Social Media and Hate Speech in India: A study on the use of YouTube as a tool of political propaganda

This study explores how does a political speech on YouTube shape the political ideology and behavior of social media users. Social media gives a much larger space for freedom of expression but within this new platform, hate can also be shared freely. The following paper also focuses on the impact and spreading of hate Speech delivered by politicians among social media users. The main purpose of the study is a) to analyze the content of speech used by politicians on YouTube, and b) to explore the use and impact of YouTube as a tool of political propaganda, c) whether speaker uses wrong facts and figures in their speech. For this research, the literature on hate speech in India, the theory of political propaganda, media content analysis and the use of social media are reviewed to make an effective correlation with its analysis. Moreover, this study employs a content analysis as a research design to analyze the political speech in videos of all national political parties. Videos are taken from their Official YouTube channels. The duration has taken just before the state assembly elections in the five states (Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana) during November and December 2018.