Monday, July 1, 2013

Latin American Presidents on Twitter

I wrote about Latin American presidents on Twitter a bit in May. As of today, here is a more detailed look at what presidents are doing.

Country
President
Status
#Followers
#Following
Type
Retweets
ARG
Kirchner
Active
2.1 million
54
All
None
BOL
Morales
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
BRAZIL
Rousseff
Inactive
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
CHILE
Piñera
Active
1 million
22,266
Policy
Common
COL
Santos
Active
1.9 million
5,856
Policy
Rare
CR
Chinchilla
Active
200,000
575
Policy
Common
CUBA
Castro
Active
92,000
36
Speeches
None
DR
Medina
Active
199,000
7,979
Policy
None
ECUA
Correa
Active
1 million
5
All
None
EL SAL
Funes
Inactive
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
GUATE
Pérez M
Active
87,000
52
Policy
Common
HOND
Lobo
Active
22,000
19
Policy
Rare
MEX
Peña
Active
1.9 million
159
Policy
Rare
NICA
Ortega
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
PAN
Martinelli
Active
346,000
752
All
Common
PARA
Franco
Active
66,000
198
Policy
None
PERU
Humala
Sporadic
626,000
60
Policy
None
URU
Mujica
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
VEN
Maduro
Active
1.2 million
34
All
Common






















Neither deductive nor inductive reasoning help us a lot here, unless there are patterns I am missing. Some initial thoughts:

  • A majority (about 3/4) of presidents are on Twitter, suggesting they see intrinsic value in it.
  • Ideology doesn't matter much. On the left Cristina Kirchner and Nicolás Maduro are very active, but all the presidents with no account or an inactive one are left or center-left. Nicolás Maduro attacks the opposition on Twitter, but so does Ricardo Martinelli.
  • At the same time, 3 out of the 4 presidents who tweet on all different types of topics rather than just summary of specific policies/events are left of center. Almost by definition, they have the most interesting tweets.
  • Presidents with a lot of followers tend to be in larger, wealthier countries (Rafael Correa is an exception).
  • Presidents who follow a lot of other people tend to have dull and dry tweets.
  • Ricardo Martinelli is entertaining and should have more followers. E.g. from June 27: Hoy un periodico mencionò que hoy hacia mi viaje 82.Viendo mi pasaporte veo 57 sellos de salida. hay que contar mejor.
Further, this tells us nothing about effectiveness. Presidents want to reach people and thereby gain support, but as yet I've not seen any evidence--perhaps with polling?--about whether it benefits them politically. An aide to Dilma Rousseff said that she thought Twitter is a "total waste of time." Clearly others disagree, but we don't have a good grip on how to evaluate that.

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