US President Barack Obama's India visit ruled media space, Internet

NEW DELHI: US President Barack Obama's three- day-visit to India dominated not just the media space but was also well covered on the Internet.

According to a senior Information and Broadcasting ministry functionary, it is estimated that during the time he was in India, leading channels on an average spent nearly 32 hours covering news related to the American President and the Republic Day celebrations, of which he was the chief guest.

"The amount of time that private channels on an average devoted to the visit is almost similar to the time that DD News gave to it," the official added.

Obama's visit was also widely disseminated and followed on social media. I&B ministry had created a special blog on Obama's visit, which was widely accessed by Internet users, officials said.

The Republic Day celebrations were live-streamed by the ministry on YouTube, which was viewed 11.83 lakh times.

The ministry had also created a hashtag -- #IndiaUSA -- for the visit, which had a reach of 5.25 lakh accounts. The potential reach of I&B ministry's posts on Facebook was about 10 lakh accounts between January 25-27, 2015.

The SoundCloud platform of All-India Radio uploaded audio stories related to the visit with more than than 800 plays registered for some of these.

The total number of tweets published by various accounts of I&B ministry on Obama's visit was 291 and these were then re-tweeted 12,956 times, officials said.

Also, the prime minister's ' Mann ki Baat' programme, whose latest edition featured Obama, was also widely followed. The I&B ministry is now planning to bring out an e-book on it as suggested by the prime minister. I&B Secretary Bimal Julka had earlier said that the ministry would decide on the modalities for bringing out an e-book soon.

"There should be an e-book made of the talk between Barack and me today. I hope the organisers of Mann Ki Baat will release this e-book," Modi had said during the talk yesterday.