Narendra Modi Third Most Followed World Leader On Twitter

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains the third most followed world leader on the micro-blogging site Twitter while External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is the most followed foreign minister, according to a latest study.

Twiplomacy Study 2015, accessed by IANS, showed that Sushma Swaraj is the most followed foreign minister with 2,438,228 followers. She is far ahead of UAE' Abdullah Bin Zayed (1,608,831) and Turkey's Mevlut Cavusoglu (376,429).

The study, which counted data till March 24, is an annual global survey of world leaders on Twitter. It is aimed at identifying the extent to which world leaders use the site and how they connect on the social network.

The study revealed that three most followed world leaders were U.S. President BarackObama with 56,933,515 followers, Pope Francis (@Pontifex) with 19,580,910 followers on his nine different language accounts, and Modi with 10,902,510 followers.

Since his election in May 2014, Modi's account has moved into the top three most followed Twitter accounts of world leaders, said Twiplomacy's Matthias Luefkens. He told IANS that Modi was also among the most effective in terms of re-tweets per tweet.

Modi's huge victory in the 2014 general election was partly credited to a well-organised social media campaign.

Besides, the study found the most followed world leaders have one thing in common: they have discovered Twitter as a powerful one-way broadcasting tool. They are only following a handful of other world leaders, if any, and are hardly conversational which is almost impossible, given the sheer size of their audience.

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