NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Almost 90
percent of all governments have an official Facebook presence, and
87 heads of state, 82 heads of government and 51 foreign ministers
maintain personal pages on the platform, according to a new study
by Burson-Marsteller, a leading global public relations and
communications firm.
Based on data collected in January
2016, the World Leaders on Facebook study – the first
installment of the 2016 edition of Burson-Marsteller's annual
Twiplomacy study – found that 169 of the 193 UN member states
maintain an official Facebook page.
"This first study about governments' use of Facebook provides
valuable insights about the communications practices of political
leaders around the world," said Donald A.
Baer, Worldwide Chair and CEO, Burson-Marsteller. "There is
a great deal corporations, NGOs and other sectors can learn from
the ways governments and their leaders use Facebook. By showing
their human side, they are creating a closer relationship with
their citizens."
Over the past eight years, Facebook has become the platform of
choice for world leaders and governments to engage with their
voters and constituents. On January 4,
2016, all of the world leaders combined had accumulated a
total of 230,489,257 'likes' and had published a total of 302,456
posts.
"This study illustrates that governments are becoming savvier
and more professional in the use of social media. An encouraging
finding from this study is that, for governments, it seems that
quality trumps quantity in terms of what they post," said
Jeremy Galbraith, CEO of
Burson-Marsteller Europe,
Middle East & Africa and Global Chief Strategy Officer. "It
is also very refreshing to see that successful politicians on
Facebook behave just like any other Facebook user, sharing pictures
of their home life, holidays and their children."
U.S. President Barack Obama is the most popular world leader on
Facebook with 46 million likes on his Barack Obama campaign page.
Obama is closely followed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
with more than 31 million fans on his personal Narendra Modi page
and 10.1 million fans on his institutional PMO India page, which is
in third position. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Egyptian President Abdel
Fattah el-Sisi complete the top five list of the most popular world
leaders with more than 5 million likes each.
In November 2015, the U.S.
administration set up an official institutional page for the
President of the United States
(/POTUS) which has since attracted 1.3 million likes in less than
two months and is already among the 30 most popular pages of world
leaders.
Modi has the most interactive fans, with more than 200 million
interactions in his Facebook 'community' in 2015 (the total number
of post likes, comments and shares), more than five times as many
as Obama. However, the White House's posts, while attracting far
fewer likes than Modi, are nevertheless shared more frequently.
Argentina's new President,
Mauricio Macri, is the most engaged
world leader and has become the undisputed 'Facebook
president' with a double digit engagement rate relative to the
number of page likes of almost 12 percent.
The Facebook page of the Presidency of the Dominican Republic is the most prolific page,
with an average of more than 27 posts per day in 2015. Almost as
prolific are the governments of Botswana and the
Philippines, each with an average of more than 20 posts per
day. By contrast, the official POTUS page only publishes
intermittently, but gathers more than 77,000 interactions per
post.
Other key findings include:
Asia-Pacific
- Indian government leaders, including the President, the Prime
Minister and the Foreign Minister dominate the rankings in the
Asia-Pacific region. The size of
the country is clearly a decisive factor for these large
audiences.
- Facebook has been making inroads in other Asian countries and
has become the platform of choice for Asian leaders. Philippine
President Noynoy Aquino, Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak, Myanmar's new leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Cambodian Prime Minister,
Hun Sen have all got sizeable audiences, with more than 1 million
followers each.
Middle East
- Egyptian President Abdel Fattah
el-Sisi leads the rankings in the Middle
East and North Africa with
close to 6 million likes, ahead of Jordan's Queen
Rania, an early adopter with 5.5 million likes, in turn well
ahead of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin
Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai with 3 million likes and Jordan's Royal Hashemite Court with 1.6
million likes.
Latin America
- Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is the most popular leader
in Latin America with 4.5m likes,
ahead of the new Argentinian President, Mauricio Macri, with 3.5 million and
Brazil's Dilma Rousseff with 2.6
million likes.
Africa
- Kenya's Uhuru Kenyatta is the most popular leader in
Sub-Saharan Africa, with 2 million likes ahead of John Dramani Mahama, the President of
Ghana and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the foreign minister
of Ethiopia, each with more than
600,000 likes.
Europe
- Turkey's President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, the British Monarchy, Romanian President
Klaus Iohannis, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, Russia's Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev and Albania's Edi
Rama are Europe's most popular leaders on Facebook.
World Leaders not on Facebook
- The governments of only 24 countries have not yet established a
presence on Facebook, including China, where the social network is banned and
Switzerland, where the former
president briefly set up a personal page in 2013 before
deactivating it four months later.
About the Study
World Leaders on
Facebook is Burson-Marsteller's latest research into how
world leaders, governments and international organizations
communicate via social media. The research builds on
Burson-Marsteller's highly acclaimed
annual Twiplomacy study. Initially focused
solely on Twitter, the 2016 study is being expanded to other social
media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google+ and
more niche digital diplomacy platforms such as Snapchat and
Vine. An analysis of each separate platform will be released
each month in the run up to the publication of the complete
Twiplomacy study in May 2016.
About Burson-Marsteller
Burson-Marsteller, established in 1953, is a leading global
strategic communications and public relations firm. It provides
clients with strategic thinking and program execution across a full
range of public relations, public affairs, reputation and crisis
management, advertising and digital strategies. The firm's seamless
worldwide network consists of 73 offices and 85 affiliate offices,
together operating in 110 countries across six continents.
Burson-Marsteller is a part of Young & Rubicam Group, a
subsidiary of WPP (NASDAQ: WPPGY), the world's leader in
communications services. For more information, please visit
www.burson-marsteller.com.
SOURCE Burson-Marsteller