Devotees on an Astroturf: Media, Politics, and Outrage in the Suicide of a Popular FilmStar

Abstract

The death of Indian film star Sushant Singh Rajput at the peak of the COVID lockdown triggered chaos on the news cycle in India with a range of conspiracy theories that led to a witch hunt of sorts, and the hounding of several entertainers and public figures in the months that followed. Using data from Twitter, YouTube, and an archive of debunked misinformation stories, we examine the drivers and consequences of social media outrage in this case. We analyse these patterns from the framework of conspiracy and astroturfing and contextualize our findings to the socio-political background currently prevalent in India. Primarily, retweet rates on Twitter suggest that commentators benefited from talking about the case, which got higher engagement than other topics. Moreover, we report evidence of political hands in the way the discourse has shaped online, but more importantly that the story bears warnings for the shape and impact of witch-hunts in the backdrop of a fractured media environment. In conclusion, we consider the effects of Rajput’s outsider status as a small-town implant in the film industry within the broader narrative of systemic injustice, as well as the gendered aspects of mob justice that have taken aim at his former partner in the months since.