The Anatomy of a Debate

Data : @arpit | Article/Viz : @vivek

"... From a pseudo secularist, you've become a traitor now..."

-

One panelist to another,

Republic TV Debate

26th Sep 2017

What does it mean when one calls his fellow citizen a "traitor"? When he/she labels another an "intellectual terrorist"? What does it say about us, when the people in question are panelists of a primetime debate show on India's most watched english news channel? The implication of betrayal towards the state was not a label used in civil discourse, until very recently. And the bar to make claims without credible, independently verifiable facts, never lower. There are no people-you-disagree-with, anymore - only "sikulars", "man-hating feminazis" and "bhakts". But I have to agree, a Mortal Kombat cage match between a trishool wielding bhakt and a commie-sympathizing-sikular makes for great TV.

The Debate

If you are in India and haven't heard of Arnab Goswami by now, you must be living under a literal rock. And you must be lucky. We all hear/discuss about how he shouts a lot, in an endearing way, because he speaks truth to power, amirite? No, he doesn't. Arnab succeeds in confusing his viewers, which he then uses to thrust his opinion as truth. It is not so much his content, but his method that makes him most effective. Which is why, we decided to distil his content from his method. The critique is not so much against what Arnab or the panelists say, but how they go about doing it. A win at this point is convincing people on both sides of the debate that this is probably not how we should talk to each other. We picked one debate, and decided to beat it to death. Here's the link to the video. Watch it at the risk of your own sanity. Arnab uses 4 broad tools, to accomplish his goal in every debate :

Shouting over each other to ensure all arguments seem equally obvious, and none are comprehensible Dedicating a disproportionate amount of time to the side he favours , to do more than just ensure (an often false) equivalency of ideas Using certain terms and not using certain terms , repeatedly, for better recall Use Red Herring arguments to direct the debate from anything remotely relevant, and use Ad Hominem attacks when they fail

Chapter 1 : The Epidemic of Speaking Over Eachother

But wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense. Total Speech time adds up to 150.7% of the show! Exactly. It does add up to that, which brings us to this.

More than one person speaks at a time, for a whopping 59.4% of the debate. and all three parties - Arnab, pro-Arnab, and anti-Arnab - speak all at once for a mindnumbing 13.39% of the debate.

The show lasts for 48.02 mins, out of which the first 8.17 mins are occupied by an intro video followed by a reporter. The actual debate is 39.8 mins long, out of which there is 37.3 mins of speaking time. The speaking time percentages of these entities are calculated against 37.3 mins.

Chapter 2 : More Talk ≠ More Truth

Despite what must be very close to the metaphorical fish market, it appears like all parties get equal screen time, right? They do, but the insidious aspect of Arnab debates is that he clearly picks a side, sometimes even championing it better than the panelists. So the above Venn diagram needs to be redrawn.

Now, the difference in screen time becomes clear. Arnab and team has more than 3 times the screen time as his opponents, whenever they are not shouting over each other. Also, it has to be mentioned that 2 panelists who were anti-arnab did not (get to) say a single word in the entire debate.

Chapter 3 : Hotwords

Pakistan Myanmar Terror Pseudo Refugee Illegal Immigrant Hindu Muslim Words uttered, especially across different view-points, are insightful in understanding priority and the general narrative of the debate. In this particular debate, Arnab mentioned "Pakistan" 21 times, and Myanmar a mere 6 times. The word "Terror" was uttered 37 times, and was spread out throughout the debate. He also loves the words "Pseudo" for some reason. Though the choice of hotwords under observation are subjective, the distribution of the chosen words do paint a picture of the tone of the debate. An extremely telling example of this is that Rohingyas were referred to as "Illegal Immigrants" 10 times by Arnab and team, whereas they were referred to as "Refugees" a total of zero times. Despite there being a loss of context with measuring word frequency (whether speakers were objecting to the use of the word or using it themselves), it certainly speaks volumes about concepts and entities that were integral to the discussion. [There were 3 entities that were also frequent but weren't observed - "Rohingya", "India" and "Indian Government".]

Chapter 4 : Red-herrings, Ad Hominems and the Kool-Aid

We're trying to shed some light on each of these methods, with some data[0].

Red herring and hyperbole are Arnab's go-to methods to rile up the panelists. He heckles them with statements such as "You should be ashamed" and "I will continue till you muster the courage to reply". He says things like "The Rohingya will come to every Indian city and take over", which is silly because Bangalore will be under water by the time they get here. His panelists make him proud with their smoke-screens and evasions. Shubhrashta bellowed "THIS IS NONSENSE!" 6 times, when Dinesh Varshey was speaking. Dinesh Varshey screamed "SHUT UP ARNAB GOSWAMI!" throughout the final few minutes of the debate.

Almost all panelists evade legitimate questions with counter questions. "Aren't you concerned about Rohingyas being murdered?" is met with "Aren't you concerned about Kashmiri Pandits being murdered?". Arnab especially answers legitimate questions with ridicule and mockery. "Aap kahenge Rohingya terrorist athithi devo bhava", was his response to a question about why India did not treat refugees from other conflict regions with the same contempt and hate.

Epilogue : Now what?

[0]We are well aware that any conclusion drawn from this piece is statistically insignificant. This is a breakdown of one debate in all its glory, hoping it inspires a deeper inspection, by anyone interested. To give some sense of direction, we have a few things we want to definitely do - like benchmark against other debate shows, especially international ones and get aggregate statistics over many debates of the same show. But the biggest challenge is generating this data. Here's a link to the Youtube Annotator Arpit built, to easily annotate the video as you're watching it.

Click here if you want to know about future plans for this analysis.

Do ping me on vivekaithal44[at]gmail[dot]com if you want to discuss this further.