War of the Hashtags: Trending New Hashtags to Override Critical Topics in Social Media (2004.11451v1)

Abstract: Hashtags play a cardinal role in the classification of topics over social media. A sudden burst on the usage of certain hashtags, representing specific topics, give rise to trending topics. Trending topics can be immensely useful as it can spark a discussion on a particular subject. However, it can also be used to suppress an ongoing pivotal matter. This paper discusses how a significant economic crisis was covered by triggering a current trending topic. A case study on politics in India has been studied over the past two months. The analysis shows how the issue on inflation was attacked by the exercise of a new constitutional law over media. Hashtags used to discuss the topics were scrutinized, and we notice a steep ascend of the more recent topic and an eventual drop in discussions over the previous issue on inflation. Balancing the influence of hashtags on social media can be employed. Still, it can be equally challenging since some hashtags that represent the need of the hour topics should be given more importance, and evaluating such issues can be hard.