Prime Minister Narendra Modi occupied the centre-stage of news, according to an AI-driven news analytics report of headlines during the lockdown. The report released by boutique brand-building company, Dharma Media Consultants, and technology company, PRM Fincon, analysed 75,000 headlines from almost 15 news sources using Artificial Intelligence techniques to identify, extract, and classify the top newsmakers from various categories.
“Our aim with this report was to find who and what were the newsmakers from before Lockdown 1.0 till Lockdown 3.0 induced by Coronavirus. The COVID-19 outbreak and its fallout are historic; and in these extraneous circumstances, the news cycles also projected unique findings. There were interesting findings in our month-long data crunching exercise with some surprises and a few news disrupters as well,” said Shutapa Paul, Founder, Dharma Media Consultants.
With the COVID-19 outbreak sending India and the world into a tizzy, political leaders, industries, and brands began firefighting efforts to tackle the virus. The month-long data crunching exercise of 75,000 headlines showed that 24.5% of headlines were related to COVID-19 in pre-Lockdown, the number increased to 42.2% during Lockdown 1.0 and 2.0, and dropped slightly to 32% in Lockdown 3.0. The total number of COVID-19 headlines was 7,455 in Pre-Lockdown, it jumped to 16,505 in the height of the Lockdown period (1.0 and 2.0), and fell to 1,660 till the middle of Lockdown 3.0.
“Our contextual analysis engine, Xlrt, is capable of generating insights that end users can use for informed decision making. Using its AI engine, we were quickly able to identify the entities that were making the headlines across a variety of news sources and news categories,” said Rupesh Chaudhuri, Co-Founder, PRM Fincon.
Among all Politicians, Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed the top place in COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 news followed by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Home Minister Amit Shah. The trio maintained their position among all national politicians too. Among State Politicians, Jyotiraditya Scindia ranked first due to his shift from Congress to BJP. He was followed by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
From the world of business, Google, Amazon, and Facebook had most COVID-19 related news; with Yes Bank, Google, and Facebook topping news in the period of listed entities while Jio (due to news of Facebook’s investment), Realme, and Flipkart topped among unlisted entities.
Sudden demise of the legendary actors, Rishi Kapoor and Irrfan Khan made most news among Celebrities while postponement of Tokyo Olympics 2020 made most news from the world of Sports, followed by Indian Cricket Captain Virat Kohli and the IPL.
The top Trending News during the Lockdown period was the Migrant Labours issue, which has grown into humanitarian crisis, followed by the Tablighi Jamaat incident and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
