Study of Acceptance of Indian Political Cartoons in Facebook Landscape

Abstract

Indian society changed after digitalization and economical reformation. Currently, the Facebook is the most popular social media in India. The political cartoonist took that platform as an opportunity to share their thoughts and raise socio-political issues through their cartoons. The aim of the paper is to study responses (likingness and affective) to political cartoons in respect to responsiveness towards cartoons, gender, and socio-economic status. The study was conducted among 875 Indians from different parts of India including males and females with various socio-economic backgrounds. The data captured in the form of sentiments (love, sadness, angry and happiness emotions) for each cartoon shared in the Facebook timeline. Then, relevant descriptive statistics were computed using IBM SPSS 20.0 software. Results showed that maximum Facebook users expressed their thoughts about political cartoons through emoticons in terms of like, sad, angry, and happiness. It is found that male user are more likely to be expressive to political cartoons than female user. Mostly user from low and middle socio-economic backgrounds relate themselves with the cartoon scenarios and shown interest than users from higher class of the society. Hence, political socio-political scenarios can be communicated effectively using political cartoons in Facebook as the people of India are relating themselves with various cartoons.