How Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt. of India blundered in communicating Ebola?

What is the difference between million and billion? One mighty say: ‘just an alphabet’. But that just an alphabet can make a lot of difference. And that’s why proper communication whether written or verbal is very important as miscommunication can lead to disasters. For the same reason extra care should be exercised while communicating important public health events as the consequences of miscommunication or ineffective communication could be huge.

Now, what would an epidemiologist or a physician call a person who travelled in a plane in which there was another person infected with Ebola virus? A confirmed case of Ebola? Really? It seems that at least ‘Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW), Govt. of India’ thinks so.

In a glaring example of negligent communication MoHFW issued a press note on August 8, 2014 which was published on Press Information Bureau’s website (PIB) informing that a CONFIRMED case of Ebola Viral Disease (EVD) arrived in India on 20 July 2014 and been monitored by health officials since then. The information of the case was received from World Health organization (WHO). It further said that the person was traced to Dwarka in south-west New Delhi and found to be healthy. He was provided with all necessary guidelines for self-monitoring and asked to report to the authorities in case of manifestation of symptoms. The same day WHO declared 2014 Ebola outbreak in East Africa as Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

As the press note was released it created major concerns not just about the arrival of virus in India but as to why this important information was not released for 19 days? Even the same was not informed to Indian Parliament on August 6, 2014 when the Minister of Health & Family Welfare Dr. Harsh Vardhan made a statement in both houses. Why the same was informed only when WHO declared the outbreak as PHEIC?

On August 9, 2014 i.e. the next day MoHFW issued another statement on PIB’s website in which Dr Harsh Vardhan clarified that India does not have any confirmed or even suspected Ebola virus affected person. It further said that the WHO had informed that one Indian passenger had travelled on the same flight in which Ebola virus patient (a foreign national) was travelling from Monrovia to Lagos. This Indian passenger is now back in India. He is healthy, fit and fine and his health is being regularly monitored.

This clearly shows that the statement issued on August 8, 2014 informing that a CONFIRMED case of Ebola Viral Disease (EVD) was arrived in India on 20 July 2014 was factually incorrect. This was a major negligence in communication keeping in view the seriousness and mortality associated with Ebola outbreak and gravity of consequences of such miscommunication. This is beyond comprehension how could a person who was just travelling in a plane in which there was another confirmed case of Ebola was labelled as a confirmed case of Ebola in the official communication of MoHFW? Either the official(s) who prepared the note do not understand the difference or enough care was not taken during writing of the note and the same was not checked before releasing it.

In another incident of careless press note drafting just 3 days before this incident, MoHFW in another press note wrote ‘child mortality’ as ‘child morality’. One can blame this to auto correction but the twitter handle of MoHFW also repeated the mistake without any application of mind.

Comparative analysis of Twitter handles of Cabinet Ministers of India

Summary

After formation of new government in India in May this year, there were reports that the Prime Minister has advised his cabinet colleagues to open accounts on various social media platforms to spread the word about the work being done by the government. The start was a bit shaky when Ms.Uma Bharti tweeted about her portfolio even before its formal announcement and later one of her staff member apologized for the same. But slowly and steadily more and more cabinet members are becoming active on social media platforms. 

This is an analysis of Twitter handles of Prime Minister of India and his 22 cabinet colleagues between 1 July 2014 and 31 July 2014. Communication between government and people is very important in democracy. The objective of this analysis is to help improve this communication by increasing the awareness of these twitter handles among masses for greater public good.  Only 9 cabinet members including Prime Minister have verified twitter accounts and been included in this analysis (Table 1). Two unverified twitter accounts (Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu and Shri D.V. Sadananda Gowda) have also been included in analysis as they mention that they are the official accounts of Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu and Shri D.V. Sadananda Gowda. June was the first full month after the formation of the government during which cabinet members had the opportunity to speed up and hence has been excluded from analysis. The analysis is done by using online platform Talkwaker.

Some of the key finding of the analysis are:-

1. The twitter handle of Prime Minister was the most active during this period with 3.74 total twitter handle owner activity/day followed by Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad (3.58). The twitter handles of Smt. Sushma Swaraj and Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu were the least active (Table 2).

2. There were more number of retweets than original tweets by twitter handle owners for twitter handles of Smt. Smriti Z Irani and Sh. Sadananda Gowda (Table 2).

3. There were very few replies from all twitter handle owners (Table 2).

4. More than half of the tweets of Sh. Arun Jaitley and Sh. Ananth Kumar contained pictures whereas no tweets of Smt. Smriti Irani had any pictures during this period (Table 3).

5. Maximum twitter handle owner activity on any given day was by Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad on 1st July 2014 (19 tweets, retweets, replies) (Pic 2).

6. Twitter handle of Prime Minister was most popular out of 11 twitter handles included in the analysis. His twitter handle tops both in audience mentions and audience retweets (Table 4).

7. Twitter handle of Sh. Sadananda Gowda registered the maximum monthly follower growth of 124.35% (probably due to rail budget presented in July 2014) (Table 5).

8. Geographically, majority of audience activity of all twitter handles was from India. Dr. Harsh Vardhan’s 44.61% audience activity was from USA, 5.14% audience activity of Sh Nitin Gadkari was from Indonesia (Table 6).

9. The language of majority of audience activity of all twitter handles was English. Around 5.4% audience activity of the twitter handle of Sh. Rajnath Singh was in Hindi and around 5.5% audience activity of the twitter handle of Sh. Nitin Gadkari was in Tagalog (Table 7).

10. Majority of audience activity of all twitter handles was generated by males. More than 18% audience activity of twitter handles of Smt. Sushma Swaraj, Sh. Arun Jaitley and Dr. Harsh Vardhan was generated by females (Table 8).

Table 1: Twitter handles analyzed (July 1-31, 2014)

Name1	Portfolio1	Twitter handle2	Verified/Unverified2	Included/Excluded in analysis
Shri Narendra Modi	Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions	@narendramodi	Verified	Included
	Department of Atomic Energy Department of Space
	All important policy issues
	and all other portfolios not allocated to any Minister
Shri Raj Nath Singh	Home Affairs	@BJPRajnathSingh	Verified	Included
Smt. Sushma Swaraj	External Affairs	@SushmaSwaraj	Verified	Included
	Overseas Indian Affairs
Shri Arun Jaitley	Finance	@arunjaitley	Verified	Included
	Corporate Affairs
	Defence
Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu	Urban Development	@MVENKAIAHNAIDU	Unverified	Included-says official twitter account
	Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation
	Parliamentary Affairs
Shri Nitin Jairam Gadkari	Road Transport and Highways	@nitin_gadkari	Verified	Included
	Shipping
	Rural Development
	Panchayati Raj
	Drinking Water and Sanitation
Shri D.V. Sadananda Gowda	Railways	@DVSBJP	Unverified	Included-says official twitter account
Sushri Uma Bharati	Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation	@umasribharti	Unverified	Excluded
Dr. Najma A. Heptulla	Minority Affairs	None
Shri Ramvilas Paswan	Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution	None
Shri Kalraj Mishra	Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises	Multiple	Unverified	Excluded
Smt. Maneka Sanjay Gandhi	Women and Child Development	@ManekaGandhi1	Unverified	Excluded
Shri Ananthkumar	Chemicals and Fertilizers	@AnanthKumar_BJP	Verified	Included
Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad	Communications and Information Technology	@rsprasad	Verified	Included
	Law and Justice
Shri Ashok Gajapathi Raju Pusapati	Civil Aviation	None
Shri Anant Geete	Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises	@AnantGeete	Unverified	Excluded
Smt. Harsimrat Kaur Badal	Food Processing Industries	@harsimrat_badal	Unverified	Excluded
Shri Narendra Singh Tomar	Mines	@nstomarminister	Unverified	Excluded
	Steel
	Labour and Employment
Shri Jual Oram	Tribal Affairs	@jualoram	Unverified	Excluded
Shri Radha Mohan Singh	Agriculture	@singhradhamohan	Unverified	Excluded
Shri Thaawar Chand Gehlot	Social Justice and Empowerment	None
Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani	Human Resource Development	@smritiirani	Verified	Included
Dr. Harsh Vardhan	Health and Family Welfare	@drharshvardhan	Verified	Included
1Source: http://pmindia.nic.in/details10.php (Accessed on August 4, 2014) 2Twitter Accounts as of August 4, 2014 24:00 hrs

Table 2: Twitter handle owner activity (July 1-31, 2014)

Twitter handle	Tweets	Replies	Retweets	Total Activity	Avg. Total Activity/day
Sh. Narendra Modi	89	0	27	116	3.74
Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad	75	2	34	111	3.58
Smt. Smriti Z Irani	16	3	48	67	2.16
Dr. Harsh Vardhan	33	0	1	34	1.10
Sh. Rajnath Singh	24	0	1	25	0.81
Sh. Sadananda Gowda	8	0	16	24	0.77
Sh. Arun Jaitley	16	0	1	17	0.55
Sh. Nitin Gadkari	11	1	0	12	0.39
Sh. Ananth Kumar	11	0	0	11	0.35
Sh. M Venkaiah Naidu	9	1	0	10	0.32
Smt. Sushma Swaraj	6	0	0	6	0.19

Table 3: Tweet Content type (July 1-31, 2014)

Twitter handle	Text	Picture	Link
Sh. Narendra Modi	75%	11%	13%
Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad	48%	23%	29%
Smt. Smriti Z Irani	100%	0%	0%
Dr. Harsh Vardhan	97%	0%	3%
Sh. Rajnath Singh	83%	4%	13%
Sh. Arun Jaitley	44%	56%	0%
Sh. Nitin Gadkari	82%	18%	0%
Sh. Ananth Kumar	27%	55%	18%
Sh. M Venkaiah Naidu	89%	11%	0%

                 *No data for tweets ≤10 (excluding retweets)

Table 4: Twitter handle audience activity (July 1-31, 2014)

Twitter handle	Audience Mentions	Audience Retweets	Total Audience Activity	Avg Audience Mentions/day	Avg Audience Retweets/day	Avg Total Audience Activity/day
Sh. Narendra Modi	161710	238599	400309	5216	7697	12913
Sh. Arun Jaitley	30745	31668	62413	992	1022	2013
Smt. Smriti Z Irani	13478	28125	41603	435	907	1342
Sh. Rajnath Singh	11521	16549	28070	372	534	905
Smt. Sushma Swaraj	9587	13018	22605	309	420	729
Dr. Harsh Vardhan	12025	10201	22226	388	329	717
Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad	7747	13630	21377	250	440	690
Sh. Sadananda Gowda	7937	8735	16672	256	282	538
Sh. Nitin Gadkari	4087	4786	8873	132	154	286
Sh. M Venkaiah Naidu	1410	619	2029	45	20	65
Sh. Ananth Kumar	798	689	1487	26	22	48

Table 5: Number of Followers (July 1-31, 2014)

Twitter Handle	Total Followers as on 31 July 2014 (24:00Hrs)	New Followers in July 2014	Follower Growth in July 2014
Sh. Sadananda Gowda	27171	15060	124.35%
Sh. M Venkaiah Naidu	6517	2151	49.27%
Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad	119215	29591	33.02%
Sh. Arun Jaitley	541951	93275	20.79%
Dr. Harsh Vardhan	243009	34050	16.30%
Smt. Smriti Z Irani	586699	71630	13.91%
Sh. Nitin Gadkari	87721	10258	13.24%
Sh. Rajnath Singh	502111	53703	11.98%
Sh. Ananth Kumar	48071	3968	9.00%
Sh. Narendra Modi	5463132	336344	6.56%
Smt. Sushma Swaraj	1370631	50142	3.80%

    

                                           

Table 6: Geographic distribution of Total Audience Activity of Twitter handles (July 1-31, 2014)

Twitter Handle	India	United States	Indonesia	United Kingdom	Italy	United Arab Emirates	China	Croatia	Estonia	Others
Dr. Harsh Vardhan	49.33%	44.61%	1.25%	1.15%	0.00%	0.29%	0.22%	0.02%	0.04%	3.07%
Sh. Rajnath Singh	49.46%	41.93%	4.37%	0.72%	0.05%	0.31%	0.49%	0.33%	0.09%	2.26%
Smt. Smriti Z Irani	54.68%	36.79%	3.09%	0.53%	0.13%	0.26%	0.37%	0.23%	1.55%	2.37%
Smt. Sushma Swaraj	51.11%	35.19%	3.54%	1.61%	1.26%	0.64%	0.49%	0.19%	0.14%	5.83%
Sh. Nitin Gadkari	55.84%	34.39%	5.14%	0.75%	0.10%	0.25%	0.28%	0.02%	0.09%	3.13%
Sh. Arun Jaitley	60.66%	32.64%	1.92%	0.83%	0.02%	0.43%	0.51%	0.12%	0.13%	2.73%
Sh. Sadananda Gowda	62.03%	31.87%	1.72%	0.66%	0.13%	0.36%	0.41%	0.07%	0.16%	2.61%
Sh. Narendra Modi	59.00%	30.67%	2.41%	1.09%	1.06%	0.47%	0.39%	0.52%	0.26%	4.13%
Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad	63.61%	30.39%	1.94%	1.17%	0.07%	0.16%	0.19%	0.14%	0.19%	2.13%

*Excludes Twitter handles with <1% share of Total Audience Activity

Table 7: Language distribution of Total Audience Activity of Twitter handles (July 1-31, 2014)

Twitter handle	English	Hindi	Indonesian	Tagalog	Estonian	Haitian	Others
Sh. Rajnath Singh	86.29%	5.40%	2.92%	1.11%	0.90%	1.06%	2.31%
Sh. Arun Jaitley	90.67%	4.01%	1.62%	0.62%	0.63%	0.97%	1.48%
Sh. Nitin Gadkari	84.18%	3.10%	3.32%	5.54%	0.99%	0.54%	2.33%
Sh. Sadananda Gowda	93.23%	3.00%	1.43%	0.46%	0.58%	0.19%	1.12%
Smt. Sushma Swaraj	85.67%	2.63%	2.08%	1.21%	3.68%	0.39%	4.34%
Sh. Narendra Modi	90.93%	2.58%	1.63%	0.99%	0.94%	0.54%	2.39%
Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad	92.83%	2.52%	1.46%	0.70%	0.87%	0.28%	1.32%
Smt. Smriti Z Irani	90.95%	2.09%	2.16%	1.70%	1.26%	0.51%	1.34%
Dr. Harsh Vardhan	94.55%	1.44%	1.22%	0.52%	0.55%	0.53%	1.19%

*Excludes Twitter handles with <1% share of Total Audience Activity

Table 8: Gender distribution of Audience of ‘Total Audience Activity’ of Twitter handles (July 1-31, 2014)

Twitter handle	Male	Male (%)	Female	Female (%)	Total
Smt. Sushma Swaraj	11421	81.32%	2623	18.68%	14044
Sh. Arun Jaitley	32745	81.79%	7292	18.21%	40037
Dr. Harsh Vardhan	10935	81.89%	2418	18.11%	13353
Sh. Sadananda Gowda	8832	83.27%	1775	16.73%	10607
Sh. Nitin Gadkari	4839	83.84%	933	16.16%	5772
Sh. Narendra Modi	215919	84.03%	41021	15.97%	256940
Sh. Rajnath Singh	15498	84.61%	2818	15.39%	18316
Smt. Smriti Z Irani	24988	87.31%	3631	12.69%	28619
Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad	11355	87.48%	1625	12.52%	12980

       *Excludes Twitter handles with <1% share of Total Audience Activity

 

Table 9: Top 3 Hashtags associated with Total Audience Activity’ of Twitter handles (July 1-31, 2014)

Twitter handle	1	2	3
Sh. Narendra Modi	#abkibaarIITDhanbad	#fakecases	#India
Sh. Rajnath Singh	#fakecases	#abkibaarIITDhanbad	#498a
Smt. Sushma Swaraj	#fakecases	#Iraq	#India
Sh. Arun Jaitley	#Budget2014	#fakecases	#ModiBudget
Sh. M Vankaiah Naidu	#fakecases	#Budget2014	#498a
Sh. Nitin Gadkari	#GangaManthan	#fakecases	#achchedin
Sh. Sadanand Gowda	#RailBudget	#RailBudget2014	#RailwayBudget
Sh. Ananth Kumar	#SaveArian	#fakecases	#BanCowSlaughter
Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad	#fakecases	#498a	#crimesagainstmen
Smt. Smriti Z Irani	#abkibaarIITDhanbad	#fakecases	#CrimesAgainstMen
Dr. Harsh Vardhan	#SaveArian	#PleaseHelpArian	#fakecase

Table 10: Top 2 contributors of Total Audience Activity of Twitter handles (July 1-31, 2014)

Twitter handle	1	2
Sh. Narendra Modi	@Suryavam_Ganesh	@devoted2nation
Sh. Rajnath Singh	@devoted2nation	@YashKVerm
Smt. Sushma Swaraj	@EvaUlian	@Mahesh25979
Sh. Arun Jaitley	@vivekkapoor111	@VKRAOMOVVA
Sh. M Vankaiah Naidu	@VKRAOMOVVA	@YashKVerm
Sh. Nitin Gadkari	@YashKVerm	@ngp_pradeep
Sh. Sadanand Gowda	@ngp_pradeep	@YashKVerm
Sh. Ananth Kumar	@drsheikh_bjp	@YashKVerm
Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad	@NitinKumarGoya2	@1985swapnil
Smt. Smriti Z Irani	@rmehta0895	@NeelSwapneel
Dr. Harsh Vardhan	@NitinKumarGoya2	@YashKVerm

Limitations:

1. This analysis includes data from Twitter only and does not include data from other social media platforms
2. Data is auto-generated using online tools and may have inaccuracies
3. This analysis is based on one month twitter data only and is in no way a reflection of the performance of these Twitter handle owners or their respective ministries.
4. To keep this analysis simple for a layman, following analysis has not been included: Impressions, engagement, engagement rate, reach etc.

Conflict of Interest: No conflict of interest identified. No grant, fund or compensation was received for this analysis.

Acknowledgement: Special Thanks to Twitter and Talkwalker .

Disclaimer: This analysis is intended for providing information only and does not constitute professional advice. The information is based on auto generation of online results and utmost professional care and diligence has been exercised in the collection and processing of the information in this analysis. The author makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy of this analysis. The author, Twitter Inc and Talkwalker shall not be liable to any user of this analysis or to any other person or entity for any inaccuracy of information contained in this analysis or for any errors or omissions in its content, regardless of the cause of such inaccuracy, error or omission. Furthermore, the author, Twitter Inc and Talkwalker accept no liability and disclaim all responsibility for the consequences of you or anyone else acting, or refraining from acting, in relying upon the information contained in this analysis or for any decision based on it, or for any consequential, special, incidental or punitive damages to any person or entity for any matter relating to this analysis even if advised of the possibility of such damages.