PM Imran ninth most-followed world leader on Twitter

Records 22 per cent growth in his followers on microblogging site

KARACHI:

Prime Minister Imran Khan has emerged as the ninth most followed world leader on microblogging site Twitter, registering a 22 per cent growth in the number of his followers on official account, a study by Twiplomacy revealed Tuesday.

The 2020 study by Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW) — a public relations and communications firm — focused on tweets by world leaders during the coronavirus pandemic, monitored their reach and the overall flow of accurate information.

The report found out that the heads of state and government of 163 countries and 132 foreign ministers maintain personal accounts on Twitter. “As of June 1, 2020, all 1,089 personal and institutional Facebook pages of world leaders had a combined total of more than 620 million followers and had posted 8.7 million tweets since their creation,” it said.

US President Donald Trump has been reported the most followed world leader with more than 81 million followers while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi came second ahead of Pope Francis who has 51 million followers on his nine different language accounts.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was ranked seventh, with 16.1 million followers and recording a 17% growth on his account.

In terms of effectiveness, the US president again took the lead but Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz bagged the second position, with 23,573 retweets on average.

Erdogan was in the fifth position in this category, with 4,879 retweets on an average.

In terms of reach, on the other hand, PM Imran managed to secure the fourth position, with the true reach estimated to be 7.5 million people or 64% of his 12.1 million followers.

Trump was in second place at 20.3 million people or 25% of his 83.8 million followers, while Erdogan was on eighth at 5.2 million people or 33% of his 16.4 million followers.

Report also indicated that the governments and leaders of 189 countries had an official presence on the social network, representing 98 per cent of the 193 UN member states.

According to the report, Pakistan's Shah Mehmood Qureshi is the second most followed foreign minister after recording a 29 per cent growth on his Twitter account with 3.1 million followers.

UAE's Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan topped the ranking with 4.6 million followers while US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Iran's Javad Zarif also made it to the list with 1.9 and 1.5 million followers respectively.