PoliWAM: an exploration of a large scale corpus of political discussions on WhatsApp messenger

Abstract

WhatsApp Messenger is one of the most popular channels for spreading information with a current reach of more than 180 countries and 2 billion people. Its widespread usage has made it one of the most popular media for information propagation among masses during any socially engaging event. In the recent past, several countries have witnessed its effectiveness and influence in political and social campaigns. We observe a high surge in information and propaganda flow during elections. To explore such activities, in this paper, we discuss challenges, methodology, and opportunities in data curation from WhatsApp for politics-based exploratory studies. As a use case, we study the period before, during, and after the Indian General Elections 2019, encompassing all major Indian political parties. We present several complementing insights into the investigative and sensational news stories from the same period. Exploratory data analysis and experiments showcase several exciting results and future research opportunities. To facilitate reproducible research, we make the anonymized datasets available in the public domain.