World leaders are on Twitter, but they’re not using it

According to the latest edition of an annual study of online diplomats from Burson-Marsteller, although 78 percent of world leaders are on Twitter, with European leaders the most likely to be using it, their level of diplomatic engagement on the service varies.

The award for best-connected world leader goes to Carl Bildt, the former prime minister of a country that gives its national Twitter handle to a different citizen every week. Bildt and 44 other global statesmen are mutual followers on Twitter. But Bildt is something of an anomaly. Few if any national leaders tweet using their own thumbs. Only a third of the roughly 227 top ministers or heads of government that Burson-Marsteller profiled can say they represent themselves on social media. Of those, only 14 tweet on any kind of regular basis. If digital diplomacy were really taking off, we might expect it to help maintain relationships among world governments, or at least serve as a cheap way to engage in posturing amid international negotiations. Instead, the State Department’s social media efforts are floundering.