#twitteer

World leaders vie for attention, connections and followers on Twitter, that’s the latest finding of Burson-Marsteller’s Twiplomacy study 2014, an annual global study looking at the use of Twitter by heads of state and government and ministers of foreign affairs.

While some heads of state and government continue to amass large followings, foreign ministers have established a virtual diplomatic network by following each other on the social media platform.

For many diplomats Twitter has become a powerful channel for digital diplomacy and 21st century statecraft and not all Twitter exchanges are diplomatic, real world differences are spilling over reflected on Twitter and sometimes end up in hashtag wars.

“I am a firm believer in the power of technology and social media to communicate with people across the world,” India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote in his inaugural message on his new website. Within weeks of his election in May 2014, the @NarendraModi account has moved into the top four most followed Twitter accounts of world leaders with close to five million followers.

More than half of the world’s foreign ministers and their institutions are active on the social networking site. Twitter has become an indispensable diplomatic networking and communication tool. As Finnish Prime Minister @AlexStubb wrote in a tweet in March 2014: “Most people who criticize Twitter are often not on it. I love this place. Best source of info. Great way to stay tuned and communicate.”

As of 25 June 2014, the vast majority (83 percent) of the 193 UN member countries have a presence on Twitter. More than two-thirds (68 percent) of all heads of state and heads of government have personal accounts on the social network.

Most Followed World Leaders

Since his election in late May 2014, India’s new Prime Minister @NarendraModi has skyrocketed into fourth place, surpassing the the @WhiteHouse on 25 June 2014 and dropping Turkey’s President Abdullah Gül (@cbabdullahgul) and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (@RT_Erdogan) into sixth and seventh place with more than 4 million followers each. Modi still has a ways to go to best U.S. President @BarackObama, who tops the world-leader list with a colossal 43.7 million followers, with Pope Francis @Pontifex) with 14 million followers on his nine different language accounts and Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono @SBYudhoyono, who has more than five million followers and surpassed President Obama’s official administration account @WhiteHouse on 13 February 2014.

In Latin America Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the President of Argentina @CFKArgentina is slightly ahead of Colombia’s President @JuanManSantos with 2,894,864 and 2,885,752 followers respectively. Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto @EPN, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff @dilmabr and Venezuela’s @NicolasMaduro complete the Latin American top five, with more than two million followers each.

Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta @UKenyatta is Africa’s most followed president with 457,307 followers, ahead of Rwanda’s @PaulKagame (407,515

followers) and South Africa’s Jacob Zuma (@SAPresident) (325,876 followers).

  Turkey’s @Ahmet_Davutoglu is the most followed foreign minister with 1,511,772 followers, ahead of India’s @SushmaSwaraj (1,274,704 followers) and the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates @ABZayed (1,201,364 followers)

Are they tweeting themselves?

All but one of the G20 governments have an official Twitter presence and six of the G7 leaders have a personal Twitter account. However, few world leaders are actually doing their own tweeting.

Notable exceptions include Estonian President Toomas Henrik Ilves (@IlvesToomas) and UK Foreign Minister @WilliamJHague who bluntly tweeted: “#Twitter is a great way of making our staff nervous by communicating directly!”

Swedish Foreign Minister @CarlBildt does not check his tweets with his staff before sending, and in early 2014 he got into a memorable Twitter spat with the Russian foreign ministry about Ukraine.

Quite a number of world leaders occasionally tweet themselves during Twitter chats, answering a selection of questions sent by their followers. During his last Twitter chat Belgian Prime Minister @ElioDiRupoadmitted that he liked his “fries without mayonnaise”.

Finnish Prime Minister designate, @AlexStubb, who is known for sharing his athletic exploits on Twitter and his penchant for selfies, even co-authored an e-book in Finnish about what to do on Twitter and some of his tweets were even put to music.

Tweeting personally and in a language that is not your own, can put world leaders at risk of a faux pas, as Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders can testify after his first tweet in English read: “i’m coming on twitter”.

Hashtag Diplomacy

Over the past year, foreign ministries and world leaders have used hashtags to promote specific issues, be it #BringBackOurGirls or #ENDViolence against children as Slovenia’s Foreign Minister Karl Erjavec did.

In September 2013 the Cuban foreign ministry @CubaMINREX used the hashtag #GiveMeFive to push for the release of five (#LosCinco) Cuban intelligence officers convicted in Miami of conspiracy to commit espionage in the United States.

At the end of March 2014, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki posted a picture with the hashtag #UnitedForUkraine, a campaign that was coordinated with a number of Western allies including the UK Foreign Office, Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, the Swedish and the Ukrainian foreign ministries. Within days the hashtag had been tweeted more than 400 times garnering 23,000 retweets.

The hashtag campaign also caught the eye of the Russian foreign ministry which started to use the same hashtag. The @MFA_Russia and @MID_RF accounts used the hashtag more than 200 times garnering 8,000 retweets. This was probably the first “hashtag battle” on Twitter where opposing sides try to raise awareness for the same issue.

The foreign ministry in Moscow also initiated its own hashtag #BringBackOurBoys to press for the release of two journalists captured in eastern Ukraine.

Of course, hashtags alone will not bring back the girls from captivity in Nigeria or bring peace to Ukraine. However they serve as a powerful rallying cry on specific issues and causes, and help give them international recognition as a trending topic on Twitter.

Are They Conversational?

Twitter allows citizens direct access to their leaders. Anyone can @mention a world leader on Twitter. Whether the world leader answers is another question, although a select few do reply to their followers’ @mentions.

African leaders seem to use Twitter solely to converse with their followers. Ugandan Prime Minister @AmamaMbabazi is the most conversational world leader with 95 percent of his tweets being @replies to other Twitter users.

The second most conversational leader is Rwanda’s President @PaulKagame who often gets into memorable Twitter exchanges with his critics. Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa (@MashiRafael), Rwanda’s Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo (@LMushikiwabo) and Norway’s Prime Minister @Erna_Solberg complete the top five list.

Most Listed World Leader

Another sign of Twitter popularity is the number of times an account appears on a Twitter list. Barack Obama is the most listed world leader appearing on 207,722 Twitter lists. The @WhiteHouse and Russia’s Prime Minister @MedvedevRussia appear on 58,914 and 45,779 lists respectively. The Japanese government’s @Kantei_Saigai account is listed 32,867 times and Jordan’s @QueenRania is listed 20,034 times.

The UK government (@Number10gov), Pope Francis (@Pontifex), Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff (@dilmabr), the U.S. State Department (@StateDept), Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina), Turkey’s President Abdullah Gül (@cbabdullahgul), India’s @NarendraModi, Venezuela’s @NicolasMaduro and Colombia’s @JuanManSantos all appear on over 10,000 Twitter lists.

When Did They Start Tweeting?

Barack Obama was the first world leader to set up a Twitter account on 5 March 2007 (at the time as Senator Obama) as user #813,286 when he was still a senator. Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN), Belgian Prime Minister @ElioDiRupo, Canadian Prime Minister @PMHarper and the U.S. State Department (@StateDept) are among the early adopters having signed up to the micro-blogging service in 2007.

Most world leaders followed suit in 2010 and 2011. The latest to have joined the Twitterverse in May 2014, are the Spanish Royal Household @CasaReal, the Moroccan Foreign Ministry (@MarocDiplomatie) and Malawi’s new President Peter Mutharika (@ProfMutharika).

Thirty-one accounts are inactive and have never sent a single tweet, and seven are protected accounts, including those of outgoing Finnish Prime Minister @JyrkiKatainen and Zambia’s @MichaelSata. Two hundred forty nine accounts have been officially verified by Twitter, giving them a blue star of appreciation on their Twitter profiles.

Most Active Twitter Accounts