World leader interactions on Facebook exploded in March
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is still the most popular world leader on Facebook, with more than 44.7 million likes on his personal page and 13.7 million likes on his institutional Prime Minister of India page. US President Donald Trump is the second most popular world leader on Facebook, with more than 26 million likes and Jordan’s Queen Rania is in third position with 16.8 million likes.
These finding come from the latest “World Leaders on Facebook” survey done by global communications agency, Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW), represented in Namibia by Gys Reitz of Parrot Communications.
World Leaders on Facebook is BCW’s latest research into how world leaders, governments and international organizations communicate via social media. The research builds on BCW’s acclaimed annual Twiplomacy study, which is now in its eighth year. In 2016, the Twiplomacy study was expanded to cover all key social media platforms.
The survey revealed that Facebook interactions between world leaders and their constituencies, exploded during March, mostly as a result of people looking for guidance from their leaders.
President Trump dominates the rankings for the most interactions with 309 million comments, likes and shares on his Facebook page over the past 12 months, ahead of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro with 205 million interactions. Prime Minister Modi, who has more than four times as many page likes is only in third place with a total of 84 million interactions over the past 12 months.
In Africa, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo is the most popular leader in Sub-Sahara Africa with 1.6 million likes, ahead of Rwanda’s Paul Kagame. However, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali has made it into the Top 10 list with 735,000 page likes and he has the best true reach, reaching 35% of his Facebook community.
For the first time the Russian Foreign Ministry tops the list of the most active world leaders with an average of more than 27 posts per day over the past 12 months. The governments of Uzbekistan and Botswana are in second and third position with more than 20 posts per day.
