Jokowi among world leaders successfully using social media for diplomacy

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Indonesia’s President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has a growing 5.09 million followers on Twitter – joining a group of diplomats and leaders including US President Barack Obama and religious head Pope Francis, who have taken their diplomacy to various social media platforms.

Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and even Snapchat have been used by global leaders like Jokowi (@Jokowi) to reach a wide range of audiences.

A recent study titled “Twiplomacy,” published by Burson-Marsteller, a global leading public relations and communications firm, found that Twitter was the main social media platform for world leaders and governments.

793 Twitter accounts belonged to heads of state and government in 173 countries, while Facebook ranked second with 537 diplomat users.

The report also said that, “governments that do not have full broadcasting capabilities, mainly in Latin America, are embracing Periscope and Facebook Live to broadcast their press conferences.”

Similarly, Jokowi made history in the Asia-Pacific region, when he held a live Periscope session during a local festival in Pontianak, West Kalimantan.

Jokowi’s Twitter feed is an example of leaders embracing visual communication as he regularly engages his audience by posting pictures from events, press conferences and interactions with other world leaders.

Only a quarter of the 1.3 million tweets analyzed in this study utilized pictures in their tweets, making President Widodo an exception in the twittersphere for diplomats.

The report also pointed out that Jokowi, like Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet, French Prime Minister @ManuelValls and President François Hollande (@FHollande), “suspended their Twitter activity for a period of time, but then reactivated their accounts as the next election campaign approached” – highlighting his purpose for using the social media platform.

Influence

“Our Twiplomacy study shows people in positions of power are increasingly tapping social media platforms to connect with the audiences most important to them,” said Don Baer, CEO of Burson-Marsteller.

The research analyzed the accounts and found that the posts with the highest retweets were those that reflected major announcements and historic events including sad news like when the Malaysian Prime Minister tweeted about the loss of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

However, the study revealed that a large following does not equate to a larger impact citing Obama’s carefully drafted tweets that are written in his tone and style. The @POTUS twitter handle garners an average of 12,350 retweets and his recent tweet, ¿Que bolá Cuba?” – Cuban slang, meaning: “What’s up, Cuba?” defined a historic moment after his touchdown in Havana.

The number of followers of world leaders has come to be a symbol of national pride and leaders of populous countries where the popularity of Twitter is growing are likely to have a greater following. –Rappler.com