Top10 Rankings 2013 Summary Report

Research Note: World Leader Rankings on Twitter December 2013 10 politically controversial content, Chinese authorities use punitive measures to bring an appearance of accountability to its social media. Reportedly, a team at Weibo will actively delete content that might cause it problems with authorities -- each member is said to process 3 million posts per day. Weibo messages that are deemed libelous and are clicked on more than 5,000 times, “retweeted” over 500 times, could land the writer in jail for a breach of the law. The campaign began as President Xi Jinping’s newly installed government intensified its persecution of those marked as dissidents, showing no sign of wanting to loosen the party’s grip on public media. Surprisingly, Prime Minister David Cameron opened a Weibo account prior to his visit to China in 2013, prompting intrigued Weibo users to inquire as to why China’s own political leaders have stayed away from social media platforms, with one asking: “When will President Xi open a Weibo account?” Nearby communist holdouts to Twitter also include Laos and North Korea. In 2013, it is surprising that not all democracies in Europe have their leader represented via Twitter. Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt is not present, although some citizens predict she may open a Twitter account during the next parliamentary election. Interestingly, the Swedish government does not have an official Twitter presence, although via the account @Sweden citizens themselves become spokespersons. Instituted by the Svenska Institutet and VisitSweden, the project hands the official Twitter account to a new citizen every week to manage, with the goal to manifest Swedish diversity and progressiveness through their own lives and personalities. Also noteworthy, Swedish Foreign Minister @CarlBildt was recently identified as one of the most well-connected government officials on Twitter. In late 2013, the more fragile African countries of Zimbabwe, Angola and Chad let their accounts go dormant joining Djibouti, Gabon, and Liberia, which have not been active at all. Ukraine had an inactive Twitter account in 2013 as well as Pakistan, represented only by Ministry of Foreign Affairs accounts. Latin American countries which also have gone dormant include Guyana. Moreover, in 2013, eGovernment portals such as those in Morocco, Egypt, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Uzbekistan still remain the official Twitter presence, with no leader emerging. The only new government portal in 2013 was the eGovernment Portal of Belarus. As mentioned before, Egypt’s Government Services Portal is now the most active for Egypt with the bio line, “Provisional government appointed by military junta.” We have also seen some big downward movers outside of the Top 10 that include Finland, Nepal, Mali, and Libya, all which have changed their major Twitter account from 2012 due to an election or another shift. On a more positive note, while the adoption amongst world leaders has slowed, the number of people following their political leaders is growing at a healthy rate. In 2013, 83 million people followed a world leader or their national office. In 2012 it was 53 million. In 2011, the total was 24 million and a mere 10 million in 2010.

Top10 Rankings 2013 Summary Report

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