The 2013 Twiplomacy study reveals that 77.7% of world leaders utilize Twitter, with various levels of engagement and connectivity among them; 68% have mutual connections with peers. Notably, Barack Obama has the highest follower count but the least connections, while Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is the most connected. The study illustrates Twitter's role as a significant communication tool for leaders across the globe, facilitating direct interaction with citizens and establishing a digital presence for governments.

1. Twiplomacy Study 2013
The Best connected World Leaders on Twitter
Twiplomacy is the leading global study of world leaders on Twitter. The governments
of more than three-quarters (77.7%) of the 193 UN member countries have a
presence on Twitter: Almost half of the 505 accounts analysed are personal accounts
of heads of state, heads of government and ministers of foreign affairs; a third of
these world leaders tweet themselves, but very few on a regular basis.
This study shows that Twitter has become
a formidable communication tool allowing
the broadcast of short messages to
millions of followers. At the same time the
social network invites direct interaction
between users and two-thirds (68%) of
world leaders have made mutual
connections with their peers.
A quarter of world leaders and
governments unilaterally follow President Barack Obama and the White House, but
@BarackObama and the @WhiteHouse have established mutual Twitter relations
with only four other world leaders.
Swedish Foreign Minister @CarlBildt is the best connected world leader, mutually
following 44 peers. Ugandan Prime Minister @AmamaMbabazi is the most
conversational world leader with 96% of his tweets being @replies to other Twitter
users.
Many governments also use Twitter as an automated news feed from their website or
Facebook page. As of 1 July 2013 the 505 accounts enjoyed a combined following of
105,733,356.
More than two-thirds of African governments have a presence on Twitter and African
leaders are generally among the most conversational Twitter users. Twitter is very
popular among Latin American leaders where almost all governments have a Twitter
presence with very large numbers of followers.
Most Latin American presidents have personal accounts and they frequently
communicate with each other publically on Twitter such as Argentina's President
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner @CFKArgentina, who is Latin America's most
followed leader with over 2.1 million followers
Twitter is also becoming the communication tool of choice for three-quarters of Asian
governments. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono @SBYudhoyono
has enjoyed phenomenal follower growth over the past 2.5 months. Australia’s Prime

2. Minister Kevin Rudd @KRuddMP is among the most conversational leaders,
frequently sharing personal moments on Twitter.

3. Executive Summary
Over the past five years, Twitter has become a new way to communicate with world
leaders and a way for these leaders to communicate with each other. On the one
hand, it allows heads of state and government and foreign ministers to broadcast
their daily activities to an ever-growing audience; on the other, it 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 actually reply
to their followers’ @mentions.
“Using social media channels is a way for a country to punch above its weight” said
former Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
@AlecJRoss in February 2013. Indeed a number of governments are using Twitter to
put themselves on the proverbial digital map, to broadcast their messages to a global
audience and to connect with their peers around the world.
Three quarters of all governments are on Twitter
The study found that more than three-quarters (77.7%)
of world leaders have a Twitter account. Presidents,
prime ministers, foreign ministers or their respective
administrations in 153 countries have a presence on
Twitter. All 45 European governments and all South
American countries except Suriname now have an
official Twitter presence. In North America, Asia and
Africa 79%, 76% and 71% of all governments are
using the micro-blogging service. In Oceania
governments in only four out of the 14 countries (i.e.
38.4% of governments) have a Twitter presence.
U.S. President @BarackObama is still the most
followed world leader on Twitter with 33,510,157
followers as of 1 July 2013 and is the fourth most
popular account in the Twitterverse, just behind Lady
Gaga. Pope Francis is the second most followed world
leader with 7,200,332 followers on his nine different
@Pontifex accounts. The White House is in third
position with 4,018,510 followers - @WhiteHouse and
the @LaCasaBianca accounts combined. Turkish
President Abdullah Gül (@cbabdullahgul) and Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (@RT_Erdogan) are
among the top five most followed world leaders with
3.4 million followers each.
Queen Rania of Jordan (@QueenRania), Indonesia's
president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

4. (@SBYudhoyono), Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussia &
@MedvedevRussiae), the UK government (@Number10gov), and Argentina's
Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina) complete the top 10 list of most followed leaders
with more than two million followers each. Twenty-two world leader accounts have
more than one million followers. As of 1 July 2013 all 505 accounts of world leaders
together had 105,733,356 followers.
Barack Obama is the Least Connected
More important than the number of followers are
the connections between these world leaders on
Twitter to allow which allows for direct private
interactions. @BarackObama was the first world
leader to join Twitter, he is the most followed, the
most listed and following a record 661,084 other
Twitter users, but he is only following two other
world leaders. The U.S. president and the U.S.
government accounts might be among the most
followed but they are the least connected.
@BarackObama, the @WhiteHouse and the
@StateDept are followed by 148, 132 and 99
peers respectively, however they only follow four
world leaders, namely Russia's Prime Minister
@MedvedevRussiae, the UK government
@Number10gov, Norway's Prime Minister
@JensStoltenberg and Chile's President
@SebastianPinera. Interestingly the State
Department @StateDept does not follow any other
foreign service.
Two-thirds (68%) of world leaders have
established mutual connections with their peers
on Twitter. Swedish Foreign Minister @CarlBildt is
the best connected world leader, mutually
following 44 peers. The European External Action
Service (@eu_eeas), the EU's Foreign & Security
Policy Service led by Catherine Ashton comes
second with 36 mutual connections to other world
leaders; the Polish Foreign Ministry is third with 31
mutual connections, followed by the Foreign
Office and the French Foreign Ministry with 27
and 26 mutual connections respectively. Of the
505 accounts analyzed, 161 don't have any mutual connections on Twitter.

5. Twitter is sometimes used by small nations to increase their global visibility and tweet
on a level playing field with other nations. Several governments have recognized the
power of Twitter relations, actively seeking to connect with their peers around the
world. The Croatian government (@VladaRH) unilaterally follows 195 other world
leaders' accounts. The Foreign Minister of Iceland, which started its Twitter journey
on 19 March 2013, follows 142 peers. The Foreign Ministries of Norway, Sweden and
Kosovo unilaterally follow more than 80 other leaders and foreign ministries in hopes
that they will return the favour. Twenty-two accounts don't follow any other world
leaders and are not followed by any other world leader. The Pope is only following
the other papal accounts. On average, world leaders follow eight other peers.
All world leaders combined are following 2,058,109 other Twitter users. The majority
of this figure, 78%, can be attributed to the five accounts that follow most other
Twitter users, namely @BarackObama (661,084), @KRuddMP (420,311),
@Number10gov (371,578), @bluehousekorea (96,886), @GH_PARK (65,229) all of
which had at some point automatic following enabled and were automatically
following anyone who followed them. This practice has been disused as it didn’t
improve the quality of the followers or the interaction.
Pope Francis the most influential
“Four more years.” @BarackObama’s
Twitter picture sent on the day after the
U.S. presidential election has become the
most popular tweet ever, retweeted
806,066 times. Despite his massive
following, his tweets are on average only
retweeted 2,309 times. By this standard,
Pope Francis is by far the most influential
tweep with 11,116 retweets for every tweet
he sends on his Spanish account. His English tweets receive on average 8,219
retweets. Venezuela's President @NicolasMaduro gets on average 4,767 retweets
per tweet. Six world leaders have sent at least one tweet which was retweeted over
10,000 times: Indonesia’s President @SBYudhoyono, UK Prime Minister
@David_Cameron, US Secretary of State @JohnKerry, Japan’s government
@kantei, Venezuela’s President @NicolasMaduro and ousted Egyptian President
@MuhammadMorsi.
The @Pontifex account which started on
12 December 2012 under Pope Emeritus
Benedict XVI has seen phenomenal
Twitter growth over the past six months,
becoming the second most followed world
leader. His Twitter success is dwarfed by
the exponential growth of the Twitter
@BarackObama: Four more years.

6. accounts of Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro and Indonesian President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono, who both signed up to the micro-blogging service in March
2013 and now rank among the top 20 most followed world leaders.
Are they tweeting themselves?
All but one of the G20 governments have
an official Twitter presence and seven of
the G8 leaders have a personal Twitter
account, however few of them are tweeting
personally. French President François
Hollande @FHollande and Brazil’s
President Dilma Rousseff @DilmaBR even
suspended their Twitter activity once
elected. Almost half of the accounts
featured in the study are personal
accounts: 90 heads of state, 61 heads of government and 53 foreign ministers have
personal accounts on Twitter and a third of these do tweet themselves, but only 14
tweet on a regular basis. In Germany and Switzerland, the government spokesperson
is the official Twitter representative for the head of government and both institutional
accounts (@RegSprecher and @BRSprecher) have been included in this study.
Are they conversational?
Ugandan Prime Minister @AmamaMbabazi
is the most conversational world leader with
96% of his tweets being @replies to other
Twitter users. The second most
conversational leader is Rwanda's
President @PaulKagame. Swedish Foreign
Minister Carl Bildt comes third with his
@fragaCarlBildt “Ask-Carl-Bildt” account,
which is exclusively used for Twitter chats.
On his Swedish account (@cbildt) Carl Bildt
is also replying to other Twitter users in
every second tweet. Ecuador's Rafael
Correa and Rwanda's Foreign Minister
Louise Mushikiwabo complete the top five list.
Most Listed World Leader
A sure sign of influence is the number of times a person appears in a Twitter list.
Barack Obama is the most listed world leader appearing on 195,304 Twitter lists. The
@WhiteHouse and Russia's Prime Minister @MedvedevRussia appear on 54,225
and 51,122 lists respectively. The Japanese' government’s @Kantei_Saigai account
is listed 31,401 times. Jordan’s @QueenRania, the UK government @Number10gov,
@CarlBildt: Spent half an hour answering questions on Twitter
following the debate in Parliament.

7. Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff @dilmabr, Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner
@CFKArgentina, the US State Department @StateDept, Turkey’s President Abdullah
Gül @cbabdullahgul and Pope Francis @Pontifex all appear on over 10,000 Twitter
lists.
When did they start Tweeting?
Barack Obama was the first world leader to sign up to Twitter on 5 March 2007 as
user #813,286. Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto @EPN, Belgian Prime
Minister @ElioDiRupo, Canadian Prime Minister @PMHarper and the US State
Department @StateDept are among the early adopters having signed up to the
micro-blogging service in 2007. Most world leaders followed suite in 2011 and 2010.
The last to join the Twitterverse are Moldovan Prime Minister Iurie Leancă,
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Slovakia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in
June 2013.
Most active Twitter Accounts
All world leaders combined have sent 1,081,728
tweets. The Venezuelan presidency
@PresidencialVen has sent more than 34,000
tweets averaging more than 40 tweets each day.
The @StateDept places second with 29,259 sent
tweets. Venezuela's Foreign Ministry
@vencancilleria is third with 21,612 and Costa
Rica's presidency @presidenciacr is fourth (19,662
tweets sent).
World leaders tweet in 48 different languages. One
hundred seventy-six English language accounts
have sent 316,728 tweets to a combined following
of 52,617,262 followers. However, the 60 Spanish
language accounts are the most prolific having sent
342,121 tweets to 18,158,992 followers. 44
accounts tweet in French (69,036 tweets), 38 in
Arabic (41,299 tweets), 14 in Russian (34,705
tweets), 12 in Portuguese, eight in Italian, German and Croatian respectively.
405 are active accounts, 79 are dormant accounts, 17 are inactive accounts and
have never sent a single tweet and four are protected accounts, namely those of
Afghan President Hamid Karzai @PHamidKarzai, Armenian President
@SerzhSargsyan, Finnish Prime Minister @JyrkiKatainen and Zambia’s
@MichaelSata. 167 accounts have been officially verified by Twitter, giving them a
blue star of appreciation on their Twitter profile.
@AlexStubb: Never lie on twitter. Vertical sleep
action. #euco #mff

8. Twitter Lists
The vast majority of accounts (85%) have not created any Twitter lists, which are
useful to list other government agencies or diplomatic missions abroad. Israel’s
Foreign Office has the most public Twitter lists with 15 lists on the @Israel account
and eight on the @IsraelMFA account. The @EU_Commission maintains 12 lists, the
@StateDept maintains eight lists and the @ForeignOffice and Malaysia’s Prime
Minister @NajibRazak seven lists respectively The UK @ForeignOffice lists 194
ambassadors, embassies, consulates and missions on Twitter followed by the Polish
Foreign Ministry @PolandMFA, (150), Israel’s Foreign Ministry @IsraelMFA (127),
the US State Department @StateDept (127) and the Swedish Foreign Ministry
@SweMFA (116).
Twitter Design
World leaders have not taken advantage of
Twitter’s design yet. While 54% of all
analyzed accounts have a custom
background only 37% have a custom Twitter
header which appears on mobile devices.
Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj
makes the best use of pictures on his Twitter
profile and in his Twitter stream showing him
on horseback or taming a camel in the vast
steppes of Mongolia. Finland’s Minister for
Europe and Foreign Trade, Alexander Stubb, is one of Twiplomacy’s stars and “tries
not to take himself too seriously...”. During one of the long all night negotiations in
Brussels he posted a picture of himself having a “vertical nap” while waiting for the
results.
Twitter Client
Almost half of the world leaders use Twitter's website to tweet. Twitter clients
Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are used by 8% and 4% respectively. Eight percent tweet
their status updates directly from Facebook and 9% 'tweet on the go' from an iPhone
or an iPad. Five world leaders have “made a scene” and created six-second Vine
videos such as the French government during official state visits.
About the Study
“Twiplomacy” is a study of the use of Twitter by world leaders, conducted by leading
global public relations and communications firm Burson-Marsteller.
Burson-Marsteller identified Twitter accounts of 505 heads of state and government,
foreign ministers and their institutions in 153 countries worldwide. Burson-Marsteller
expanded the breadth of the Twiplomacy study in 2013 with 315 new accounts,
including 148 accounts of heads of state and government and 167 accounts of

9. Foreign Ministers and Foreign Ministries. The study has also added 30 more
countries, for a total of 153 countries.
The study analyzes each leader’s Twitter profiles, tweet history, and their
connections with each other. Data used was taken in July 2013 using Twitonomy.
More than 50 variables were considered, including: tweets, following, followers,
listed, the date the user joined Twitter, ratio followers/following, ratio listed/100
followers, tweets/day, retweets, % of retweets, user @mentions, average number of
@mentions/tweet, @replies, % of @replies, links, average number of links/tweet,
hashtags, average number of hashtags/tweet, tweets retweeted, proportion of tweets
retweeted by others, total number of tweets retweeted, average number of tweets
retweeted, users most retweeted, users most replied to, users most mentioned,
hashtags most used, platforms most tweeted from.
Burson-Marsteller also used Twitonomy to pull together the entire Tweet history for
each account to find the first and the most popular tweet. (When the account had
more than 3,200 tweets it was sometimes impossible to find their first tweet).
Burson-Marsteller also looked at each account to see if it had a header and/or a
background, if the account is dormant, active or protected and if the world leader
tweets personally. We checked in which language the account tweets and checked
for the presence of Twitter lists.
Burson-Marsteller used Doesfollow.com to analyze Twitter relations between world
leaders and Wordle and Tagxedo to create tag clouds of each feeds most frequently
used terms.
Acknowledgements
A big thank you to all of Burson-Marsteller’s offices and particularly Aisha Allee-
Mosaheb, Ben Aryeetey, Jorė Astrauskaitė, Andrés Ávila, Paula Bakaj, Nissan
Balaban, Raúl Baz, Timothée Beckert, Mario Boada, Kjetil Brun, Elaine Cameron,
Cely Carmo, Maria Teresa Ceruti, Leandro Cervantes, Damon Clinkscales, Sarah
Cole, Katia Consentino, Paul Cordasco, Irma Cordella, Fabio Couto, Toni Cowan-
Brown, Gustav Dahlgren, Sara de la Torre, David Folley, Maria Alejandra Galdo,
Desiree Gomes, Karl Haechler, Jessica Hedberg, Richard Hemmer, Sam Jackson,
Jan Jogis, Adam Kaliszewski, Saehee Kim, Gunars Klegers, Tereza Kobelkova,
Verónica Lara, Mariana Maldonado, Abha Malpani, Ian McCabe, Anibal Nogueira,
Eve Noone, Mladen Panić, Lauren Papp, Vitor Pavarini, Ana Pineres, Carlos
Rabago, Martin Rubagumya, Claudia Santamaria, Cynthia Sarafianou, Ayşegül
Seferoğlu, Stine Soerensen, Anke Stockhausen, Kelsey Suemnicht, Alexis Tadifo,
Massimiliano Terzini, Thomas van Oortmerssen, Katarina Wallin Bureau, Jordan
Watson, Emma Weedon, Wulfran Yao, Marek Zaremba-Pike, and Mohamed
Zourkaleini who have helped compile this study.
Matthias Lüfkens

10. @Twiplomacy
Matthias.Luefkens@bm.com
Geneva, 24 July 2013