Flames of Justice in a Virtual Garden: An Analysis of a Digital Campaign on Twitter Surrounding the Death of an Indian Celebrity

Social media particularly Twitter has emerged as a powerful medium for expression and discussion for a wide range of topics. Through the use of hashtags, a powerful and popular affordance of Twitter, several online campaigns aimed at raising awareness and consciousness towards various issues of civic and social justice, have emerged. Although prior scholarship has investigated forms of rhetoric and impacts of such narrative movements on Twitter, an important consideration is to understand the structural forms that such narratives take depending on context and regional culture wherein the movement originates, rendering each campaign unique in its collective identity and objective. To this end, this study embarks on a mixed-methods analysis of 27,265 tweets related to calls of action and social justice in the aftermath of the death of a popular Indian movie star. The analysis reveals a diverse spectrum of themes ranging from expressions of loss and grief to astute critiques of the major institutions of power. Parallel but powerful themes also demonstrated attempts to nurture and embolden the campaign. Temporal trends provide insights into the collective orientation and gradual development of a community focus among campaign participants. The ultimate aim of this analysis is to provide insights into how such channels of discourse should be designed to create and nurture a medium for freedom of expression and foster safe spaces for civic engagement.