Americas Quarterly - Winter 2012

JUST THE NUMBERS

Twittering Presidents and Stars

There’s very little correlation between the most prolific Twitterers, the most curious about other Twitter users, and who has the most followers. President Barack Obama has been active on Twitter and has over 10 million followers; at the same time, he follows close to 700,000 other users. Compare that to President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner who is only following 42 other users—which is double that of President Hugo Chávez and roughly the same as Shakira. Then look at President Michel Martelly of Haiti, who in his first year in office has been tweeting furiously with over 2,000 143-character messages to his paltry 20,000 followers. Still, that doesn’t make him the most prolific Twitterer for the smallest audience; that goes to Lionel Messi, who has posted over 10,000 messages to his likely overworked 53,000-plus followers. In contrast, feel sorry for the 1,200 followers of El Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes, who are still waiting in vain for even one tweet from the executive.

@BarackObama Barack Obama, USA 2, 121 Tweets 687,229 Following 10,936,507 Followers

@chavezcandanga

Hugo Chávez, Venezuela

1,379 Tweets 21 Following

2,231,814 Followers

@GaelGarciaB

Gael García Bernal, Mexico

1,375 Tweets 251 Following

770,484 Followers

@FelipeCalderon Felipe Calderón, Mexico 1,413 Tweets 218 Following 1, 107,824 Followers

@Lionel_Messi

Lionel Messi, Argentina

10,653 Tweets 10 Following 53,620 Followers

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@dilmabr

Dilma Rousseff, Brazil

394 Tweets 581 Following

900,360 Followers

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@SarahPalinUSA Sarah Palin, USA 1,031 Tweets 116 Following 686,937 Followers

@presidentmicky
Michel Martelly, Haiti
2,856 Tweets
12,570 Following
20,273 Followers

@CFKArgentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina 1,155 Tweets 42 Following 691,753 Followers re

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OBAMA: STEFAN ROUSSEAU-POOL/GETT Y; CHAVEZ: LEO RAMIREZ/AFP/GETT Y; SHAKIRA: NICKY LOH; ROUSSEFF: ALEJANDRO AULER/LATINCONTENT/GET TY; CALDERON: NORBERTO DUARTE/AFP/GE TTY; BERNAL: MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP/ GE T T Y; PALIN: JUS TIN SULLIVAN/GE T T Y; GAGA: NEIL MOCKFORD; FILMMAGIC; KIRCHNER: SASHA MORDOVE TS/GE T T Y; MESSI: DAVID RAMOS/GE T T Y; MARTELLY: CHARLES ESHELMAN/GE T T Y; FUNES: YURI COR TEZ/AFP/GE T T Y.