As a nationwide lockdown continues to fight the coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19 has accounted for up to 42.2 per cent of mainstream news headlines during this period while a resultant migrant labour crisis has emerged as the most-trending news, a new study showed on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has emerged as the biggest newsmaker among all Indian political leaders, showed the study that used artificial intelligence to analyse 75,000 headlines across 15 mainstream news sources between March 1 and May 10.
Modi is followed by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Congress leader P Chidambaram in the top-five newsmakers among national leaders, as per the study done by boutique brand-building firm Dharma Media Consultants, in partnership with technology company PRM Fincon, on how COVID-19 has primarily occupied news space.
Among state-level politicians, Jyotiraditya Scindia was most in the news with 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.
The study found that out of the total 75,000 headlines, 24.5 per cent of headlines were related to COVID-19 pre-lockdown (from March 1), but it rose to 42.2 per cent during the first two phases of the lockdown and then dropped to 32 per cent in the first week of the third phase (till May 10).
The third phase of the lockdown continued for two weeks till May 17 with considerable relaxations as compared to the earlier two phases, while the lockdown has now been extended to the fourth phase till May 31 with further relaxations to help revive economic activities.
Dharma Media Consultants' Founder Shutapa Paul said the study was carried out with an aim to find who and what were the newsmakers before and during lockdown induced by the deadly coronavirus.
PRM Fincon's Co-Founder Rupesh Chaudhuri said, "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."
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