Mythbusters episode 1 - Indian netizens and online polls

[DomainK]

The myth: Indians can influence any online poll because of their sheer strength of population. Reality: Even though we are the world’s second most populated country, our healthy cyber population is quite low. India has 1.18 billion human beings. That is mighty rich when it comes to human resources. Indians are also well known for our IT expertise. We have geeks. We have nerds. We have people with extraordinary skills and knowledge when it comes to modern information technologies. So can these billion people with this huge reputation rule the internet world to influence things in their favour? Can we really make all online poll results favour us because of our sheer strength of population? Take a look at the following map, it shows the word’s most populated countries. The darker the color, the denser the population. See how India stands out and how most other countries fade out in comparison? Yes. Thats the power. We have the sheer numbers. So can we influence the online polls? Having people and having netizens with the time, money and will to go around influencing online polls are two quite different things. A large part of the Indian population, unfortunately, lives a little below or above the poverty line working day and night to make ends meet. Then there is the huge lower middle class group that are better off but not exactly with the time, money or inclination to go around influencing online polls. So, lets see how many people from India actually use the internet and compare the statistics to other countries. Below is a map of the world showing the countries with most internet users. The darker the color, the denser the population of netizens. We saw how dominant India was in the population comparison. Now lets see how dominant India is in the netizen comparison. You see how India pales out compared to most of the rest of the world? Yes. But thats not the end of the story. That just shows the number of people using the internet. They are people who access internet in offices or college libraries or in cyber cafes for some important work, not with the time and inclination to indulge in random online polls. Below is an image of countries with the highest number of DSL subscribers and as you can see, India is not even in the picture. So, it's a myth that Indians rule the online space. We may seem intelligent, smart and hugely populated, but we are still struggling with certain monstrous problems and we just dont have the sheer number of netizens that it takes to take over all online polls.

[DomainK]

And here is an interactive map from Google to give you a better idea of India's might on the internet: http://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=110112

[Sachinism]

Excellent post Dominik :two_thumbs_up: Just one thing I'd like to point out is among cricket playing nations - India must be among the highest and a ton of Indians are living abroad, just look at the members on this forum, a large %age are NRIs

[Pioneer]

Thought this thread was going to be about the tv show...

[Nova]

Yes Indians can definitely influence online polls in their favor if you take into consideration the diaspora too. Two such examples come to mind. One is Amitabh Bachaan being voted as the greatest star of the millennium of stage or screen by BBC News Online users and this was in 1999, a decade ago! Another example being the voting of Taj Mahal as one of the seven wonders of the world. While many non Indians probably voted for this too but Indians took active interest in promoting this. I remember mass chain emails and references on online forums. And here is the best part: Tendu is right now leading Bradman in a poll being conducted by Australia's Sydney Morning Herald asking to vote for the greatest batsman ever. What? You have not voted for Sachin yet? Too bad..the poll closed two days ago and Sachin won. Well it's fair to say that in this case even many Aussies would have voted for SRT after he reached the milestone of 50 test hundreds. More than 20,000 votes were casted and Sachin got almost 70% of the votes in his favor. Even a dead Indian would rise up from the grave and vote for such a poll.

[EnterTheVoid]

And here is the best part: Tendu is right now leading Bradman in a poll being conducted by Australia's Sydney Morning Herald asking to vote for the greatest batsman ever. What? You have not voted for Sachin yet? Too bad..the poll closed two days ago and Sachin won. Well it's fair to say that in this case even many Aussies would have voted for SRT after he reached the milestone of 50 test hundreds. More than 20' date='000 votes were casted and Sachin got almost 70% of the votes in his favor. Even a dead Indian would rise up from the grave and vote for such a poll.[/quote'] Australians may have voted for Tendulkar as they've actually seen him play. With Bradman, their knowledge may only be limited by what they've heard others say about him. :idea:

[Sachin=GOD]

Yes Indians can definitely influence online polls in their favor if you take into consideration the diaspora too. Two such examples come to mind. One is Amitabh Bachaan being voted as the greatest star of the millennium of stage or screen by BBC News Online users and this was in 1999, a decade ago! Another example being the voting of Taj Mahal as one of the seven wonders of the world. While many non Indians probably voted for this too but Indians took active interest in promoting this. I remember mass chain emails and references on online forums. And here is the best part: Tendu is right now leading Bradman in a poll being conducted by Australia's Sydney Morning Herald asking to vote for the greatest batsman ever. What? You have not voted for Sachin yet? Too bad..the poll closed two days ago and Sachin won. Well it's fair to say that in this case even many Aussies would have voted for SRT after he reached the milestone of 50 test hundreds. More than 20,000 votes were casted and Sachin got almost 70% of the votes in his favor. Even a dead Indian would rise up from the grave and vote for such a poll.

agreed.

[Nova]

Australians may have voted for Tendulkar as they've actually seen him play. With Bradman, their knowledge may only be limited by what they've heard others say about him. :idea:

Umm..did you miss the part where I said many Aussies would have voted for Tendu too? :winky: But you can't discount the fact that icons like Tendulkar and BigB mobilize the masses in India and this could well be true for online polls too.

[vaibhav_delhi]

TOI has the largest hits in the world for an online english news website. So i guess there r a lot of india netizens out there. But its not hard to imagine sachin winning a neutral poll. He is regarded by many many non-indians also as the best batsman ever.

[DomainK]

Yes Indians can definitely influence online polls in their favor if you take into consideration the diaspora too. Two such examples come to mind. One is Amitabh Bachaan being voted as the greatest star of the millennium of stage or screen by BBC News Online users and this was in 1999, a decade ago! Another example being the voting of Taj Mahal as one of the seven wonders of the world. While many non Indians probably voted for this too but Indians took active interest in promoting this. I remember mass chain emails and references on online forums. And here is the best part: Tendu is right now leading Bradman in a poll being conducted by Australia's Sydney Morning Herald asking to vote for the greatest batsman ever. What? You have not voted for Sachin yet? Too bad..the poll closed two days ago and Sachin won. Well it's fair to say that in this case even many Aussies would have voted for SRT after he reached the milestone of 50 test hundreds. More than 20,000 votes were casted and Sachin got almost 70% of the votes in his favor. Even a dead Indian would rise up from the grave and vote for such a poll.

Lets take them one by one. SB being the greatest star was probably the correct outcome, was it not? The "star" status of a star comes from popularity and I seriously doubt if any other star had the same kind of fan following at that time. South Asia not only is the most densely populated part of the world, but also has one of the most cinema-crazy population. So if AB won that poll, it was only a successful poll. Taj Mahal was chosen as one of the world's wonders. Shocking? It was considered a wonder even before that and it continued to stay so. Indians may have voted so for that one and others might have voted for the ones they owned. China has the highest number of internet users in the world, so lets say that they influenced the poll to include the great wall of China. Similarly, you are just assuming that for Tendulkar to lead an online poll against Bradman, Indians have to have influenced that poll. Why?

[DomainK]

Okay lets get down to pure stats. Here is a lits of countries with the highest number of broadband subscribers in the world. India figures at 19. Well below Australia at 14. So how exactly we influenced the polls against the Aussies? http://www.internetworldstats.com/dsl.htm

[EnterTheVoid]

Similarly' date=' you are just assuming that for Tendulkar to lead an online poll against Bradman, [b']Indians have to have influenced that poll. Why?

Thats exactly what I was trying to find out when I posted this:

Australians may have voted for Tendulkar as they've actually seen him play. With Bradman' date=' their knowledge may only be limited by what they've heard others say about him. [/quote']

[Sir john]

Few months back we do a survey,why people did't have net connection,we find that mostly people say that it is waste of money. :wall:

[Nova]

Lets take them one by one. SB being the greatest star was probably the correct outcome' date=' was it not? The "star" status of a star comes from popularity and I seriously doubt if any other star had the same kind of fan following at that time. South Asia not only is the most densely populated part of the world, but also has one of the most cinema-crazy population. So if AB won that poll, it was only a successful poll. [/quote'] So it's fair to say that the population of a given community plays a vital role when it comes to outcome of some polls. I disagree that AB is the greatest star of the millennium. He has immense following in India and for good reason but a worldwide poll in favor of him? Indians voted for him in sheer number in an online poll...that's all I am saying and that is netizen power. Your original post implies that India lacks netizen power which cannot be true in this case. Taj Mahal case is not shocking at all. Again netizen power is proportional to the population. If Indians have a huge population they also have a rising penetration for online polls. Are you taking into account voting for such polls through SMS via cell phones? The cellular market in India is huge. The data you presented does not take into account this factor. I don't know the current status but not long ago India had the 2nd largest SMS usage in the world after China.

Similarly, you are just assuming that for Tendulkar to lead an online poll against Bradman, Indians have to have influenced that poll. Why?

The correctness of the poll is not the point here. All I am implying is that an icon like Tendulkar will get Indians to vote in large numbers. Do you disagree?

[Sachinism]

Domaink the reason I say Indians heavily influence the results of the poll. I've been on many online communities and a lot of them are India-centric, or even desi-centric and on many occasions when such polls are around, there are people who encourage others to vote for whoever or whatever it may be. I myself in the past have done. I don't know the impact these things have on the polls, but it does happen

[DomainK]

Yes, those threads in those forums create the impression that Indians are influencing the polls in large numbers. And how many replied do you see there? A few hundred with the same 10/12 posters replying over and over? Do you really believe they make a difference? But they sure make it look like they are making a difference. @Digi: Indians voting for their favs and Indians influencing a poll are two different things. It usually comes across as a criminal manipulation of the online polls as if only Indians have voted someone or something to the top. Indians vote for Indians as much as other people vote for their favorites. But lets be clear that there are people who actually vote judicially. To assume that all the Indian votes made Tendulkar lead that poll is very unfair especially after I have clearly shown you that Australians have a far greater number of broadband connections than Indians. So we can be sure that a good number of Australians did in fact vote for Tendulkar. Just like the polls in ICF we see a good number of Indians voting for Bradman because thats what they feel is the right choice.

[Nova]

DK, you and Bossbhai make a valid point and I agree. I will not argue upon how many Indians participated in the recently concluded SRT/Bradman poll and who voted for whom. So keeping this example aside, the point I make is that generally icons like Tendulkar can mobilize masses in India even if it is only urban population. My contention is more towards Indians being able to vote in online polls through various means and demonstrate their influence. The correctness of any poll is not relevant in this case. Your correlation that Indians have less influence on online polls because India does not have enough internet connections is not entirely accurate. There are other ways to vote such as SMS too provided the poll is enabled for this facility. Another thing which confuses me is that how many worldwide online polls have taken place which concerns Indians? The BigB, Taj Mahal, and cricket related polls - this is all I know. Not many Indians are going to participate in a worldwide poll if the subject in hand is not related or close to your heart. On the other hand, when it comes to matters close to our hearts and when a nation's pride is involved, we rise to the occasion and vote. Voting for our favorites and influencing a poll is related and not different! People ultimately influence the outcome of a poll by voting on their favorites and there is nothing wrong with that. We cannot conclude if the outcome of a poll is biased or not because there is no raw data readily available. Hence the correctness of a poll cannot be established in many cases.

[CSK Fan]

But i always thought sites like cricinfo always take the weightage vote depending on the polulation of people who voted. They explained this while they held the online poll for best team

[Sachinism]

But i always thought sites like cricinfo always take the weightage vote depending on the polulation of people who voted. They explained this while they held the online poll for best team

I don't think SMH went to those lengths

[Clarke]

I believe our diaspora cannot significantly influence polls which have an active participation worldwide. As per wiki, the total strength would be around 25 million ... A large percentage of that would be people of Indian origin, in other words Chanderpaul/Amla's family might not have the same opinion as many of us. Cricket polls are something they can actually influence. If we're talking of the Bradman-Tendulkar debate, lets not forget that the population of Australia is similar to that of Mumbai metro area.