaced the election government, the analysis picked up the thread in how the early tweets

showed fears about election violence and generated doubts about the possibility of successful or

peaceful election. As the campaign picked up and vote happened, the fears fizzled out, giving

way to surprises, which then, broke out into cheers.

A few tech-savvy enthusiasts, with access to codes, tools and applications, analyzed the

campaign tweets and shared their findings, such as the bomb being a dominant topic, via the

social media (Simplify360, 2013). These analyses limited their scope to focusing on a few days

of the campaign and voting because Twitter imposed time and rate limits in bulk extraction of

old tweets freely.

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By planning ahead of the peak campaign period, the current effort gradually built the collection

of tweets, pulling the first tweet almost a month before election and the last a month after it.

Within the constraints of limited time, skill, resource, tool and technique, tweet handle @japokh

used several online applications in tracking and archiving the election tweets. Similar freeware

later eased the exploration of the collection.

The scope of this work, therefore, will be limited to reading the archive of tweets for their

manifest content characteristics around a general context thread going from popular fears to

bursts of cheers, grouping them in example categories, and interpreting, mostly through a visual

exploration, what they read like in different stages of the election process.

1.5 The structure of the write-up

The previous sections gave a quick summary of the assessment of Nepal's recent election tweets,

spelled out the objectives, reviewed the general context in which studying election tweets

mattered, listed the main findings and limited the scope of the study to a close reading and visual

exploration of the archived tweets. This section offers a transition for the readers to see the key

thrusts of the past efforts, which provide the backdrop to the current undertaking. A brief

description of the tools and methods used for this study follows the review of past work with

election tweets, touching on the specifics of search strings, online and desktop tools, variables,

and data. The next section highlights the findings and discusses them. The final section will

arrive at a conclusion and make some recommendation for further research.

2. Past studies of election tweets

With hundreds of millions active users worldwide, Twitter was an emerging frontier of human

behavior inviting scrutiny, exploration and better understanding. A growing body of literature

had looked into the relationship between Twitter messages and electoral successes. Computer

science, communication and sociology departments of universities in the United States, Europe,

and Australia, for example, were doing these studies.

In 2013, Indiana university researchers studied a random sample of 537,231,508 tweets from 1

August 2010 to 1 November 2010 alongside the data from 406 competitive U.S. congressional

elections. They found more tweets meant more votes, even while accounting for the control

factors (DiGrazia, 2013).

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A study had analyzed tweets from the run-up to 2009 German federal elections. It, however, saw

no direct correspondence between the candidates' success on Twitter and electoral success. The

researchers explained the results might show a deficiency in theoretical connection between the

metric of choice (Twitter messages) and the outcome of interest (electoral success) or the

methods the proponents of the predictive ability of tweets used to collect and analyze the

underlying data (Jungherr, 2013). Earlier study of tweets from the same election, however, had

shown a more positive relationship (Andranik Tumasjan, 2010).

A Stanford study highlighted the feasibility of using election tweets to replace traditional polling.

It had analyzed the US republican

primaries in the manner of snap polls

(SNAP, 2012). Near home, in India,

the talk of the tweeple favoured

Narendra Modi in New Delhi elections.

The adjacent illustration found on the

Internet, for example, gives a glimpse

of how tweets were being analyzed to

take stock of the Indian elections.

The Hindustan Times, reporting the

findings of two surveys, predicted as

more and more young Indians went

online, social media could swing 3-4%

votes in India's April 2014 general

elections (Hindustan Times, 2014).

In the context of the United States, a caveat came from a

journalist: "Since everyone in the D.C. bubble is following

everyone else on Twitter; it's an electronic echo chamber. And

that echo chamber often forgets that just 8 percent of the public

gets its news from Twitter and only 16 percent of the public uses

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Twitter at all (Washington Post blog, 2013)."

For several studies in the intersection of tweets and politics, forecasting election results has been

a dream proposition, thanks to Barack Obama's prudent use of social media for his election

victories in 2008 and 2012 as the US president. The Obama tweet, 'Four more years' above, for

example, had received the record number of re-tweets ever.

On the other side of the brouhaha is this caution by a Spanish university researcher about any

extraordinary ability of Twitter to reflect the sentiments of the people who sent them, giving

important clues about the things people intend to do, like voting in elections. In the title of his

review of past claims about the predictive power of Twitter, the author concluded: I Wanted to

Predict Elections with Twitter and all I got was this Lousy Paper: "A Balanced Survey on

Election Prediction using Twitter Data. (Gayo-Avello, 2012)". The review challenged anybody

working in this area: “There are elections virtually all the time, thus, if you are claiming you

have a prediction method you should predict an election in the future!”

Back home, a Nepali Times story reported a survey, of people, not tweeple, though, that

predicted Nepal's election 'in the future' as shown in the following bar diagram.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is

safe to say the poll made a

reasonably close prediction, with

Sushil Koirala actually replacing

Chief Justice Regmi from the

Prime Ministerial chair (Nepali

Times, 2013). Election predictions,

from @ushaft and @akhanal, for

example, also circulated in the

Twitverse, ironically, during the campaign and blackout period, when the election code of

conduct required the mainstream mass media to remain silent about parties and candidates and

publish no poll predictions.

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The tweets analyzed for this write-up showed the key party leaders were also making tall claims

about election victory of their candidates while political pundits might have been cutting them

short. Meanwhile, some predictions, such as a Maoist leader made on Facebook giving his party

a thumping majority, came a cropper, way off the mark.

Some studies explored what in the tweets drove people's engagement. The following diagram

developed with data from the official Twitter blog shows interactive features in tweets boosted

engagement in different areas variously (Twitter blog, 2014).

As many journalists were sending tweets on government and politics, those who were more

interactive, therefore, were more likely to engage the audiences. In a newspaper article, media

scholar Dr. Dharma Adhikari, however, wrote a caution: surveying posts on Twitter and

Facebook, one comes across thousands of comments, overwhelmingly negative, directed at

journalists or their media outlets. "Some commenter's are bemused that the social networks now

help to easily track journalists' political leanings... there are many news portals today that are far

too biased, blatantly ideological, constantly spitting out vitriol against perceived opponents

(Adhikari, 2013)."

Surprisingly, yet, the reactions in tweets seemed to be fairly in line with the election results, an

author noted, citing an analysis by a staff at Simplify360: Positive words in tweets were

associated with Nepali Congress and Gagan Thapa (Neupane, 2013). "Only 9.97 percent of

women took part in online discussions. This too is in line

with the number of women elected in the CA, which was

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dismal," she wrote. Amidst several such possibilities, the risk of fatigue setting in for Twitter

was also likely, just as it had been the case with Facebook lately (Today Tech, 2013). The graph

shows the overall trend, despite the clamor about the social media use in Nepal.

3. The data: tools and methods

3.1 Search strings

Two search strings, #nepal and Nepal/ Election, pulled matching tweets into two separate online

archives for @japokh to collect election time tweets for monitoring and analysis of their content

features. A month-long free trial version of an online hashtracking application,

hashtracking.com, fetched 28,251 #nepal tweets between 1 and 23 November 2013. Another

spreadsheet, a free copy of @mhawksey's tweets-archiver, routinely harvested tweets with the

election string in their texts, bringing a total of 11,041 cases between October 24, 2013 and

December 25, 2013. The merger of the two collections yielded 39,292 tweets as the main corpus

available for exploration.

The table below summarizes the data.

Data information Tweets Collection begins Collection ends Counting

Spreadsheet tool 11041 24-Oct-13 25-Dec-13 Yes

Monitoring service 28250 31-Oct-13 23-Nov-13 Early phase

Total tweets archived Q4, 2013 39291 24-Oct-13 25-Dec-13 Yes

Data used for main analysis 36521 1-Nov-13 23-Nov-13 Early phase

Election period covered Campaign Nov 1- 16 Blackout Nov 17-18 Election Nov 19 Early count, Nov 20-23

Total tweets 16720 4336 5271 10194

On cleaning the corpus, mainly focusing on key election phases and removing exact duplicates in

terms of three major variables, namely, handle, text and time, some 30,134 unique tweets,

originating from 12,071 unique handles, were available for a close reading and analysis. Not all

these election time tweets were about the

election, although they contained election

related codes. Cleaning the corpus needed

to look at the languages of the tweets: the

alphanumeric text strings were in several

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languages, including English, Nepali, Indonesian, Russian, Swedish, Spanish, French, Japanese,

Chinese and so on. The quantitative analysis of all the archived handles produced visuals, such

as, in comparing the number of all-language tweets sent over the election phases, but the

qualitative textual analysis focused on the English language tweets. For Nepali language tweets,

it was a pick and choose affair, and for other languages, tweets meant nothing more than

numbers populating the Nepal topic corner in that online space, which, even by a liberal

estimate, was a tiny 0.0017 per cent of all Twittersphere, assuming a worldwide 218 million

active users who had tweeted something until a few months ago.

The English tweets contained a total of 45,957 sentences with the election codes, including, vote,

chunab, voting, and poll. These were taken from the total tweets for different levels of analysis

over six segments of time in two months, starting with 24-31 October 2013, as the first time

span, to take stock of how the election campaign mood on Twitter built up. As the campaign

picked momentum, 1-16 November 2013 made the second time band. The campaign blackout

over 17-18 November 2013, the actual voting day on 19 November 2013, the vote counting from

20-23 November 2013 and results and post results period between 24 November 2013 and 25

December 2013 formed the successive time bands for which the tweets, mainly the Nepal

election quotes, were analyzed.

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3.2 Online tools -- for archiving

A free copy of TAGS v5.0.7, with code written by @mhawksey, pulled tweets into a spreadsheet

archive built by @japokh to collect tweets on an hourly basis over 62 days from 24-October

2013 to 25-December 2013. The initial attraction of the tool was in its capability to adapt to an

online network visualization application, the Tag Explorer (Hawskey, 2013). So, coinciding with

the election campaign, @japokh shared the visualization with colleagues via some social media.

Only when the archive swelled, fetching a maximum 1,500 tweets daily within Twitter API rate

limit, it began to make sense that digging a bit deeper might yield more insights into the handles

and texts, interestingly without involving too much cost at all.

Another online application hashtracking.com, during a trial run, collected tweets which were

initially meant to corroborate with whatever had ended up in the spreadsheet archive. The merger

of the two archives built a robust corpus with at least 3 in each 4 tweets being unique.

3.3 Analysis tools

Several other online and desktop tools, all freeware or trial runs, helped the textual analysis.

They were mainly twitter.com, google.com, SocialBro, SocialBaker, SocialMention, Topsy,

Tweet level, etcML, Semantria, NodeXL, Tableau Public, Atlas.ti, Rapidminer and so on.

3.4 Variables

The main variables analyzed in the data were:

unique handle. the username of the author who sent tweets that landed in the spreadsheet and

online tweet monitoring archives. the frequency with which it appeared over the phases of

election time was one measure of the handle size or importance. other measures were the number

of its followers or friends, mentions and re-tweets

unique text. the body of a tweet containing unique alphanumeric character strings, mainly

#nepal or Nepal/ Election, the search terms that built the archives. the frequency with which

certain words appeared in the collection of texts in the archive for different phases of the election

time was one measure of the importance of the text. the number of re-tweets was another

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measure. processing the text at word and sentence levels, with select codes, gave numbers for

further comparison and analysis

time. the year, quarter, month, day, hour, minute and second in the timestamp records for each

tweet post. the main variable to organize the handles and texts across phases of the election time,

24-31 October 31 being the pre-election campaign band, 1-16 November 2013 the campaign

period, 17-18 November 2013 the campaign blackout, 19 November 2013 the Election Day, 20-

23 November 2013 counting and 24 November 2013 and 25 December 2013 serving as the post-

election time band.

followers. all twitter account holders who followed the author of the election tweet during the

time it was posted. measured in number from 1 to 600,000 or algorithmic color bands to

represent the numbers

friends. all twitter account holders the author of the election tweet followed during the time it

was posted. measured in number from 1 to 600,000 or algorithmic color bands to represent the

numbers

Other concepts and categories used for textual analysis, such as the +ve and -ve context, action,

hope, fear and other words, are derived from the data through manual selection and on the basis

of some personal judgment of @japokh.

3.5 Data analysis and interpretation

The article relied on a mixed approach to data: no prior rule and rigor made any demand on the

qualitative textual interpretation. The data collected in the spreadsheet archive or CSV files were

transferred, merged and cleaned up in Microsoft Excel and Access worksheets. Tableau Public,

Google Fusion tables, NodeXL and some semantic machine learning tools like etcML helped the

data analysis, interpretation and visualization. Example cases were extracted and sorted

manually.

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4. Findings

The following section highlights the findings, in plots, diagrams, charts and graphs, around

people, place, organization, assertion and description most frequently appearing in the tweets

over the election phases. Brief comments accompany the visuals.

4.1 People

This section groups the people into author-handles; very interactive tweeple (VITs), noted for

receiving the most mentions and re-tweets; and names for a collection of people and individuals.

4.11 The author-handles

A total of 12,071 unique handles participated in sending tweets, replies or re-tweets about Nepal

and election between 24 October and 25 December, over 62 days, in the last quarter of 2013.

The density of their appearance over the period of archiving is the highest for the Election Day.

Clearly, more authors sent tweets on that historic day and days closer to it, such as the campaign

blackout and immediate vote counting. More handles were using the social media megaphone in

talking politics than they did ever before.

Their participation in the conversation on electoral politics is also evident in that the authors

posted more texts on the Election Day compared with any other single day over the period of

monitoring. The diagram below shows this.

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Tweeting often, the first 2,186 handles (18%) generated 70% of the buzz, while the last 9,885

handles (82%) sent just one or two tweets each for the entire election time. The remaining 17%,

the in-between group, comprised a spectrum of handles from quite active to quite passive. The

following bar diagram shows how the talkative few sat in the archive with the silent majority.

Of the garrulous 18%, the first 100 were responsible for half the buzz, whereas the next 500

rented the air in the echo-chamber generating conversation volume equal to that from the

remaining 1,586 handles did.

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A scatter plot for the senders of the most tweets, calculated as a daily average, over the early

campaign, campaign, campaign blackout, voting and vote counting periods, marked by the end

dates of these phases, looked like the following:

4.12 Very interactive tweeples (VITs)

Some handles were more interactive than others. Those most prone to sending re-tweets, for

example, are shown in the following diagram.

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The very interactive tweeples (VITs) were receiving a number of mentions in tweets and re-

tweets from others. The following distribution shows the top VITs clustered by color grouping of

frequencies for their mentions.

The 12,071 handles generated 24,265 instances of mentions, as identified by @ marker, in the

corpus of tweets. Those receiving the most mentions in the body of tweets for the entire period of

monitoring are shown in the diagram below.

The following box plot shows what they were tweeting and re-tweeting. The greener the box the

higher the number of re-tweets the text in it received, with the greenest receiving 79 re-tweets

and the most faded one receiving 10 re-tweets.

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The plot is only an example, and, hence, does not exhaust all tweets. For one, the following text,

which received at least 114 re-tweets, is not in it: RT ... I am leaving for Nepal tonight to observe an Election there. I will

take a week's rest too. I'll be back …

Some were receiving replies from fellow handles of various hues. Those with the most replies,

with the size showing their importance in terms of followers, are in the following plot by time.

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4.13 Handles made for nepal and election

Some authors had chosen to include text strings, nepal and election, that were part of the search

strings to build this archive, in their handle names. They are in the following lists.

4.13.1 Election related handles

ElectionNepal13, NepalElection, ElectaEditore, Election_USA, electionguide, ElectionTweets2, ElectoralReport, NCElection, pasapelectoral,

UK_ElectionNews, elecnep13, Election_Watch, electionista, Cleanelection, NeutralityPolls, F_A_Polls, Polliticko, Nepalvotes, Vote4Nepal,

THTNepalVotes, votereportindia, votenet, votesafe, 14votes, Voter_In, Vote3rdPosition

4.13.2 Nepal related handles

asdnepal, AyonNepal, ekaamnepali, ElectionNepal13, gcmcNepal, Goal_Nepal, hamronepal8848, JumlaNepal, kishorenepal, KTnepal,

LeoWhitmanNepal, live_nepal, Mad_Hav_Nepal, Nepal_Bot, Nepal_Monitor, Nepal_Time, Nepal_travels, nepalanupama, nepaldiary,

NepalElection, nepalitimes, nepalkonews, nepalnews_com, nepalnews24, nepalnewsfeed, NepalNoSora, NepalSamachar, Nepalvotes,

NewsFromNepal, pearl_nepal, RaviNepal, redditnepal, RepublicaNepal, RSFNepal, ShineDigiNepal, telegraphnepal, thedatanepal, UpsideNepal,

Vote4Nepal, 1stNepali, 3AngelsNepal, Aam_Nepali, AayushreeNepal, Acharyanepal, amicsnepal, aria_nepal, Binaj_APNepal,

Blue_Army_Nepal, bluesFromNepal, BolaunNepal, carefree_nepali, ChurchinNepal, cidennepal, cijnepal, ComedyNepal, DFIDNepal,

drbishnuhnepal, EatPrayNepal, Ecotournepal, elites38_nepal, encountersnepal, EnergyForNepal, EqualMoneyNepal, FoC_Nepal_eV,

forestrynepal, G4HNepal, gamesnepal, GMINepal, Hamro_Nepal, HappyNepal, HSTNepal, ImNepalblog, IndigenousNepal, IslamandNepal,

KidashaNepal, LAHURNIPNepal, LeSurajNepalais, libirdnepal, Lo_Nepal, made4nepal, MapsNepal, mountain_nepal, MUFC_Nepal,

myholidaynepal, mymynewsnepal, Nagnepal, NCARDNepal, NEFNepal, nepal_adira, Nepal_Cricket, Nepal_deep, nepal1st, nepaladvisor,

NepalBasketball, NepalCAM, NepalCricket, NepalDRR, nepaleeidiot, NepaleseAtheist, nepaleseprince, nepalforestfire, Nepalgateway,

NepalGiftShop, NepalHoops, nepali_football, Nepali_Wizard, nepalialert, nepalibytes, nepalichristian, NepaliEr, nepaliktm, NepaliPirate,

NepaliSagar, nepalisanchars, NepaliSense, NepaliSites, nepalkopage, Nepallitfest, NepalMagazine, nepalournepal, NepalPhotoBlog,

nepalpictures, NepalSchoolsAid, nepalsites, NepalSurvey, Nepaltalks, nepaltourtrip, nepaltravel, NepalTravelD, nepalvideonews, NickinNepal,

NomadicNepali, NowInNepal, NYCAnepal, nynepal, OldNepal, OurNepal, paddlenepal, PBI_Nepal, philipinnepal, PicturesOfNepal, rajunepal,

reportersnepal, saminnepal, sardogsnepal, SESFNepal, shadowofnepal, showtimenepal, TheNepal, travelexnepal, TrekNepalApp, troll_nepal,

tutornepal, UKinNepal, UN_Nepal, USEmbassyNepal, Viator_Nepal, WaterAidNepal, womenLEADnepal, XinhuaNepal, aaja_nepal,

ArjunNepalarjun, banepali, CalgarianNepali, CountryNepal, cricket_Nepal77, cricketingnepal, cricketofnepal1, eventsinnepal, mynepal00,

Nepal33, NepaleseAvenue, nepaligreens, nepaliketi22, nepalisthegreat, NepalSport, PunkazNepal, SonOfNepal, SwankyranaNepal,

THTNepalVotes, Yeti4mNepal, AmazingnepalNet, AshishNepal1, europenepal, GlamourNepal, IlamNepal, kumudnepal, nepalibabuu,

nepalichater, nepalinews, nepalmonitor, nepalnews, nepaltourismb, risingnepalsoon, SFCG_Nepal, shakyanepal, TheNepalTrust, UNDPNepal,

visitnepal2011, weeklynepal, WPDNepal, AAANepal, arunsinghnepal, better_nepal, bihaninepal, BimalNepal, eduparknepal, FACTSNepal,

Gauravnepali, GorgeousNepal, justnepalii, nepalabeauty, NepalEcco, NepaleeDai, NepaleseCook, nepalfm, nepalgovin11, Nepali6oro,

nepaliketo1, nepalikoradio, nepalinepal, nepalivigilente, NepalNetwork, NepalTeam, NepalTibetTours, nepaltraveltips, nepaltroll, picnepal,

PuncozNepal, sextoysinnepal, sizzannepal, SStepsNepal, top_nepal_news, topofworldnepal, UmbrellaNepal, WELNepal, yugalnepal, BlogNepal,

cricnepal, droplets_nepal, HelloNepal_, hrtbtnepal, ILeadNepal, Nepal_Church, Nepal_khanal, Nepal_Tech, NepaliNews24, NepalIre,

nepalitvserial, nepalkotweet, SwissNepali, udlnepal, URD_Nepal

These handles may have skewed the results for nepal and election related codes. However, their

uniform control over different phases of election must have minimized the effect.

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handle Text Time

@YAMI_LALSALAM

Yami_LalSalam

!! !!!! म म !!! #NepalVotes

#Nepal_Election #nepalelections 11/20/2013

@PRACHANDANEPAL Maane mero bhaasan ko demand ta @KimKardashian ko sex tape bhanda charko

cha ta. Harek mahina leak huncha. #lalsalam Nov 18

@ LAL_PRACHANDA

_prachanda Jite #dhoti leJhur khelyo #Nepal leRamro khelera harya vaye ni chitta bujhthyo baru#india... 11/19/2013

PrachandaLife @KTnepal This will not last! Baburam promised. #Nepal #NepalVotes 11/20/2013

@BRB_KAALDHWOJ

brb_kaaldhwoj

RT @aakarpost: Great Analysis on Nepal CA Election Results by @akhanal in

Tough Talk / @DilBhusanPathak. http://t.co/P4OAm1TDLJ [Must Watch… 11/26/2013

@WARSHINGTONPOST

WarshingtonPost #Nepal election puts Maoists, and a nation’s disillusion ... #GaganThapa #NepaliCongress 11/18/2013

EXAMPLE

4.14 Funny handles

Some people with their new media skills created handles with somebody else's names or

identifier strings and made funny, silly or simply sinister tweets. @Plaid_Regmi was a parody

account for election prime minister Regmi as was the @krr_baaldhwoj, which had placed a

hairful head in a mugshot of Regmi with the name CJ Khil Raj Regmi written next to it.

4.15 Real world names in handles

The variety of ways in which a user could choose the name of the handle made it difficult to say

for sure if each reflected the author's real identity in some way. Twitter asks users for email

verification to create their usernames. That, however, does not guarantee the user and username

have similarities on which to draw conclusions. Moreover, many people have multiple email

accounts. When they sign up for the micro-blog, they can choose handles that leave no trace in

the name of who they are.

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Even those who follow the guidelines may choose a variety of usernames. The official advice on

choosing the username is this: there’s no harm in using your actual name of course, provided

someone else hasn’t taken it already! "If your desired username has been taken, choose

something that reflects you and how you’ll try to use your Twitter account.

There’s no harm in being totally professional, but a little bit of character will make you seem

more human (TweetLevel, 2013)." The information in the profile pages would be helpful in

some cases, but, in many others, the authors simply avoided showing their real identity. Reading

the profiles of the top few authors, who contributed the most election-proper tweets to the

spreadsheet archive, shows the nature of the problem.

Even these profile details are not always helpful

to establish the fleshy identiy of the authors. Only

by piecing together the handle name, profile

picture, the description for the handle and some

tweets could one confirm a known author.

Complicating the matter, the CMR survey, said

one in 10 Nepali users maintained multiple

accounts. Twitter verification would enhance the

confidence about the person being known offline

but it was applicable only in the case of a few

Nepali handles, such as @AnupKaphle,

@prabalgurung and @DeepakAdk of the analysed

archive.

Even with knowing all this, one needed other

guarantees that these persons were posting the

tweets by themselves. Individuals and

organizations deployed some device, software or

application to send tweets on their behalf. The

sources of tweets that came to the archive via the

#nepal string indicated that many people were using mobile devices and tweet scheduling

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applications. Some had clear markers like @japokh's UPDATE prefix and END suffix or even

better, for example, [auto tweet] or satimage, etc. Several handles, it was visible, pulled texts

from online tools for containing certain character-strings and auto-pushed these to their Twitter

pages, creating a heady soup of text strings produced by humans and automatons of various

persuasions. The tweets collector, @japokh, sent 61 election related tweets over the 62 days of

archiving. Of these, only a few tweets were posted by the fleshy author of a real world while all

the other tweets on his behalf came from an online push message service, with caps on the

number of texts, to pull and push as tweets (dlvr.it).

The following network view shows the picture nodes in a grid involving about 100 handles

sorted top down, excluding a few from the topmost ones, as they skewed the results for reasons

given below the bar diagram, in terms of the number of tweets they posted during the election

time.

Those who posted the highest number of tweets were not always those who talked about election

or talked evenly over days, weeks or months of the election period. The following diagram

shows the top handles by month in color, as an example.

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.

Noticeable in the above chart is a handle with a bar which is more than half red and a little green,

showing that it shared election tweets in the platform later in December and dominated it by

producing the sheer number of texts with the key search string or hash tag that built the archive

for analysis. Many text strings generated by this handle contained topics outside election.

Another handle, @Nepal_Time, despite being all green for its presence during the campaign

period, sent tweets containing the chronology of nothing but time itself: ! ! ! ! !

म ५ छ #TIME #NEPAL #NST. @PowerCutAlert also contributed regularly to expand the

archive but its contents were obviously about load-shedding information.

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The variety of handles and texts in the tweeple town presented a colorful world of its own. The

relative presence of the handles of all hues in the archive, plotted by colored spheres that grew

bigger for higher number of postings on the Twitter wall, produced the following visual.

If each follower, or friend, of the handle looked up each tweet it came their way, the potential

reach of all the tweets in the archive could have been immense. The plot below, for tweets in the

spreadsheet archive, shows the

handles, represented by colour of

dots showing size of their followers

and the size of dots showing their

potential reach among followers.

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These handles, with their indicative total size of followers, friends and replies, were using

several languages as shown in the following plot. English handles dominated in their reach to

followers and friends.

en= english, zh-cn=chinese, ar=arabic, ko=korean, el=greek modern, pt=portugese, ru=russian, it=italian, th=thai, en-gb=english great britain,

de=german, hi=hindi, fr=french, id=indonesian, es=spanish, nl=dutch, ja=japanese, da=danish, ir= pl=polish, sv=swedish, ca=catalan, fi=finnish,

no=norwegian, ro=romanian (Library of congress)

The following scatter plots show handles grouped for their size of followers, such as more than

100,000, or between 10,000 and 99,999, which sent election tweets over the different phases of

Nepal's CA election in different languages.

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Those with fewer than 1000 followers, the majority of handles sending the election tweets, were

also using English the most often.

4.16 Handles back then -- Talking CA I

The following are some of the handles which were tweeting about Nepal's first CA election back

in 2008. Most were international media organizations.

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EXAMPLE: HANDLE 2008

TEXT 2008

Nepal vote counting under way: Authorities in Nepal have started counting votes f.. http://tinyurl.com/3tbwun

EP Nepal pone fin hoy a 240 años de monarquía: Nepal dejará de ser hoy una Monarquía para pasar a conve..

Nepal assembly sworn in: A newly elected assembly that will rewrite Nepal's.. http://tinyurl.com/3z28dc

Nepal Poised for Rebirth as a Republic http://tinyurl.com/4uy6zt

At Least 8 Killed on Eve of Nepal Vote http://tinyurl.com/4skpd6

Fear of violence clouds Nepal polls: Nepal's leaders have called for calm after violenc.. http://tinyurl.com/3oq9w2

Nepal police shoot Maoist activists: Police in Nepal have shot dead six Maoist activist.. http://tinyurl.com/3vtmbx

Heavy turnout for Nepal elections: UN: Landmark elections in Nepal seem to have got off to a strong start..

Nepal abolishes monarchy: Nepal's King Gyanendra has been given 15 days to v.. http://tinyurl.com/5yazx2

Nepal results affirm Maoist victory: Final results from Nepal's elections show former M.. http://tinyurl.com/3oysvp

Blasts as Nepal set to ban monarchy: Two small explosions have struck Nepal's capital h.. http://tinyurl.com/3ecpw2

Nepal capital hit by two bombs: At least two bombs have exploded outside a venue i.. http://tinyurl.com/3vj45q

Campaign 2008, a public report of Media Monitoring Programme 2008, shows that Nepal's

major media monitoring effort during the first CA had covered only the mainstream media

outlets, leaving social media and online news sites outside its routines (Nepal Monitor, 2008).

4.17 Name for collection of people and individuals

The group, common or proper names for people most frequently appearing in the texts over time

are given in the following plot.

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The colors and lines indicate a general pattern of mentions for maoists, nepali, we, officials,

maoist, people, prachanda, who, leader, voters, hindu, nepalese, women, paras, nepalis, carter,

leaders, he, man, guys, friends, politicians, lama, everyone, tibetan, president, chairman,

children, child, chinese, jimmy, australian, head, candidadats, you, and voter received by the date

markers in the plot.

The following are some pick and choose instances of their appearance in the tweets.

EXAMPLES

Maoists

As the Maoists were the main topic of most election tweets, some example tweets have been

extracted from the archive to give a feel of what the talk concerning the topic was like.

handles talking about maoists before voting

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@Nepalvotes @janadeshonline @chandangoopta @nepalnews_com @kamalsinghbhatt

@milijulidotcom @SharadChirag @bhuwan44 @arpanshr @AnupKaphle @jhyal

@kishorenepal @WarshingtonPost @ARA_Network @ElectionTweets2

CAMPAIGN TALK

Hota Chunaw – Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) an election music video of Rekha Thapa http://t.co/ZcAuvQDwMB

RT ... : Bihar bridge for Maoists in #Nepal, #India: intelligence panelhttp://t.co/PgNXjF7bja Really? Are India's Maoists ...

RT...: म छ #Nepal #CAelections2013 #Nepalvotes #Maoists

Travelling on Maoist chairman Dahal's #election campaign route in eastern Nepal? FLSC's #bandhs are along the way.

If @UCPNMaoist loses this election, #Nepal's journey since 2006 will be derailed ... Hence, #onelastchancetoprachanda!

in nepal election need to win maoist because for peace and constitution other party win its not possible ex maoist force still live ...

nepali maoist ne,ka,pa using gun and bom to distruped mangsir election in nepal agian going to home war plz be care indian security...

Very good news from #Nepal these days. Anti election campaign from maoist splinter group attracts little support...

Protesters of a 33 party alliance ... arrested. #Nepal #Election http://t.co/IN5Hjmupq4

#Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M), is boycotting ... the country's second national election since a 10-year civil war ended in 2006

RT @ushaft: Only the #Maoists (both factions) have ... to use violence to disrupt #election. Should condemn…

RT @AnupKaphle: Nepal's election puts Maoists, and a nation's disillusion, in spotlight -- my story, pix from Kathmandu.

RT @NewsFromNepal: Nepal's Maoists face struggle to win over disillusioned voters - The Guardian http://t.co/FF71RgyZ1N

Nepal's Maoist leader Prachanda loses his appeal http://t.co/ujA9XcRQjy

Although Maoists, both UCPN-Maoist and CPN-Maoist, were frequently mentioned in tweets

during the campaign period, few handles wrote texts in their direct support.

A quick picking and choosing of handles talking about Maoists on the election day and the

following morning generally showed that the people were more happy in the prospects of

Maoists losing than the prospects of other parties winning.

handles talking about maoists on the election day and the following morning

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@Kazi_USA @Kazi_Australia @Kazi_Canada @EquipeNicoleBR @WarshingtonPost @npPoet

@abbottmedia @top_nepal_news @ezspk @ushaft @jhyal @medsane @nimishav9

@DancingWarm @ibnamra @Q_Qubit @dishilicious @pradeep4845 @paramendra

@MarkAnt4425 @BeingShuvham @audelp @CrespiEnrico @PatrioticVirtue @Onel_Sap

@THAPASantoshNP @NewsFromNepal @PrabalTiwaree @TheNepalTrust @TheNepal

POST-CAMPAIGN TALK

Early CA election results hint Nepali Congress will soundly wipe the floor with Maoists. #NepalVotes #Nepal #nepalelections

@akannampilly Ammu, followed nepal election updates? #Maoist are washed down the gutter! :)

@simondenyer @washingtonpost In Nepal election, #Maoist are badly losing, if you have time to observe!

Maoist leader 'Prachanda' of Nepal ... to lose CA election ... latest: RAJAN KC (NC)-5368;Prachanda (MAOIST)-4778;(UML)-3741

#Maoists in #Nepal is outruns by nationalist #NepaliCongress ... Congratulations to people of Nepal for choice

... a Kathamndu sta vincendo il Congresso, come sembra nel resto del paese. Il leader maoista Prachanda rischia di buscarle.

It seems one thing will change from this election...Maoists won't be no.1.Should Nepalese be happy /sad / frightened?

Hang on well wishers of #Nepal, we'll qualify for the #WT20.. Cheer yourself... the maoists are losing the national election.

Nepal election: down maoist, up congress which is going to win, probably, as predicted

The Maoist participation in election after mass genocide is an insult to democracy, justice and the people of Nepal... #nepalelections

Maoists leading in zero places...huh ??? :P #Nepal #Election

#Nepal #election Maoist paxadi....

RT @medsane: The good thing abt Nepal election is Maobadis mentored by likes of Sitaram Yechurey n Prakash karat will be def…

Bomb blast mars Nepal election as Maoist hardliners protest http://t.co/68XxacJwYd

Ca ELection 2070 Live Update Vote Counting Score Kailali Area no:1 ucpn maoist 103 nep congress 99 uml 73 Forum Loktantrik 17

THREE RESULTS OF CA ELECTION FROM GORKHA ... WON BY UNITED NEPAL COMMUNIST PARTY (MAOIST).

In Gorkha, Cash Maoist Baburam repeats 2008 election irregularities/intimidation, writes @ushaft. We agree. http://t.co/U6iv5H9Nqk

#NEPAL: High Election Turnout Reported as Voters Defy Bombings, Threats [world politics news] Nepal's Maoist...

छ म छ, म म छ. ...

Election Commission of Nepal claims 70% voter turnout....end of the road for the disruptionist Baidya Maoists ?

#AsiaPacific ▪ Nepal Holds Vote Amid Scattered Violence: Maoists in two areas disrupted the election of a body...

Nepalis vote today Nov. 19th in hopes of building a republic after 10 years of rebellion by the Maoists via @reuters

RT @cfhaviland: Poverty, disaffection, apathy, charisma as #NepalVotes 2013. Can the Maoists win again? #Nepal

"Hamro partyle hoina Ramro partyle jitos" yehi mero kamana.. #Nepal #election#mangsir4 #ca #uml #maoist #congress

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Women

For a more neutral category, tweets discussing women during the election time were chosen as

another example of a group of people featuring in the tweets. According to the Simplify360

analysis, women comprised ... % of the handles sending election tweets.

handles talking about women

@naribhan1975 @SumanKhadka14 @BiKuKo @myganthan @pragyalamsal @himabista

@arpanshr @Riznews1 @GopalGg @anilbhattarai @Nepalvotes @Madhu2067 @occupytheory

@grg_ccr @womenLEADnepal

THE TALK

RT @RaviNepal: @thedatanepal do you know how many women won the election in#Nepal this year? Thanks!

"@RaviNepal: @thedatanepal: Of 233 seats ..., 223 men & 10 women won. What can we do to elect more #women?"

No Women Candidates Elected From Lumbini Zone in CA Electionhttp://t.co/mxrMwiuqJm

Result ... shows Nepal is now in the way of Development and Prosperity.Respect of Women , give success to Nation.

#Women in #Nepal voting In today's election! Via washingtonpost's photohttp://t.co/jJyrzVAtVh

Election Day in Nepal! Morning impressions Good turnout - professional officials! Long and patient ques of both men and women!

... 12 million voters 601-member Constituent Assembly. 16,000 candidates 100 parties... nearly 6,000 of them women

Women voters are deciding the fate of #Nepal at this election #Nepalvotes@Ujyaalo http://t.co/baygHE6cRX

Nepalese female candidates join forces http://t.co/eRjDMfS2yR via @AJEnglish#Nepal #women #election @JMaskay

RT @BiKuKo: म म RT @luinteljaya: Election, Mainefestos and Women's issues

Emancipation of Women: Election or Revolution? http://t.co/nYltavaSr2 via@IGNITEtweeting #Nepal

#socmed1325 In Nepal ... Election will held on 4th Nov 2013, though women candidate are less hope maximum get elected :)

#Nepal #Election DEW-Nepal distributes voter education materials at a women’s cultural festival. Photo by L.N....

This is why our work is so critical: out of 75 districts in Nepal, 50% have less than 6 women candidates for the upcoming election.

Inclusion

Plotting the number of mentions different groups of people received during the election against

their composition in the FPTP candidacy list produced the following.

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The percentage figures for candidates and categories of inclusion were taken from the a policy brief on the Second Constituent Assembly

Election (Martin Chautari, 2013).

4.18 Individual name referents

Some individuals received the most mentions by their names, first or last, over different election

periods. The top examples are given in the line graph.

Prachanda topped the tally as the mot mentioned individual, notably, in the vote counting period,

inviting a general tone of disapproval for his response to election results. For another example,

Carter as a category brought both admirers and opponents among the handles that mentioned

him.

Jimmy Carter

handles talking about carter

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@LeoWhitmanNepal @milijulidotcom @donthebear @ohiomail @anyalhas @kbmaharjan1 @mysoul_peace @sanpokh @JAYA_HOS

@THTNepalVotes @Nepalvotes @keshuvko @News_Addicted_ @WaterflowerM @sanpok2 @npPoet @News_Addicted_ @mtamang

@TPSpacedOut @Nepalvotes @Mrs_Jamarkattel @LiberalHDWoman @BTandKM @CyG_US @Obsessed_W_News @JessicaArgues

@LeoWhitmanNepal @Kissiebunny @Syndicated_News @Stefanelli @ikev85 @RawStory @ElectionTweets2 @NewHavenMedia

@sulthinar @IamWalexzy @UnreportedNews1 @Superfeeder @freedomforthwin

THE TALK

#nepalelections2013 start after 12 hours..good luck #nepal. Hotels packed election observers et al and #jimmycarter

#BBC is broadcasting #JimmiCarter, ... his statement that the#election boycotting alliance are merely a tiny faction...

RT @CarterCenter: 12.5 million voters, 80 political parties, 601 Assembly seats. Learn more about the Nov. 19

Jimmy Carter in Nepal to observe polls in long-awaited election | The Raw Story http://t.co/OXw42gn5bb

#Nepal EC parries questions on Carter remarks on French model: KATHMANDU: Election Commiss...

RT @madhumarasini: He is 89 and still active. Thank you President Jimmy Carter for coming Nepal …

For the monitoring of election ... Jimmy Carter,89, arrives in Nepal. #GreatPoliticalFigure #TrueRespect @CarterLibrary

RT @keshuvko: How can Jimmy Carter who came to observe the election suggest Nepal on forms of governance?

. छ .#Carter #LeaveNepal #Nepal #Election

@CarterCenter like last election, u can not uphold all terrorist acts ... Dont be in hurry2declare nepal's election free ...

RT @LiberalHDWoman: Best former President. 89 and still working to better the world. Former President Carter in Nepal

RT @Mrs_Jamarkattel: Prez Carter @CarterCenter look at this pic and tell us if everything is going smoothly ...

UPDATE: Jimmy Carter in Nepal to observe polls in long-awaited election - Raw Story http://t.co/vuLKVZ9PVx TNX

Political bigwigs

The following pie chart shows the relative shares of mentions some big names in politics

received throughout the election phases.

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Searching for the mention trends of some top vote winners from the three parties, however,

produced the following trend lines (Election Commission, Nepal, 2013).

The short and other popular names for these candidates could have produced a different graph,

something not done this time though.

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Election actors

The line graph below shows the attention that the actors, the party, media, voter and candidate,

received over the time of election.

4.2 Places

Some places received frequent mentions in handles and texts. In this section, the places at home

and abroad receiving mentions in the texts will be explored, as searching for place names in

handles will serve no direct purpose in this exploration. Moreover, as most tweets have been

archived without geo tags, only the manifest common and proper names of places, from home

and abroad, receiving the most mentions will be discussed here.

4.21 Sweet home

Kathmandu, the capital city, was the main attraction for the tweeple to talk about in their election

time tweets over all the phases of election, from campaign to counting. The mountains, winning

the second slot for most mentions, point at the presence of several travel related tweets traveling

the tweeple town during the election time.

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Only five out of 14 zones received mentions in the tweets. Karnali, where CPN-Maoist, which

boycotted the elections, had its influences, showed up frequently in campaign and counting

periods. The reference to other zones also showed the possibility of several tweets being travel

related.

The districts receiving mentions over time were the following. Even here, as Mustang tops the

tally of talk in tweets, travel trade appears to be an influential sector dominantly present in

Twitter.

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4.22 Foreign friends

India topped the tally in all phases of election, especially being noticeable during campaign and

voting. China showed up above India during the vote counting. The cricket and football matches

had a role in propelling India and some other places to stand out on the Nepal corner of the

Twitter wall.

4.3 Organizations

Several organizations figured in Nepal's election time tweets. The most frequent ones were from

the media, and world bodies, from home and abroad. Among the media, the tweeple talked about

both old and new media.

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4.31 The political parties

Maoist clearly led and won the title for being mentioned most often on Twitter. However, the

sharp increase in the volume of tweets following a massive turnout of voters generally showed

the party, both the establishment Maoists and the splintered faction of Mohan Baidhya, in less

favourable light.

4.32 The home media

The Nepali media presented another great material for the tweet authors to talk about, post links

and re-tweets. The most mentioned ones were the following.

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4.33 The world media

The world media also made Nepal election their topic for sustained coverage over the election

time. Some of the most frequent news media surveying Nepal's election are in the graph below.

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4.44 Other organizations

The Constituent Assembly and the United Nations were two top organizations frequently

appearing on the tweet wall over the election time.

4.4 Assertions

4.41 Topics

The core topics building the archive were distributed over time as shown in the line graph below

here.

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The most frequently appearing words below give a hint to the kind of handles, texts and

interactions that made the tiny Nepal Twitverse.

The top hashtags in the archive were the following.

These hint that routine topics, weather, load-shedding, travel, sports and festival were also part of

the ongoing election conversation.

The word clouds below show the salience some topics received over others during the election

phases.

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In the first cloud, on the top left, clash, strike,

attack are words that evoke a sense of fear.

The list and size of fear words grow on the

campaign blackout period with bomb and

blast looming over other words. The bomb

continues to threaten the Election Day mood

as well. The adjacent line graph shows how

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the tweets were using the fear words over time.

Some less desirable standalone words frequently appeared in the tweets over the election phases,

indicating that there were many things, some routine stuff like loadshedding, in the minds of the

tweeple to worry about during the election time. Interestingly, the hope words were aplenty, too.

Many tweets were sending upbeat vibes about festivals, games, adventures, luxuries, etc, during

the election time.

EXAMPLES: ELECTION VIBES

The festival mood

handles

@dhakalmukul @TheNepal @npsanjal @dipak_dr @kathmanducity

@Anushaneupane @kishorenepal @pearl_nepal @Saatdobato

@NnNissan @Kewgeezer

texts

Bombs flying everywhere and Nepal 's PM wants us to take this election as a festival.Surely ,he wasnt thinking

Diwali.#Nepalvotes #Muppets

Bye bye Dashain and Tihar, see you next year with a new hope of better Nepal after the constitution assembly election 2.

http://t.co/236HoP686N: Election Commission of Nepal Tihar Deusi Bhailo songhttp://t.co/bOCXyZxjhc

RT @kishorenepal: Election#Nepal. A candidate with election symbol dog was campaigning in Kathmandu. Comparative advantage

of Kukur Tihar!

मझम म म म छ म छ #Tihar#Election #Nepal

RT @kishorenepal: Mixing Tihar and Chhath with election in #Nepal: practically the same thing, Election is gambling in politics and

gamblin…

म , म छ

म #TIhar #DogDay #Election

Dashai,Tihar+CA II Election+Vote to UCPNM+NEW Constitution+New Nepalhttp://t.co/ZYM1nAPKSO

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The code and campaign

handles

@Huskle @rabetdhakal2 @jhyal @Nepal_Monitor @kc_anuj @kcramesh97

@arpanshr @Nepal_Bot @live_nepal @milijulidotcom @Nepal_Monitor

@SatishKTM @LensNews @nepalnewsfeed @MizoNews @EvaSanchez777 @AnnabellePerez0 @Nepal_travels @newstrackindia

@AsiaDailyNews @Chiranjib87 @nepalkonews

texts

EC lifts election code of conduct http://t.co/3888AFcbjR #nepal

Election commission Nepal website not working here in Bangkok, can somebody send me media code of conduct

Complaints lodged against UML candidates Khanal, Nembang for flouting election code of conduct http://t.co/JXWeU2imeJ #nepal

Election Commission #Nepal ordered Nepal Govt to halt transmission of ABC Television citing violation of election code of conduct

Dinner with Nepal election commissioner Ella Sharma; was busy all times on phone for implantation of code of conduct

In this silence hour,my inbox is receiving urge 4vote by a candidate,breaking codes of election,where's the ethics?

RT @RepublicaNepal: UCPN (M) is flouting election code of conduct, says UMLhttp://t.co/fLcZ0l3RG5 #nepal

Election Code Violated by Media and Political Parties | म म l...

RT @DhakalSaurav: I need Code for Conduct for Election Promotion : Some dev agencies people claim they are promoting candidate

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RT @PallaviDhakal: छ ? म छ

Did the UCPNM violate the Election Code of Conduct with its "anti-Nepal banda motorbike rally"? And who else?

NC draws EC's attention towards election code violation http://t.co/pxUdh6bRs0(eKantipur) #fb

Federal Socialist Party Distributes Cards against Election Code | l:

#Nepal EC removes poll materials that breached code of conduct: KAKADBHITTA: The Election

Election Commissioner Sharma stresses on poll code of conducthttp://t.co/g3FpZ6xdMq (eKantipur) #fb

Carter Centre urges respect for election code http://t.co/qmteDTEUCm #Nepal

+ So, the worst violators of the code of conducts are the President, this KhiRaRe#government and this said-to-be-

More impunity is only outcome to expect once the failed politicians who r blatantly flouting EC code of conduct win this

Govt engineer breaches election code of conduct http://t.co/f0DsRebwlM #nepal

#Kathmandu: #Nepal's Election Commission has formed a high level committee to effectively monitor the #election code of conduct.

Nepal poll panel to monitor election code of conduct

हेलिकप्टरको प्रतिस्पर्धा: चनुधव प्रचधरमध हेलिकप्टर चधटारको प्रतिस्पर्धामध ववघटटि संववर्धनसभधको...

हेर्दी जधनहुोिध एक टर्दन बदै्य को पछधडि एउटध मधखो पने घमु्नएेे छैन। शधयर्द त्यो टर्दन मङ्लशर ५ गिएेे पने हुन सक्छ। #Nepal

हेर्दधा हेर्दधा हधम्रो रे्दश नेपधि कस्िो भो, आिु प्यधज भन्र्दध बम पो सस्िो भो #Nepal #Election #Nepalvotes #Nepalvote #Kathamandu

टहमपधििे प्रचधरमध बधर्ध: बबहीबधर अपरधह्नरे्दखख मौसम पररविान भई िेकधिी बस्िीमध भधरी टहमपधि भएको छ...

टहजो रधिी "बबगे्रको को पे्रसर कूकर" बधटो मध फलिटर्दएको,बबहधन उठ्र्दध ि बम डिस्पोसि टोिी आएर डिस्पोसि गरै्द रधइछ"...हध हध हध....

टहसंध र भयरटहि चनुधव गना ककरधि र्मागुरु लिङ्रे्दनको आग्रह #Nepal #Nepalvotes #election #violence #Kirat

The seers

handles

@aakarpost @arpanshr @BeingSam22 @BivasN @chapagain @CPAryal @CrespiEnrico @dhunganarajiv

@EarthySmriti @gadhikari53 @itscoolsky @jhyal @kishorenepal @nepalanupama @Nepalvotes @npPoet

@pra7ik @Prashant68 @ramupangeni @risingnepalsoon @sajha @sedakensearch @SharadChirag @TheNepal

@ushaft @jg21

texts

One of the most accurate poll-predictions (rare in #Nepal) for this #election was from @akhanal ...

Early Prediction Of Constitution Election of Nepal, People have Completely rejected Extremist Maoist!! Bravo!!!!

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Wikileaks 2008 Cable - Nepal: Predicting The Election Outcome Isn't Easy -http://t.co/E6UebPa5se

Mero KTM ko #prediction thyakkai milcha ki k ho.... latest result le ta tyahi bhancha!!!!!...

Nepal election: down maoist, up congress which is going to win, probably, as predicted

Who will be the biggest party in this election? Will prediction come true ? In Nepal, several predictions have been failed. Wait 4 ...

@AdkRamen @TheNepal my guesses are here. these are just gut feelings, no predictions: http://t.co/NoZwGZv3ez

RT @ushaft: .@npPoet @KanakManiDixit Exactly I have "predicted" for the#election results

RT @peterfrancon: "@ushaft: My #election update blog: Predicting the Future:#Nepal Elections 2013...

RT @kishorenepal: Election#Nepal: Scenario almost clear. Top fight btw NC and UCPN-Maoist. Who will be gainer? Prediction ...

RT @ajayspradhan: What'd be Nate Silver's prediction on Nepal CA election?http://t.co/Eb3Fgb8iFH #nepalvotes

RT @sajha: Sajha analyst predict result of upcoming election in Nepalhttp://t.co/pT50ZYo3PP #nepalvotes #nepal

On the political note: Kukur chinha is getting 0 seats in the election #Prediction#Nepal #Politics

The following line graph indicates the use of prediction or speculation related words over the

election time.

The fears

handles

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@gmediapulse @advctMaheshwar1 @BinaBantawa @thstrytllrprjct @preetiraghunath @HediPF @Nepalvotes @SamTelco

@GdnDevelopment @guardianworld @SmartMediaFX @charities @LeoWhitmanNepal @votesafe @twitt_manoz @AseshDatta

texts

#Nepal: Govt is committed to hold election to Constituent Assembly in a free & fearless environment: #KhilRajRegmi #airnews

RT @advctMaheshwar1: Political situation of Nepal is going backward n no environment of CA election lack of fear and fair.

Constituent Election & Fear; Nepal http://t.co/8ggL2ytARC

Depressing Analysis Civil society members fear conflict after #nepal #election polls | Top Stories: http://t.co/2LomS1dXyK

RT @GdnDevelopment: Pre-poll scuffles spark fears over #Nepal's electionshttp://t.co/AtLB4Ok1D1 #nepalvotes

Activists' attempts to disrupt preparations have sparked fears of further unrest, while logistical issues loom... http://t.co/ycjdGZpUEJ

Pre-election protests heighten tensions: Activists' attempts to disrupt preparations have sparked fears of fur...

#Nepal #election Vote for the person you want to represent you. No money, no gifts, no fear to vote.

RT @twitt_manoz: Countries are warning their citizens to travel Nepal in fear of election related violence.

Free & fair election or fear free election ? Hasta Gurung, GS of CIJ Nepal questioned EC@GEOC orientation to national & district

observer.

In June, when govt said election wud be held on Nov 19, I had doubts. 2day Nepal is goin 2 polls. Hats off to Regmi+team for meetin

deadline

@brazeshk sir we expect responsible tweets from you...no doubt we all hope wish and pray nepal wins but election is no less

important

II CA election: Of hopes and doubts http://t.co/R0jBH2U91g #nepal

The bombshell

handles

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@Al_Hijra_Canada @AsiaDailyNews @CA_NewsWaver @Erudite_Enigma @globalnews4u @govsummitnet @JCosta_media275

@Love_World_Live @mikeJ_analyst @NationSecurity @nepal1st @ooda @randomrisk @SamnaniAzim @sharesbears @SulavKarki

@Tehreemm412 @TenTenzin @TRACterrorism @Tukang_Update @AlaeLunaeDharma @sailesh139 @dhungelnischal @sirensongs

@CharlotteCP @ketan72 @nepalkonews @needmooreinput @k3shtk4r @7veNtin @Nepal_travels @beringtononline @kimbo7100

@UP_NO_VIOLENCE @lukmangregs @WatchingaBuzz @NOTWRLDUK @gbl_conscience @FaziraAlHusien @Nvisible88 @TheOnly_Hanim

@TheWorldNews247 @nepalnewsfeed @rightnowio_feed @Reporters365 @south_asia @myberita @IKENYANET @CapitalFM_kenya

@SHADI_ALKASIM @EmiliaKate @Arewa_Blog @SHDWind @NdreAfrillian @YahooSG @gcmcNepal @Sakapfet @BhebyFaze @3pu_a

@DarrenLimPTW @Stylomart @Jctan1221 @geotez_update @ge13info @tm_insider @N_H_Africa @fawwadjavaid @JwForum @bnogr

@lhylcom32 @UberNewsZA@albertoallen @mrkoolodo @ManchurianDevil @WatchTVChannels @vallie @udhungel @k3shtk4r

@rightnowio_feed @Ennaachi @AsiaDailyNews @Nepal_travels @NewsForPh @sphasiaone @inthecut1time @OtieMeneses @jerryc

@kevlerzero @AvseqCFC @Arsal_Sherazi @myberita @ilhamfahryh@sulthinar @mistu_ife @tribenzil96_ @realacc_ @Marie____Taylor

@HarlemshakesOfi @Amy____Jones @IsabellaObregom @pj_club @SubhuNews @EpikFitz @storysouthasia @happythomas5

@MariyamNatasha @ssmahata @stylesforev @DanielCampbellp @Ariane_Wilson @Oceane_Rodrigue @gombak101 @sapangoyal

@Heatingnewsss @Im_cricketersb @SabahTeam @BerkleyBearNews @Illinews @chuhaizhou @KuzooRadio @N_H_Asia

@pokhrelsamundra @jzzy_bnds @GEanalyst @BeingPrabesh@Finlip@black_mustangs @Darshanaa97 @fantastic_fan @friendycalls

@ChannelNewsAsia @Sirish_Paudel @GEanalyst @prbarach @SBSNews @deans2cents @tm_insider @SMLnewswsasia

@RusyaCumhuriyet @NeighborhoodFP @Naharnet @kancha @AsmitCFC @dhungelnischal @votesafe @storysouthasia @Lujaw_L337

@SnowdenJohn @sloksagar @Watcherone @drishtikhatri @Kewgeezer @robbieraee @samushr @deepakrauniyar @yaketayak @bollyglot

@AnupKaphle @TRACterrorism @TenTenzin @ooda @JCosta_media275 @govsummitnet @CA_NewsWaver @AsiaDailyNews @randomrisk

@NationSecurity @Maktratap @Tehreemm412@SamnaniAzim @Tukang_Update @Love_World_Live @Erudite_Enigma @globalnews4u

@Al_Hijra_Canada @sharesbears @CP24 @leylz @ConflictBaseBKN @rkapali @Nepalvotes @gopstrit @NickEvershed @mrfuture11

@DirectionKtm @milijulidotcom @dpali03 @kshitizmishra @RealOdishaNews @raulrk @iDominicanWeezy @Young_freshz

@Vincent__Patel @_VikasSharma @amithbm911 @Ujyaalo @ShimmySimran@SulavKarki

texts

CAMPAIGN

Gasoline bomb attack on bus injures 13 during transport blockade in Nepal ahead of election http://t.co/unpwlvimyT

Gasoline bomb attack on bus injures 13 during transport blockade in Nepal ahead of election http://t.co/kfuBUQb4zx

► Breaking News: Gasoline bomb attack on bus injures 13 during transport blockade in Nepal ahead of election:

... http://t.co/j4f5EOKPoc

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Increases in attacks on tourist buses in #Nepal - border with #India security heightened & portions closed - response to 19 Nov

election

Nepal Election - 7 People Injured in Taplejung on Grenade attackhttp://t.co/FsGlcJFOuY

Election season in #Nepal is getting dangerous, bombs found in kathmandu, vehicles torched, attacks on candidates

CPN-M cadres attack UCPN (M) election assembly http://t.co/NAgiF2gqsN #nepal

Bombs going off in Chitwan, Nepal on eve of election. No good.

Nepal: 200,000 security personnel, including 960 bomb disposal units, will be deployed across the country on election day Tuesday,

Nov 19.

Not allowed to leave the hotel tomorrow! because of earlier bomb explosion! Protesters against Nepal election currently in action.

Nepal jasto garib desh ma bomb kinne paisa kaha bata aauncha... Khali bomb padkeko matra sunincha! Save Nepali in tomorrows

election

RT @AnupKaphle: 2 days before election, Nepal army soldier defuses a pressure cooker bomb on a busy street in Kathmandu. (v

Kantipur) http:…

Bombs flying everywhere and Nepal 's PM wants us to take this election as a festival.Surely ,he wasnt thinking

Diwali.#Nepalvotes #Muppets

Ballot vs Bullet - How to vote? Bombs exploding everywhere. #election #nepal

RT @bhu1st: Chunab ra Sambidhan/Bikash ko sambanda ta clear chha. Chunab ra bombs ko sambandha chahi kasto ho yo

?? #nepal #election

Bombing at polling station in Kathmandu suburb ahead of #Nepal election, says@dharmaadhikari Any injuries reported?

On the weekend, a bomb was defused 100 m from my gym. #Nepal election is tomorrow & 33 parties oppose it, some with threats.

RT @AnupKaphle: 2 days before election, Nepal army soldier defuses a pressure cooker bomb on a busy street in Kathmandu. (v

Kantipur) http:…

The more petrol bomb they throw, the more determined I am to vote. #Nepal#Election

Gasoline bomb attack on bus injures 13 during transport blockade in Nepal ahead of election http://t.co/kfuBUQb4zx

RT @kashishds: Nepal election is days away. Next bomb threat? Some groups have ensured re-instilling the feeling of "any time

anywhere." #N…

RT @ConflictBaseBKN: Anti Election Protests In #Nepal, Petrol Bombs Hurled At Traffic http://t.co/Tkv1Nxecof

RT @kashishds: Nepal election is days away. Next bomb threat? Some groups have ensured re-instilling the feeling of "any time

anywhere." #N…

What a news, everywhere putting and throwing petrol bomb bomb.....this is Nepal's election reminding Iraq and Afghanistan..

Final 5-Day Test Match : Nepal Election Test Series Baidhya is Bowling Bombs. Yet another Petrol Bomb in Bara.

Can‘t we just have a peaceful election? Why are they scaring us with bombs and all? #Stopstrike #Nepal

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Bomb being defused at Naradevi, Kathmandu, Nepal [8 days before CA election] !!!http://t.co/PANM6zHiKb

Pre election violence hits #Nepal "UCPN (Maoist) party office bombed"http://t.co/EsDQEBaVPn

nepse shows +ve sign which proves that election is confirmed and inevitable now.#Nepal stop bombing now !!!!!

RT @kshitizmishra: How can #nepal #election be successful if bombs r discovered on most places. Goverment unable to control

this. #todays n…

#NepVote Bomb explosion in election campaign injures four in Nepal's Taplejunghttp://t.co/2gFSp1lmZx

Vehicle torched, banda, bomb diffused, candidate beaten why such news? is it election or a race to get violent and

destructive? #Nepal #fb

Five people injured in explosion at election rally in eastern Nepal: Five people have been injured in a bomb

e... http://t.co/amAryxW3ku

VOTING

Wish I was in Nepal for its well overdue election today. Hoping for democracy and no more bombs or attacks. Stay safe. #NepalVotes

RT @tm_insider: Crude bomb mars Nepal election as Maoist hardliners protest: A crude bomb exploded early on election day in

Ne... http://t.…

RT @gunaraj: It's a happy day for #Nepal. We've shown the world that we are peace loving and democratic. Bomb and intimidation

couldn't sto…

RT @gunaraj: It's a happy day for #Nepal. We've shown the world that we are peace loving and democratic. Bomb and

intimidation couldn't sto…

To all my friends in Nepal, I hope you all stay safe amid the bomb blasts :( I hope one party gets enough votes to win the election and

p...

Nepal defies bombing, threats in post-war election http://t.co/XZmYFRyGHp

RT @breakingnewsnig: 3 wounded in bomb blast in Nepal election violencehttp://t.co/EMsha3K7R4

@DrRaisYatim Nepal defies bombing, threats in post-war election: Kathmandu (AFP) - A crude bomb exploded

early... http://t.co/7Gs0jutM74

Voting in #Nepal's Constituent Assembly #election has been slightly disrupted, after a small roadside bomb exploded.

Voting in Nepal's Constituent Assembly election has been disrupted, after a small roadside bomb exploded 50

metres... http://t.co/xe2jwUBEOT

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RT @friendycalls: And the best players of the CA Election II campaign goes to : Bomb disposal squads, Nepal Army

A crude bomb exploded in Nepal's capital hours after polls open, injuring 3 & raising fears of left-wing

disruption http://t.co/7Ok79na92T

RT @storysouthasia: To hold peaceful election, 200,000 securities are deployed. 49000 Nepal Police 30,000 APF 36000 NID

62000 NA 960 BombD…

And Voted !! plus lots of bomb threats all around Kathmandu valley and Nepal.#Nepal #Vote #Election #Kathmandu #NepalVotes

Breaking news: bomb blast at Bhote bahal, kathmandu #news24 #nepal #election

RT @SnowdenJohn: Election day in Nepal: Diffuse the bombs. Vote out the terrorists. Vote out corruption. Take your country

back. #NepalVotes

Élection au Népal · Une bombe explose à Katmandou http://t.co/UJKcttlo5Z#tvanouvelles

The hopes

handles

@ABareness @HotelHoly @rdewan @TouristRajiv @radiance_raam @kenushale @ms_saga96@Pradip_2013@prashanna8 @Pareina

@AdkRamen @dhungelnischal @dghimire31 @elecnep13 @Nepalvotes @tpela @Hrideykaya @xmilitaire @happyshiv @samushr

@Glossophobiattm @Gtmsuresh @Gru_Bo @djsuraj1 @pradhan_salika @rydrkri @npPoet @BHUSALANEEL @Nepalvotes

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@KinarftEminem @rajkutu @Nepal_Bot @Viken_shrestha @AdkRamen @99Mainali @Gkpaudel @milijulidotcom @parva_c

@ihiergeist @Nepalvotes @BinSanto33

texts

RT @Dankrity: loved @prashantktm's insights on Nepal's CA Election on@AlJazeera :) Hopeful #NepalVotes

as the sunsets on election day, i and we all nepalese hope for a better #Nepal .... .... #NepalVotes

loved @prashantktm's insights on Nepal's CA Election on @AlJazeera :) Hopeful#NepalVotes

RT @siromanid: Constituent Assembly #Election concludes peacefully with high voter turnout.Hope this election will help in

consolidating #D…

Constituent Assembly #Election concludes peacefully with high voter turnout.Hope this election will help in

consolidating #Democracy. #Nepal

RT @iBshnu: Congrats folks for the successful CA election. Hope we have selected the right persons !! Jay Nepal !!! #NepalVotes

Congrats folks for the successful CA election. Hope we have selected the right persons !! Jay Nepal !!! #NepalVotes

Its officially over for election in Nepal ! Hope for the best Result ! #NepalVotes

Hope this election will be in the direction of Change the situation of Nepal#NepalVotes! :)

To all my friends in Nepal, I hope you all stay safe amid the bomb blasts :( I hope one party gets enough votes to win the election and

p...

Today great day for NEPAL..: 1. CONTITUTION ASSEMBLY ELECTION 2. CRICKET WITH PNG 3. FOOTBALL WITH INDIA

LETS HOPE N PRAY NEPAL WINS

Exercised my right to vote in today's Constitution Commission Election II, Nepal. Hope the right candidates win.

I voted @ElectionNepal13 . Nepal election still going on. Hope it will continue peacefully everywhere in the country.

CA - 2 election _ hope it brings justice to people's aspiration #Nepal #NepalVotes

Election in Nepal today. Hope it's a peaceful one!

In Nepal is going constitute assembly election! hope it will give constitute in Nepal.

RT @rishiachayra: Today Nepal vote for second Constituent Assembly Elections hope this election will institutionalize the republic

http://…

Whaooo....CA Election 2013 ~ a most important day in Nepal. Let's hope for New Nepal with New Constitution.

RT @kenushale: Praying for peaceful election all over Nepal ! Hope this bring lots of positive changes in our Nation God bless

my #Nepal …

Praying for peaceful election all over Nepal ! Hope this bring lots of positive changes in our Nation God bless my #Nepal !!

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Election is being held in Nepal, I am very hopeful that it will be a deciding election to make a fortune of Nepal and Nepalese

@Bourdain #partsunknown #detroit episode gives me hope 4 my country#nepal.Wishing da best 4 a better future as #nepal goes to

election 2day

04/08/2070 BS (19/11/2013).. Constitutional Assembly Members Election in progress!! Hopefully very soon Nepal will get new

constitution.

@BBCWorld and we are very much excited ..lets hope this election will do somethings .God bless nepal

RT @jitendra_: Hope tomorrow's election is harbinger of peace, stability & prosperity for Nepal. Please rise above party politics to

vote a…

Election Day in Nepal! Hopefully this will end the strike.

Election day in Nepal...my grandparents very excited to vote n so are we..lets vote wisely..hope is what keeps us

alive #NepalVotes #pokhara

#Cast your #vote for a #person who is #selfish for the #nation not for himself. Hope this is not

too #late!!! #nepal #election #politics

important day for Nepal constitutional election today hope this time Nepal gets its new constitution

A long awaited day in Nepal is right here as Nepal votes for Constituent Assembly . Hope this election will... http://t.co/nLQvylUGHR

Hope this election will resolved all the issue of our country. God Bless #Nepal ! Long live Nepal-ism ! #NepalVotes

Hope there will be safe election process today back in Nepal.

@KekiAdhikari hope we can say Nepal win the election #NepalVotes

#Nepal_Votes #NepVote The election starts to go 30 min. I hope Nepali Congress win...

Could not wait to know more about second Constitutional Election in Nepal. Hope good result will come and bad apples are out

forever.

Happy Election Day! I hope we r aware whom to vote! What type of constitution u want, now its time to select those

candidates! #Nepal Votes

#NepalVotes tomorrow! Well - already election day in Nepal now. Just wanting to see Nepal away from the clutches of Maoists.

Hopefully.

RT @jitendra_: Hope tomorrow's election is harbinger of peace, stability & prosperity for Nepal. Please rise above party politics to

vote a…

Today is very important day for Nepal.Election will be held by 7am..Let's hope to see Nepal's bright future..

RT @tpela: Unable to vote but hope this election sets a precedent for a stable political system

in #nepal. #NepalElection #NepalVotes #NepV…

Hope we have a peaceful election. May the Best Person Win For #Nepal#NepalVotes

Tomorrow is constitutional assembly election day #NEPAL #NATIONALHOLODAYHope everything happens without any bombing.

I hope the people in nepal are safe and not badly affected by the election

@chintan_connect Same here. Tomorrow we have general election here in Nepal. I will be tweeting a lot about it. Hope you will also

like it

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@brazeshk sir we expect responsible tweets from you...no doubt we all hope wish and pray nepal wins but election is no less

important

Monday; a day before the Constitutional Assembly Election here in Nepal. Hope you guys wanted something to read

today http://t.co/hn0igd9mWz

Nepal is just wasting its budget on election all the time. Let's hope this time it works out.

it is said that there is no growth without change, hope this election brings positive change for us all. #CApolls #nepal #elections

Nepal's election: little hope for the families of victims of the conflicthttp://t.co/HteY4zKKx5

RT @chhantyal: Fingers crossed for #Nepal's election on Tuesday. Hope we don't make mistake of electing hardliners with

ethnic/caste based …

Let's hope things go well... http://t.co/FVHXroESFg

DTN Dubai: Threats, boycotts as disillusioned Nepal heads to polls: Voters hope second election since the end

... http://t.co/T6wqCUfBT5

Threats, boycotts as disillusioned Nepal heads to polls: Voters hope second election since the end of civil wa... http://t.co/rfzDdddjHj

@sigdelsantosh Hope you will get your file downloaded before 2nd CA election of

Nepal @rameshkr @sujansrestha @craziesandesh

Different view on level of hope in #Nepal election - my piece in @RepublicaNepalhttp://t.co/HsgaBgvTfZ

@nytimes claims 'great hope' in upcoming #Nepal election http://t.co/vGqWKlO3Bnthough interviews with people on the ground

token at best\

#socmed1325 In Nepal second constitutional Election will held on 4th Nov 2013, though women candidate are less hope maximum

get elected :)

Every where voice of election is there in nepal.hope election will happen peacefully .somewhere there are bombs and else frightening

objectl

India gifts 716 cars to Nepal for smooth election. Hope citizens of Nepal don't get inspired by India & bring to power ministers like

India.

Lets hope best for Nepal as it is soon going to held election for the new government and historic constitution would be its outcome .

blaze de election hope for the best result JAI NEPAL, JAI CONGRESShttp://t.co/wXBvvUdo4E

So election commission of Nepal has new website & twitter handle @ECNepal too. Great going. Hope they keep everyone updated.

RT @npPoet: @sardesairajdeep Sir, you should try to cover nepalese election too in your channel. Hope nepal gets some space

in @ibnlive TV

@thapagk m nepali congress & hope the party has 2/3 seats & m big fan of you.But i pray to god you lose election from your area.jai

nepal

RT @drbishnuhnepal: BBC News - #Maldives election: Supreme Court delays run-off

vote http://t.co/vBf3vu5klv Hope #Nasheed Crosses 50% #Nep…

Home of the Election Commission in Nepal. Hopefully they don't share the fate of their colleagues in the

Maldives. http://t.co/ZhaxzkQlIh

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RT @drbishnuhnepal: BBC News - #Maldives election: Supreme Court delays run-off

vote http://t.co/vBf3vu5klv Hope #Nasheed Crosses 50% #Nep…

BBC News - #Maldives election: Supreme Court delays run-off votehttp://t.co/vBf3vu5klv Hope #Nasheed Crosses

50% #NepalVotes/#Nepal:#SAARC

Whole air in Nepal is contaminated with politics ... It's Election time ¡¡¡!!! Hope we get a great leader ....

Hopeful 4 election's youth candidates, not digging some campaign literature that badmouths opponents.

Unnecessary. #Nepal #elections #2013

I hope this 2013 CA election marks the beginning of new political culture in Nepal. My personal commitment is

to... http://t.co/1ymMLPkSRN

RT @Viken_shrestha: A week left for BE class to start ... Hope there will not be strike #nepal #election

Nepal going to face second constitutional election after 13 days hope it give us constitution and bring peace

RT @AdkRamen: I wish a successful election in Nepal, hope majority people vote for their leaders for the better future of the

nation.#Nepal…

I hope, Nepal political crisis will be solved with upcoming election after Dipawali. Happy Dipawali .

II CA election: Of hopes and doubts http://t.co/R0jBH2U91g #nepal

due lack of political unstability we fell behind in race of achieving great economic success hope this election move Nepal toward

prosperty

Unlike previous CA Election #Nepal PolParties talking their agenda on#ReformationModule has increased hope to construct new

constitution.

If People like Ujwal Thapa fight and win #election, then only there will be ray of hope for #Nepal !!! http://t.co/VWyv7P8Uyh

#Nepal Khanal hopeful of being victorious in election: MANGALBARE, Ilam: CPN-UML Chairman

... http://t.co/63OIo62NXa VIA @MilijuliDotCom

Changing d topic: #election in couple of weeks in #Nepal. hope all goes well n may d deserving sincere candidate win. #kathmandu

#Nepal in full election mode. Hope this time our lousy leaders actually make the constitution after 4 years of fooling the people!

Hope !Nepal Can get " Constitution" after this election!!

The cheers

handles

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@Shrad_dha @bidrum43 @Nepalvotes @dallae1 @sadrose777 @goshrestha @bbkbhl @chirandulal @SubasTheOne

@MochanBhattarai @kapshaltist @acharyakshitiz @upenbharati @fantastic_fan @elecnep13 @1008sb1 @parexitpokhrel

@bimalsh13324209 @Pra_Wait4It_Tik @BeingPrabesh @Finlip @rinchenbigbang @trueSaroj @cricketofnepal1 @Aesydkc

@parasshrest20 @cricketingnepal @myakami @wanzanpanthee @ChildofPasteur @Nepalvotes @Jangiz_@AdkRamen

texts

A day when a nation is happy as a whole! #Election #Nepal #Cricket #NepalVotes

Arey wahh double celebration time for Us!!! #cricket #election Woot woot!! #Nepal

म, cricket: Nepal won. Football: nepal will win. Election: nepal should win (RPP-Nepal) Lol..#nepvotes

RT @dallae1: Correction Win & Win Football and Cricket We have already won election cheers #Nepal #Nepalvotes

Oh Boy! #Nepal is trending on Twitter. No wonder,it's election here today along with a cricket match and a football friendly

match #feelgood

RT @chirandulal: Nepal trending #NepalVotes >> #Election #NepVsPNG>>#Cricket #NepVsIND >> #Football #NepalforWin

Today great day for NEPAL..: 1. CONTITUTION ASSEMBLY ELECTION 2. CRICKET WITH PNG 3. FOOTBALL WITH

INDIA LETS HOPE N PRAY NEPAL WINS

Football too!! RT @BeingPrabesh: It will be interesting to see #Cricket vs #Election#Nepal

RT @Soataa: Election,football and cricket.What a day ! #Nepal

म म ? 1.Cricket (nepal vs png) 2.Football (nepal vs india) 3.Election keep on

voating

Which is your favorite Tomorrow ? 1. Nepal vs PNG cricket 2. Election 3. Nepal vs India Football Match

what a clinical performance great finish. congratulations Nepal n Nepalese . cricket is what unites the fragmenting ongoing election.

We have election tomorrow. Guys just play good cricket, we will choose good leaders @cricketicc #WT20 #Nepal

All nepali lovers,forget election for few days,now time to support @nepalicric #Nepal#CricketNepal #NepalVotes #NepalElection

4.5 Descriptions

Many tweets carried interactive features such as the hash # tags, @ mentions, and web links

http://. These features by themselves showed the quality of what the twitizenry was interested in

sharing among one another. The sharing of these features increased on the Election Day and was

high for days near it as shown below.

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The following chart is indicative of the kinds of action words that the tweet authors used,

evoking a sense of some context, coded as either +ve and -ve, leaving out many other words

manually for their neutral tone. Overall, the tweets seemed to have been sharing more positive

than negative vibes. The dominant presence of festival, sports and travel related themes, blending

with the election tweets, may also have contributed to the positive sentiments.

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4.51 The context from past action

The context of tweets, inferred from some past action words, showed that the authors were

showing a mixed sentiment overall. The types of positive action words in the present sense are

shown in the next line graph.

4.52 Present action

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4.52 Description proper

The frequent use of the following modifiers suggest the positive mood reigning over the different

phases of the election time.

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4.6 The general story

The Election Day, 19 November 2013, drew the most men, women and machines to

tweet the most texts for any single day, featuring how the elections expanded the people's

hopes putting to rest their fears of violence and early doubts about the possibility of

holding them

Both individuals and organizations were tweeting about the second CA election, unlike in

2008 when the few tweeple talking CA election were foreign news media.

As if in real life group conversations, by sending the most tweets, replies and re-tweets

over the election time, the first 2,000 unique authors (18%) dominated the entire show

over the rest 10,000 (82%), who were mostly hearing themselves in the digital echo-

chamber. Further breakdown of the contributions by the most talkative 2,000 showed the

first 1,00 dominated the next 500, which would again dominate another 1,500.

Interactive handles were far fewer than the active handles

The size of the handles varied, but most had several hundred to a few thousand followers

They were talking about many things from other tweeple, real people, festivals, sports,

travel and politics

They shared some fears, yes, but these fears were challenged, overcome, and replaced by

expanding hopes over time

4.61 Discussion

The first CA had squandered two years of its mandate, and a bonus two years in self-extended

tenures, before it died a vegetative death on 27 May 2012 without accomplishing the task for

which it had come into existence: writing and promulgating Nepal's constitution.

The big four parties of that time, namely, UCPN-Maoist, Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and the

Madheshi front, were still working to overcome their political differences, which held the first

CA hostage to indecision on several occasions. One fine morning then, as if the big four had

decided to put their daily brawl briefly behind the public glare, they requested Chief Justice Khil

Raj Regmi to arrange the second CA elections. The Chief Justice took leave of office, formed a

cabinet of former bureaucrats and lawyers and headed the election government. On 17 June

2013, the non-political government announced the holding of elections on 19 November 2013,

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engaging for a while in futile efforts to convince the dissenting political parties, mainly the

splintered CPN-Maoist, to participate in the vote.

Chief Election Commissioner Neel Kantha Uprety, with his team of commissioners, also set out

to convince the people that the elections would be held for sure and they would be peaceful.

Election Commission Nepal proceeded with its schedule asking the political parties to file their

candidates and voters to obtain their ID cards. Some tweet authors explicitly shared this context

and recent developments alongside their speculations about the fresh election prospects.

Adding fuel to fire fear-mongering or the general speculative propensities of Nepali twitizens,

hardliner CPN-Maoist and its 33 allies threatened, at times showing force, to disrupt the election.

They urged the voters to boycott what they termed was the illegitimate election process, initiated

by an illegitimate government, born through a secluded co-habitation of the big four parties. The

political dissenters announced an indefinite shutdown, running for days and weeks in the

campaign period, then planted bombs and torched vehicles. In some places, the people rejected

their bandh and, in others, over the days, the intensity of opposition to the election waned on its

own.

Only on the Election Day, when a record number of enthusiastic voters, between 70 and 80

percent, showed up in the election booths, tweet authors wrote words of surprise in place of their

early doubts. Many posted status updates with their cheers breaking right inside the election

booths -- they were sharing texts to show a sense of relief, brave face or defiance despite the

scare of bombs and bandhs. Many authors posted pictures, although they are not analyzed here,

of the voters in queues as the hours passed by.

5. Conclusion and recommendations

5.1 Conclusion

The digital texts. The tweets were texts with the technological possibility of traveling far and

wide at an instant but their lifting out of context, in abrupt, terse, short, error-laden, casual, and

suggestive sentences, made it difficult for them to jump out into the real world of gossip and

gaffe among voters or to affect their decision to vote. As many tweets loaded with information of

interest or value to individuals and society were shortened in bits and bytes, links, replies,

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favorites and re-tweets, they carried too much of stuff all the time, demanding perseverance from

the users to pick up something from there and take it to the fleshy world of families and friends.

Worse, only a few users interacted within the network. When they did, they were inside a coterie

of a few handles, talking about a few issues, without driving the conversation to go beyond the

Twitter wall.

The interaction. The interactive features of the tweets made it possible to sort the handles and

texts in groups, which suggested clusters and networks forming around tweeple and texts that

gave clues to the popularity or influence of some handles. Like VIPs in the real world, the VITs,

for example, received disproportionate attention, sometimes, commanding a series of re-tweets to

even some frivolous, wishy-washy tweets, that came from these handles. A few tweeple who

dominated the conversation, were likely to choose certain ideas in tweets or re-tweets over

others, as if they were endorsing them although their profiles cautioned they were sharing, not

endorsing anything. As most other tweets shared news links to online news portals and sites of

newspaper, television and radio, it was difficult to infer the wit, gossip and gaffe heard on the

Twitter wall was circulating in the real world if even if it did.

Network. The clustering of people around handles and texts, forming networks, promised clues

about the influencers and their behavior. The generally warm response Gagan Thapa was getting

online and off during the campaign period, for example, showed a network of people was rooting

for the young representative.

Sentiment. The mood swung over the campaign, campaign blackout, voting and vote counting

periods, creating an online buzz, available for public view, download and close reading. Early

tweet authors showed doubts about the ability or intention of the government and the key

political leaders to make the elections happen, or, in case they happened, make them peaceful.

Some of them shared hazy references from the past to show what had transpired after the

dissolution of the first CA until the election government was formed in March 2013. Others

shared the immediate context of festivals, sports, doubts, threats and uncertainties; the future

directions, mainly assertions and speculations about the fresh election prospects. Most joined in

the jubilation over the successful holding of election or, perhaps, the defeat of the UCPN-Maoist,

the largest party of the erstwhile CA.

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Summing up. Twitter was increasingly being used in electoral politics by political and civil

society actors, both individuals and organizations. With tools to tap into the public opinion pulse

from tweets, several efforts had already been made to predict the election outcomes or explore or

describe people's interest in partisan issues and substance. A few tech-savvy people had taken up

to examine election tweets of Nepal within a limited scope. Goals of analysis, early preparation,

and availability of tools, among other things, will determine the usefulness of future endeavor in

this area.

5.2 Recommendation

We need further research. Analyzed properly, with the necessary skills, time and resources,

tweets promise to open up a vast reservoir of information about political events and trends in

Nepal. As more people come on board the social media with various purposes and inspirations,

academic departments, research organizations and individuals with interest should contribute

further research in this emerging frontier of human behavior, the insights about which should be

accessible to both the users and non-users of the social media.

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ANNEX

RANK TOP HANDLES TOP MENTIONS TOP HASHTAGS TOP URLS TOP TOKENS

1 NEPALVOTES @MILIJULIDOTCOM #NEPAL HTTP://T.CO/FHOEINJRIN RT

2 REPUBLICANEPAL @AFP #NEPALVOTES HTTP://T.CO/FWYFZDVJGQ ELECTION

3 MILIJULIDOTCOM @ONEDIRSLAYTION #ELECTION HTTP://T.CO/FUTRPFKGWS NEPAL

4 YALAMANDU @DEEPAKADK: #KATHMANDU HTTP://T.CO/AOMSATJRUO IS

5 NEPALNOSORA @ORGASMICGOMEZ #WEATHER HTTP://T.CO/IJLAOTERSN NEPALVOTES

6 DRBISHNUHNEPAL @DRBISHNUHNEPAL: #SATIMAGE HTTP://T.CO/CGDAFRXJXI REPUBLICANEPAL

7 BULLFIGHTTARUKA @AKANNAMPILLY: #MONSOON HTTP://T.CO/VMIFOBGREK VIA

8 LEOWHITMANNEPAL @AAKARPOST: #NEPAL. HTTP://T.CO/TDOXSFQKMG I

9 POWERCUTALERT @USHAFT: #NEPALS HTTP://T.CO/ZEMKWNHWGR MAOISTS

10 JUMLANEPAL @ANUPKAPHLE: #NEPAL: HTTP://T.CO/HQPGHSCADS NEPALI

11 KODATSKI @REPUBLICANEPAL: #INDIA HTTP://T.CO/ALQYMTMDKQ VOTE

12 MROPHIOPHAGUS @PERSECUTIONNEWS: #NST HTTP://T.CO/WUNHWQWGPS NEPALS

13 NUGIESQUE @BIBEKBHANDARI: #TIME HTTP://T.CO/CDWALTYOJG ARE

14 DEEPAKADK @SOLHEIMDAC: #TRAVEL HTTP://T.CO/UBHCJCDEPG AMP

15 THETOMAR @HISTORYNEEDSYOU: #KARNALI HTTP://T.CO/YHXTZOVAXF LATEST

16 STORYSOUTHASIA @FUWADTHOWFEEK: #LOADSHEDDING HTTP://T.CO/CFKULYONOF MILIJULIDOTCOM

17 NPPOET @NEWSFROMNEPAL: #CRICKET HTTP://T.CO/EKVNLQYMFA OFFICIALS

18 AAKARPOST @CRICKETICC #NEPVSPNG HTTP://T.CO/FGKGFEBVBH BE

19 THENEPAL @BARCASTUFF: #CAELECTION HTTP://T.CO/LRCIDXKBFK MY

20 TRAVELFOTO @RO… #YESWECAN HTTP://T.CO/DPOMIRSHGY YALAMANDU

21 ARUNBUDHATHOKI @KUNDADIXIT: #NEPVOTE HTTP://T.CO/GMGCCKYAQK WE

22 USHAFT @THENEPAL: #POKHARA HTTP://T.CO/AGYSESXIPT TWEET

23 MOCHANBHATTARAI @RAVINEPAL: #TIHAR HTTP://T.CO/CBKEMOZKPW VOTES

24 FINDINGJEMO @GUARDIAN #ADIDAS HTTP://T.CO/HAEGWPCOQD IMAGE

25 SATISHKTM @PRASHANTKTM #ELECTIONS HTTP://T.CO/WVNXINESUO SKY

26 AKANNAMPILLY @ERICWRANDOLPH: #ASIA HTTP://T.CO/HBFAIWWXUE AUTO

27 AIBKHADKA @NYTIMES #CHINA HTTP://T.CO/JAKVAFZCTR SATELLITE

28 DHUNGELNP @SARDOGSNEPAL: #MUSTANG HTTP://T.CO/ZOJAXQZYWJ NEPALNOSORA

29 ARPANSHR @NEPALVOTES #TEAMNEPAL HTTP://T.CO/AAQLYODKZS DRBISHNUHNEPAL

30 JAPOKH @THAPAGK #ANNAPURNA HTTP://T.CO/AOWKHCDXRN COUNTING

31 NEPALISAGAR @AKANNAMPILLY #MAOIST HTTP://T.CO/BGILJHTJWS ASSEMBLY

32 MANJEECHE @HOURWIN #PHOTOGRAPHY HTTP://T.CO/BXEUBAQCTM YOU

33 NEWSFROMNEPAL @SHARETHIS #HIMALAYA HTTP://T.CO/CHLERKCLJC BULLFIGHTTARUKA

34 THEANTARIKSHA @CNNMEX: #SRILANKA HTTP://T.CO/FMUWILXLKH THAT

35 SARDOGSNEPAL @AJENGLISH: #TIBET HTTP://T.CO/ILZCXQCDVQ PEOPLE

36 PRASHANTKTM @ECNEPAL #MYANMAR HTTP://T.CO/JEGBBESSEL NEPAL:

37 RAVINEPAL @ISHZZ: #HIMALAYAS HTTP://T.CO/KGEZXNOKSP DAY

38 ASIADAILYNEWS @SAMATTSSON: #TREKKING HTTP://T.CO/NHTEKCVZDA RESULTS

39 JHYAL @AJINSIDESTORY #MALAYSIA HTTP://T.CO/NLRBQOVIEG ALL

40 PAREXITPOKHREL @CFHAVILAND: #NEPALI HTTP://T.CO/OFZMOXFEOR TIME

41 DHUNGELNISCHAL @TWITTER #PRACHANDA HTTP://T.CO/PLRPFFREBM CA

42 SIROMANID @WASHINGTONPOST. #NEWS HTTP://T.CO/PTGVTBTQLW NOT

43 MEDIAFOUND @GOFUNDME #NEPVOTES HTTP://T.CO/PTVGHYURZQ. ELECTIONS

44 PRACHANDALIFE @MALLPRESS #MAOISTS HTTP://T.CO/TEWRQYHQSG HAS

45 NUMBANIL @DEEPAKADK #BATT HTTP://T.CO/VCDNBSTLNU BEGIN

46 NEEMESHE @DHUNGELNP: #HINDU HTTP://T.CO/VLTGBNIZRV ITS

47 REDDITNEPAL @STORYSOUTHASIA: #BHUTAN HTTP://T.CO/XHDXXYFYMJ PARTY

48 WARSHINGTONPOST @ADAMPLOW: #EVEREST HTTP://T.CO/ZKNXUMGTRY OUR

49 DWDRAJU @LEOWHITMANNEPAL: #INDIANFOOTBALL HTTP://T.CO/ZQZBXQYQAF MAOIST

50 RANJITPANDEY @PIXELPROJECT: #NEPALELECTION HTTP://T.CO/AGYSNKCBUE NATIONAL

51 AAMATEURGUY @AAKARPOST #PEACE HTTP://T.CO/CQVTRUBMOW KATHMANDU

52 INDIGENOUSNEPAL @PETEPATTISSON: #MUKTINATH HTTP://T.CO/EOMHYDXJDP LEOWHITMANNEPAL

53 UJYAALO @SVARADARAJAN: #UPPERMUSTANG HTTP://T.CO/FTBGDSCWQE POWERCUTALERT

54 HOURWIN @THETOMAR: #BUDDHA HTTP://T.CO/HSMFXSKMEU SO

55 MYHOLIDAYNEPAL @BIKUKO: #DIWALIWSJ HTTP://T.CO/KVZLNYVKKL NEWS

56 IRIJALB @MROPHIOPHAGUS: #FOOTBALL HTTP://T.CO/ORBGXQQLSW POLITICAL

57 SUZATAZ @GUNARAJ: #NEPAL’S HTTP://T.CO/QFBCGVMQPD POLITICS

58 BREAKINGNEWSNEP @REUTERS #NEPAL… HTTP://T.CO/VDBVYXRIWC CONSTITUENT

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59 IHIERGEIST @GUARDIAN: #POLITICS HTTP://T.CO/VWUWUPFTPU NEW

60 BIKUKO @STORYSOUTHASIA #MOVIE HTTP://T.CO/WGIDLXJYAE WAS

61 LAHURNIPNEPAL @SUPPORT #NEPALCOUNTS HTTP://T.CO/WNDJGIATEP YOUR

62 WHEATKINGSFAN @SIROMANID: #PAKISTAN HTTP://T.CO/WVOWXWNHLE ABOUT

63 NEPALSAMACHAR @DIPAKBHATTARAI: #CHRISTIAN HTTPS://T.CO/JOJDBNEQVL GOOD

64 BESHOW @FUADTHAUFEEQ: #BANGLADESH HTTP://T.CO/ACPBXYAIOY NEPAL.

65 BIBEKBHANDARI @MARIONROCKS #NEPALELECTIONS HTTP://T.CO/AICKZMIYKC WIN

66 ERICWRANDOLPH @SATISHKTM: #BUDDHISM HTTP://T.CO/BJJOLCTCIG KATMANDU

67 SAMBIDPANT @YOUTUBE #WORLD HTTP://T.CO/BWMBRMXQXK BOMB

68 MPUDASAINEE @ANUPKAPHLE #NEPALCRICKET HTTP://T.CO/DMCHYBEPEN JUMLANEPAL

69 CHAPAGAIN @LEODICAPRIO #TTOT HTTP://T.CO/ECHGLTESZQ CAN

70 DDNEWSHINDI @UJYAALO #TRAFFICKING HTTP://T.CO/EFCRTRGINX NOW

71 EXPEDITIONWISE @DDNEWSLIVE: #FINDMATT HTTP://T.CO/ENNAOBCKVH MORE

72 BAKIZAINAL @MYHOLIDAYNEPAL: #HIMALAYAN HTTP://T.CO/FBIWNZOTKO AP

73 GCMCNEPAL @PANCREATICCANUK #VAW HTTP://T.CO/FQGVYLZTLU UP

74 NEPALESEATHEIST @WASHINGTONPOST #FB HTTP://T.CO/FZIJFJJDXU SPORTS

75 NOWINNEPAL @AAMATEURGUY: #YELLOW HTTP://T.CO/HAFMQFHCFF TODAY

76 RAJNEESHB @AKBARMEA: #THANKYOUPARAS HTTP://T.CO/HGNBKVPGQU PRACHANDA

77 GHIMIREPRASHANT @AJELIVE: #PHOTO HTTP://T.CO/IYQNHEVNEH DE

78 RAJDAI @MARIONROCKS: #CA HTTP://T.CO/KBDTVTEKJN IF

79 DIPAKBHATTARAI @AFPS #STRIPES HTTP://T.CO/KSZLCQCJCZ NO

80 FILMCROWDFUNDER @AKHANAL #ELECTION: HTTP://T.CO/LGEMRXLLGS ONE

81 PDPBASYAL @PRABALGURUNG: #INDVSNEP HTTP://T.CO/LGROTOBHSJ POLLS

82 KLAMICHHANE @SUDINPOKHAREL: #NEPALICONGRESS HTTP://T.CO/OMCCQWZCUE HIS

83 RECUROUSA @BREAKINGNEWSNEP: #FOTO HTTP://T.CO/QFUKBBDDGL LIKE

84 ADKRAMEN @IRIJALB: #ORANGE HTTP://T.CO/QGEFFPAMQT THEIR

85 BEINGPRABESH @LAHURNIPNEPAL: #PERSECUTION HTTP://T.CO/REPCZXMVTT LEADER

86 DALEEXPRESS @SCRIBBLELIVE #TIBETAN HTTP://T.CO/RGZXKUXLLK HAPPY

87 PSTKTZ @SETOPATI #UNSG HTTP://T.CO/SAANCWOHIY WHO

88 ROSHGHIMIRE @CARTERCENTER #VOTE HTTP://T.CO/TDAZYGJOAW ELECTION.

89 ANILBHATTARAI @DWDRAJU: #FESTIVAL HTTP://T.CO/TSBNHYYUPR WHAT

90 ASTHAGHIM @SUSHILSHRMA: #BHAKTAPUR HTTP://T.CO/UJSLVMSJBN ELECTION:

91 GHALEGROUP @DDNEWSHINDI: #BATTI HTTP://T.CO/UZLCOJNEPG VOTING

92 ITSCOOLSKY @MEMORIASMUNDO: #BLACK HTTP://T.CO/VEDMOVIG… FIRST

93 NEPALDIARY @AP: #TRAVELING HTTP://T.CO/VJAHNIRJAB OTHER

94 VSKATH @DRBISHNUHNEPAL #DEMOCRACY HTTP://T.CO/VRUKNQKGPX PARTIES

95 DDNEWSLIVE @OURNEPAL #SOCENT HTTP://T.CO/WHJWMDCAVD WORLD

96 IBNAMRA @BBC #AYUDOS HTTP://T.CO/XOVNEESXDL HOPE

97 MATHGUYPROBLEMS @ROUGHTOUGH: #CAUSE HTTP://T.CO/XRQZBJDDSM RESULT

98 ONGKEET @TIMESOFINDIA: #ALLIN HTTP://T.CO/YVKHKFFCWH FRAUD

99 PRATIKCFC @BIMODDEVPANTA #CONSTITUENTASSEMBLY HTTP://T.CO/ZDXCPLLOCB PLEASE

100 SOLHEIMDAC @HOURWIN: #ELECTION. HTTP://T.CO/ZPOJQYIGYP LOSES