  Increasingly online platforms are becoming popular arenas of political
amplification in India. With known instances of pre-organized coordinated
operations, researchers are questioning the legitimacy of political expression
and its consequences on the democratic processes in India. In this paper, we
study an evolved form of political amplification by first identifying and then
characterizing political campaigns with lexical mutations. By lexical mutation,
we mean content that is reframed, paraphrased, or altered while preserving the
same underlying message. Using multilingual embeddings and network analysis, we
detect over 3.8K political campaigns with text mutations spanning multiple
languages and social media platforms in India. By further assessing the
political leanings of accounts repeatedly involved in such amplification
campaigns, we contribute a broader understanding of how political amplification
is used across various political parties in India. Moreover, our temporal
analysis of the largest amplification campaigns suggests that political
campaigning can evolve as temporally ordered arguments and counter-arguments
between groups with competing political interests. Overall, our work
contributes insights into how lexical mutations can be leveraged to bypass the
platform manipulation policies and how such competing campaigning can provide
an exaggerated sense of political divide on Indian social media.

Social and Information Networks;Human-Computer Interaction