SOCIAL MEDIA. Demonetisation, Rio Olympics, T20 cricket lead conversations on Twitter

The demonetisation of ₹500 and ₹1,000 currency notes, which was announced by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8, has emerged as the most influential moment on Twitter for the country during 2016.

Twitter India said here on Tuesday that Twitter recorded 6.5 lakh tweets in 24 hours following the announcement and millions more tweets in the following weeks.

“The magnitude of these conversations by experts as well as common people put the global spotlight on India,” it said.

Users went first to ask questions, get answers or share ideas about the biggest conversations happening throughout 2016 in the most influential moments on Twitter, it said. Other influential moments on Twitter include women athletes at Rio Olympics and India-Pakistan clash in World T20 cricket match.

Sports dominated the Twitter conversations during the year. Of the top 10 hashtags for the year, seven were from Rio Olympics and WT20 cricket.

These hashtags included #Rio2016, #IndvsPak, #WT20, #IndvsAus, #IndvsWI, #IndvsBan, and #PVSindhu.

The government’s flagship programme #MakeInIndia and Indian Army’s #surgicalstrike on terror camps were the other top trending hashtags of 2016.

Narendra Modi clinched the top position in the most-followed Indians on Twitter during the year. He was followed by nine other Bollywood celebrities.

Narendra Modi’s Twitter handle, which has 24.6 million followers, added 8.8 million followers in 2016 alone. Others in the list included Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra, Hrithik Roshan, Akshay Kumar and AR Rahman.

Test Cricket captain Virat Kohli’s March 28 tweet in support of the Bollywood actor Anushka Sharma was the most re-tweeted tweet (golden tweet) of 2016.

Twitter India said that Kohli encouraged his fans and critics, who attributed his outstanding performance in the ICC World T20 to their break-up, to focus instead on empathy and community building. As on December 6, this tweet had registered 39,708 re-tweets and 1.07 lakh likes.