PM Modi: The 2nd most influential leader in the world

Geneva, July 11: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is behind US President Donald Trump (52 million) and Pope Francis (47 million) with over 42 million followers on his personal Twitter account, but in terms of impact on the microblogging site, Modi is the 2nd most important world leader, said a global study on Tuesday.

However, with over 11 million followers, India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is not only the most followed 'female world leader' but also the most followed 'foreign minister' in the world, according to the 2018 "Twiplomacy" study by BCW - a global communications agency.

The study inspected the liveliness of 951 Twitter accounts of heads of state and government and foreign ministers for a year -- from May 2017 to May 2018 -- using grand data from Crowdtangle.com, a content discovery and social monitoring platform.

While Modi currently has 43.4 million followers on Twitter, Trump has 53.4 million while Sushma Swaraj has 11.8 million followers.

Trump became the most followed world leader in October 2017 when he passed Pope Francis (@Pontifex) who is the second most followed world leader with more than 47 million followers on his 9 language accounts.

Trump's followers on his '@realDonaldTrump' account have more than doubled since taking office on January 20, 2017.

Tweets from the US President initiated 264 million interactions (likes and retweets) over the past 12 months, more than 5 times as many as Modi, with 52 million interactions, and 12 times as many as Pope Francis's tweets which triggered 22 million interactions, the study revealed.

As of May 18, 2018, the heads of state and government and foreign ministers of 187 countries had a presence on Twitter, representing 97 percent of all 193 UN member states, the result depicted.

The governments of only 6 countries, namely Laos, Mauritania, Nicaragua, North Korea, Swaziland and Turkmenistan do not have an official presence on the platform, the study said.

Even the Chinese government's State Council Information Office maintains a presence on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Facebook is the 2nd most popular network among government leaders, and it is where they have the biggest audience, in accordance with the study.

Facebook-owned Instagram has become the 3rd most popular social network for governments, with 81 percent of all UN member states have set up an account and many of them are sharing daily Instagram stories.