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Danish leaders lag behind on Twitter

The Local Denmark
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Danish leaders lag behind on Twitter
"The Danish government is one of the few EU governments which do not have an official presence on Twitter." Photo: Colourbox

With neither Queen Margrethe nor Helle Thorning-Schmidt using Twitter, Denmark is an outlier in Europe when it comes to use of the social media, a new report released on Tuesday showed.

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The annual Twiplomacy report released on Tuesday shows that Danish leaders have yet to fully embrace the use of Twitter. 
 
The study, released by public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, analyzed the Twitter use of accounts of 669 heads of state and government, foreign ministers and their institutions in 166 countries worldwide.
 
"Over the past years Twitter has become the channel of choice for digital diplomacy between world leaders, governments, foreign ministries and diplomats," the report states.
 
That message has apparently not been received in Denmark. 
 
“The Danish government is one of the few EU governments which do not have an official presence on Twitter. Neither the Queen nor Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt are active on Twitter,” the report states. 
 
An inactive profile for Thorning-Schmidt (@HelleThorningS) has amassed 7,852 followers but according to Social Democrats spokesman and active Twitter user David Tarp, the account is a fake.
The highest-ranking Danish politician in the Twiplomacy report is Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard (@martinlidegaard), who has 12,716 followers. That is a far cry from the highest-ranking foreign minister, the United Arab Emirates’ Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan (@ABZayed), whose 1.7 million followers put him at 28th place. 
 
Lidegaard isn’t even the Danish minister with the biggest Twitter following. That distinction goes to Social Minister Manu Sareen (@manusareen), who has 20,803 followers. 
 
The Danish politician with far and away the most influential account is EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager (@vestager), who has of Tuesday had 99,260 followers. 
 
As of March 24th, the most-followed world leaders were US President Barack Obama at 57 million followers, Pope Francis at 20 million followers across his nine different language accounts and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at about 11 million.
 
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan - who once vowed he would "wipe out Twitter", banning the social media site temporarily in the country - was also among the top five with 6.1 million followers.
 
The Pope beat Obama for most effective world leader, with an average of 9,929 re-tweets per tweet.
 
The report showed the Mexican presidency account to be the most prolific, with an average of 68 tweets per day.
 
"This study illustrates that governments are becoming savvier and more professional in the use of social media," said Jeremy Galbraith, CEO of Burson-Marsteller Europe, Middle East and Africa, in a statement.
 
"It is interesting to see how foreign ministries have honed their social strategies and built substantial dedicated teams to manage their online channels. We believe corporations can learn a lot from governments and their leaders on Twitter." 
 
Although the Danish Royal House has not hopped on board, a tweet from Spain’s Royal Palace announcing that King Juan Carlos would renounce the throne was one of the most re-tweeted posts by world leaders according to the report. 
 

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