It was just a few days ago when Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was trending on Twitter in Delhi. The hashtag #SaySorryKejriwal had been tweeted out more than 100,000 times. The hashtag was in response to Delhi University stating that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s degree was authentic. As I noticed the hashtag, I experienced a strong sense of déjà vu. I’d seen something like this before. I just had.

On May 3, early morning Twitter users were greeted by the hashtag, #HitlerKerjriwal. Many were observant enough to notice the careless spelling mistake, but not many asked the question why. How had thousands of Delhites forgotten how to spell the name of a CM they’d voted for only a year ago? It was mind-boggling, of course, which is why I began intensifying my investigation on this matter. I’d suspected something fishy going on on Twitter, but it was — at that time — just a hypothesis. I now had something I could investigate into– and I did. A spelling mistake such as this could have been made a couple of times but not by thousands of people on the same day.

What started off as a simple question ended up revealing a conspiracy. (Cue for dramatic music.) As I dug deep, I stumbled upon a set of tweets: same content, same hashtag, but different people.

There was a pattern. These were tweets against Kejriwal and they were quite simply — without a doubt — the same. The same text was being repeated again and again and again. In fact, the same spelling mistake was being repeated too.

Moreover, some of the tweets were posted at the same time and on the same day. How is it that the same tweet was posted by numerous people from different accounts at the exact same time? Notice the time on these two tweets. Both of them have been posted at exactly 4:05 am on the same day.

To find out why this was so, I began conversing with a social media strategist who spoke to me on condition of anonymity. He revealed that Tweet Deck could be used by organisations to simultaneously use various accounts at the same time to perform similar tasks. The individual also confessed that he’d used the same technique to promote his website. According to him, at the click of a button, one could post the same tweet from multiple accounts. He also confessed to having more than 300 fake Twitter accounts. This was the breakthrough. Someone out there had an agenda. In order to avoid a potential defamation case, I think I’ll pass naming names.

Furthermore, I was also informed that to get a specific hashtag to trend, the tweets needed to be distributed among different IP addresses. 100,000 tweets emerging from the same IP address would be ineffective. But 100,000 tweets popping up from a few different IPs would get things going. So in order to achieve a trend, the job had to be outsourced to social media managers across cities who owned hundreds of accounts. The scale and magnitude at which this was happening was – in a way – quite impressive.

To validate my hypotheses, I began tracing similar tweets. The pattern was the same. Almost every tweet I stumbled upon had been repeated and many such tweets were published on the morning of May 3. Coincidence? I think not.

Furthermore, notice the spelling mistake that prevails throughout these tweets.

When you look into these accounts in detail, you find a flurry of tweets, many of them about Kejriwal. For example:

Now if you have a look at any one of these tweets, they may seem pretty legitimate.

Reconsider. The same tweet has been published by some other accounts. In some cases, close to 20 accounts have posted the same tweet at almost the exact same time.

So what exactly does this mean?

The hate towards Arvind Kejriwal may exist, but it’s being catalysed and encouraged through a very good understanding of herd mentality and behaviour. Most people don’t know who to support, they look at who every one else is supporting. Could it be that people are being made to think that the majority is against Kejriwal through bulk tweets so it influences their perception about him?

The common man is made to see trends against Kejriwal and that tells him the majority is against Kejriwal. That political parties and interest groups are using Twitter, or rather manipulating it to create trends is not breaking news. Many marketing campaigns and TV channels themselves have been accused of this, but to see it play out in a clumsy way like the case study above makes one wonder how it is still effective. Or is it?

You’re almost being made to think in a certain way. Is it working?