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IANS-CVoter National Mood Tracker: Majority Indians believe Pakistani bots behind online trolling of Arshdeep
New Delhi, Sep 6 (IANS) India lost to Pakistan in a sensational Asia Cup match on Sunday. Immediately after the match, Twitter erupted with a nefarious agenda against Indian cricketer Arshdeep Singh for dropping a crucial catch in the 18th over of the high-voltage clash.
To malign the left arm pacer, a hate campaign was launched against him by Twitter accounts from Pakistan, some even linking him to the separatist Khalistan agenda.
Even his Wikipedia page was defaced by the Internet users whose IP address was traced to Pakistan. While many Indians were able to read the conspiracy, some fell into the trap of obnoxious propaganda against the young cricketer. Pacer Mohammad Shami was also subjected to a similar online hate campaign when India lost to Pakistan in an ICC World Cup match in 2021.
CVoter-IndiaTracker conducted a nationwide survey on behalf of IANS to know people’s views if Pakistani trolls work as a toolkit to make Indians fall in their trap of online hate campaign to project India as an intolerant nation.
The survey found that a huge majority of Indians — 76 per cent believe that such campaigns are part of the concerted design by the online trolls in Pakistan to run hateful campaigns. Only 26 per cent of Indians disagreed.
During the survey, similar sentiment was shared by both the urban and rural voters. As per the survey data, 75 per cent of urban voters and 77 per cent of rural respondents said such horrible campaigns are run by Pakistani toolkits to malign the image of India. During the survey, a huge majority of almost all the social groups, including 81 per cent of Sikh respondents expressed similar views.
The survey revealed that the majority of both NDA voters and opposition supporters were on the same page on the issue. As per the survey data, 80 per cent of NDA voters and 73 per cent of opposition respondents opined that the Pakistani Internet users work overtime to run such campaigns.
Knowing the motive behind such hate campaigns, the Indian cricket fraternity stood behind Arshdeep and extended support to the youngster. Former cricketer Harbhajan Singh took to Twitter to support Arshdeep. “Stop criticising young @arshdeepsinghh. No one dropped the catch purposely.. we are proud of our boys .. Pakistan played better.. shame on such people who r putting our own guys down by saying cheap things on this platform about arsh and team.. Arsh is GOLD,” Harbhajan wrote in his tweet.
–IANS
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