World Leaders on Twitter - Top10 Rankings

Research Note: World Leader Rankings on Twitter August 2011 5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 The president of the Philippines Benigno Aquino III is showing the strongest social media presence of any other Asian leader. When his predecessor Gloria Arroyo left office in 2010 she had 500,000 fewer followers than Aquino has currently! A question does arise though: is the president engaging with his constituents? Practically all the other leaders in the top 10 have Klout scores between 70 and 80. Aquino‟s score is 57. President Abdullah Gül of Turkey increased his following by over 500,000 people this year. In May, President Gül announced on his Twitter account, “In my opinion, there should be no restrictions on freedom. People should be able to surf the Internet freely.” The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, also uses Twitter with 286,000 followers. When Argentinean President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner appeared on Twitter in the second half of 2010, the country‟s traditional media channels spread her first tweets like wildfire, which encouraged the people of Argentina to join Twitter out of curiosity. In fact, the number of accounts increased by 2,500% in 2010, according to social media analysis Grupo EcuaLink. In the months that followed, Twitter became one of the main political battlegrounds in Argentina between politicians and citizens. Through Twitter, the president and her cabinet have been met by the opposition with debate which has been more participative, transparent and horizontal that in the past. According to digital media experts in Argentina, Twitter plays a crucial role in the government‟s communication strategy with the citizenship and even though traditional media in that country is still important, there is said to be less need for a middleman now. Chilean president Sebastián Piñera built a very strong relationship with his followers early on in his presidency by providing crucial information about a devastating earthquake, the trapped miners, and his country‟s Bicentennial events. In Chile the entire government has now been put on Twitter and its 22 ministers are all mutually following each other. Overall, 2011 results show that it is in Latin America where the heads of state and government are the most active. This is not entirely due to the miraculous rescue of the “miners of Chile and the miners of God,” to quote a tweet from the Argentinean president. In Dec. 2010 and into 2011, the Middle East experienced what is now known as The Arab Spring, a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world. Queen Rania, the queen consort of the King of Jordan, although not appearing on our list, now has over 1.6 million followers. This year her presence on Twitter has been low key and her overall image altered, which some interpret as a response to the challenge thrown up by the wave of political unrest in the region and to public criticism she faced this spring through an open letter signed by Jordanian tribal letters. The queen now appears more focused on charitable and educational projects. It seems that Jordan has effectively marginalized a very powerful media asset. Overall, it appears that Middle Eastern leaders are not yet taking advantage of Twitter as a tool to engage with their people who are in point of fact “making frenetic use of social media to oust them one by one” according to commentators. The Middle East does not share the same increase in numbers that Latin American leaders experienced in 2011.