Latin American Presidents on Twitter Part 2

Back in 2013, I wrote a post about Latin American presidents on Twitter, with a table showing their status. I decided to update that.

Here is the table from 2013:

Country	President	Status	#Followers	#Following	Type	Retweets
ARG	Kirchner	Active	2.1 million	54	All	None
BOL	Morales	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
BRAZIL	Rousseff	Inactive	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
CHILE	Piñera	Active	1 million	22,266	Policy	Common
COL	Santos	Active	1.9 million	5,856	Policy	Rare
CR	Chinchilla	Active	200,000	575	Policy	Common
CUBA	Castro	Active	92,000	36	Speeches	None
DR	Medina	Active	199,000	7,979	Policy	None
ECUA	Correa	Active	1 million	5	All	None
EL SAL	Funes	Inactive	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
GUATE	Pérez M	Active	87,000	52	Policy	Common
HOND	Lobo	Active	22,000	19	Policy	Rare
MEX	Peña	Active	1.9 million	159	Policy	Rare
NICA	Ortega	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
PAN	Martinelli	Active	346,000	752	All	Common
PARA	Franco	Active	66,000	198	Policy	None
PERU	Humala	Sporadic	626,000	60	Policy	None
URU	Mujica	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
VEN	Maduro	Active	1.2 million	34	All	Common

Here is the table for 2019:

Country	President	Status	#Followers	#Following	Type	Retweets
ARG	Macri	Active	4.83M	644	Policy	None
BOL	Morales	Active	547K	28	All	None
BRAZIL	Bolsonaro	Active	4.44M	344	All	Occasional
CHILE	Piñera	Active	2.22M	20.5K	Policy	None
COL	Duque	Active	885K	2,285	Policy	Occasional
CR	Alvarado	Active	101K	714	Policy	Occasional
CUBA	Díaz-Canel	Active	134K	126	Policy	None
DR	Medina	Inactive	687K	7,629	Policy	None
ECUA	Moreno	Active	702K	38	Policy	Occasional
EL SAL	Bukele	Active	732K	579	All	Frequent
GUATE	Morales	Infrequent	195K	996	Policy	Frequent
HOND	JOH	Active	367K	677	Policy	Frequent
MEX	AMLO	Active	5.64M	166	Policy	None
NICA	Ortega	Inactive	5,371	309	All	Frequent
PAN	Varela	Active	554K	1,153	Policy	None
PARA	Benítez	Active	299K	649	Policy	Occasional
PERU	Vizcarra	Active	567K	521	Policy	None
URU	Vazquez	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
VEN	Maduro	Active	3.63M	110	All	Occasional

Some thoughts:

--The way presidents use Twitter has not changed. The vast majority use it strictly to promote their policies. Only a small number get personal and creative with it.

--the sheer size of Twitter has grown significantly. The president with the most followers in 2013 was Néstor Kirchner with 2.1 million. In 2019 it is AMLO with 5.64 million.

--Uruguayan presidents just don't use it. Perhaps a reflection of age, I am not sure.

--Evo Morales exploded on Twitter. In 2013 he did not have an account. In 2019 he is all over it and he gets personal and angry. Meanwhile, Daniel Ortega finally got on but does not use it very much.

One conclusion from back then still stands now:

Further, this tells us nothing about effectiveness. Presidents want to reach people and thereby gain support, but as yet I've not seen any evidence--perhaps with polling?--about whether it benefits them politically. An aide to Dilma Rousseff said that she thought Twitter is a "total waste of time." Clearly others disagree, but we don't have a good grip on how to evaluate that.

Research on the topic shows that presidents use Twitter mostly as a megaphone to send out messages without filter, and it does not foster engagement. There is no common strategy for how to use it in times of crisis. One cross-national study finds the following:

We find strong support that (1) increased political pressure from social unrest and (2) higher levels of democratization correlate with leader adoption of social media platforms. 

This doesn't seem to hold well for Latin America, where almost everyone has adopted social media irrespective of what is happening in the country.

Did you know that the Venezuelan government once tried to tout Nicolás Maduro as the second most influential leader on Twitter, second only to the Pope? It was based on retweets.

It's curious that Latin American presidential Twitter use is so ubiquitous and we know so little about it. It's a megaphone for them, but does it affect popularity, re-election, or people's views about certain issues?