Virtually all political leaders and many governments have a presence on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. However, institutions are generally less popular than individual politicians. While most OECD countries allow government ministries to experiment with social media independently, only a minority have clear strategies or objectives. Guidelines exist for institutional social media use but less so for individual politicians. Uptake of social media by governments has been growing but engagement often remains low compared to social media usage among the general public in those countries. Few governments systematically measure the impacts of their social media activities.

1. Visit of the Regional School of Public
Administration (ReSPA) to the OECD
Paris, 3-4 February 2014
GOVERNMENTS AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Preliminary findings from OECD analysis
Arthur Mickoleit (E-government policy analyst)
OECD

2. Politicians and institutions are there
The majority of highest state institutions
in the OECD use either Twitter or Facebook.
Many use both.
27 out of 34
16 out of 34
(Institutional accounts for president, prime minister or entire
government. Source: OECD data collection.)
Rank
Name
1
2
Barack Obama
Pope Francis
3
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
4
5
6
7
Abdullah Gül
Rania Al Abdullah
S. B. Yudhoyono
Дмитрий Медведев
8 Cristina Kirchner
9 Enrique Peña Nieto
10 Juan Manuel Santos
Twitter account
@BarackObama
@Pontifex (all papal
accounts combined)
@RT_Erdogan &
@RecepT_Erdogan
@cbabdullahgul
@QueenRania
@SBYudhoyono
@MedvedevRussia &
@MedvedvRussiaE
@CFKArgentina
@EPN
@JuanManSantos
Followers
33,510,157
7,200,332
3,741,414
3,429,168
2,803,845
2,643,503
2,601,155
2,113,418
1,979,789
1,975,183
Virtually all political
leaders have a presence
on social media.
(Example: Top 10 world leaders by
Twitter followers. Source: Twiplomacy)

3. …and are very active

4. …but politicians are clearly more popular
than institutions
Popularity of highest state institutions and office-holders on Twitter, 2013
Share of government Twitter account followers per population

5. OECD government policies

6. Current status: “Laissez-faire” and
experimentation
Responsibilities for social media
policies and use are dispersed in
most OECD countries.
They mostly lie with individual
government ministries, agencies or
departments.
A minority of national
governments
formulate explicit
objectives or have a
government-wide
strategy for the use
of social media.
(Sources: OECD survey 2013.)

7. Guidelines: some for institutions, less for
individuals
(Source: OECD survey 2013.)

8. Uptake

9. People seem to care, to some degree
120k or 3%
37 million or 11.8%
(compared to overall population)
410k or 0.5%
1 million or 0.7%

10. But is this really satisfying?
Central government Twitter accounts in the UK and Chile
reach the equivalent of 4% and 3% of the domestic
population.
But, in the United Kingdom 57% of the population use
social media (Eurostat, 2012).
In Chile, up to 20% of the population (depending on the
source) use Twitter.
There seems to be much underused potential to better
reach the target group of active social media users.
(Source: OECD data collection.)

11. Impact
Are governments and leaders addressing the
right issues, the right people?

12. Government objectives or expectations
Public communications is no. 1 objective.
(out of 10 responding countries that indicate having specific objectives or expectations;
up to three answers allowed)
(Source: OECD survey 2013.)

13. Opportunities
• Re-creating trust
• Innovating public services
• Making the public administration more
efficient
• Managing emergencies and disasters

14. But do governments have what it takes to
create impact?
Few national governments
have a dedicated plan to
identify and develop the
skills and capacities needed
for better social media use.
Only 3 out of 22 surveyed
countries use metrics or
indicators to monitor the
impacts of social media use.
(Source: OECD survey 2013.)

15. Some questions
• Is it a must today for any government – national,
regional, local – to use social media?
• Is there a need for central government guidance
on form, content, resources, capacities?
• Can governments go beyond communication
towards using social media to solve underlying
problems in government, society, economy?
• Is anybody measuring the impacts?
• (How) do governments look abroad for
guidance?