Twitter Diplomacy is certainly a new field for diplomacy, where who follows who (among the maximum government representatives around the world) becomes part of a political statement.
3. Why to map the Twitter
diplomacy networks?
At the beginning of January 2011, we saw an interesting presentation from Matthias
Lüfkens - Media Associate Director of the World Economic Forum – about Twitter
Diplomacy among the maximum government representatives around the world.
This is certainly a new field for diplomacy, where who follows who becomes part of a
political statement.
We are a consultant firm focused on mapping and analyzing all kind of organizational
networks - looking for patterns and pathways to further develop and enhance the
organizational social capital.
With that in mind, we asked Matthias for his gathered relational dataset, looking
forward to complement his analysis with a quick Organizational Network Analysis.
He kindly accepted and here is the result of our analysis.
Note: the data was captured by Matthias Lüfkens in early December 2010.
treebranding.com For methodological notes see slide 26.
4. *
*After the network data being gathered, the Russian
government renamed their account to @KremlinRussia_E
treebranding.com
5. 1. Who are the leaders most followed
by other leaders on Twitter?
Here, the twitter bird indicates the maximum government representatives -
leaders/Governments’ - twitter accounts.
For instance, Barack Obama has 6.366.205 followers. He is a very influential leader
indeed.
However, how many world government representatives are following Obama?
Just 5!
In the next slide, we will show the direct Influence of government representatives
(in terms of Twitter), represented by the size of the birds.
treebranding.com
6. Curiously, the Argentinean president is
the most followed by others leaders,
treebranding.com mostly from LATAM region.
7. 2. Who are the leaders who most
follow other leaders?
In the next network visualization, the size of the birds indicates the Influenced
leaders (in terms of their capacity to access information and recognize others
leaderships).
treebranding.com
10. 3. Who are the brokers leaders?
In the next network, the biggest birds indicate who are - in the shortest path
between others – bridging the global leaders.
treebranding.com
11. Again, Cameron is a clear Broker,
bridging the leaders’s twitter
accounts around the globe.
treebranding.com
13. 4. Network topography
without the Mapa Mundi
The network
can be divided
into two big
sub-groups
LATAM
treebranding.com
14. 5. What is the Density* of
the global Network?
18,8%
• Too low for a small network
• There are few leaders in Twitter yet
*Density is the global interconnectivity measure of a network,
where 0% means nobody is connected and 100% means everybody
is interconnected.
treebranding.com
15. 5.1. What are the subgroups
densities?
In # of links
Subgroups: G8 LATIN AMERICA OTHERS
• G8: EE.UU, UK, France,
G8 10* 4 4
Canada, Russia.
LATIN AMERICA 3 27 0
• Latin America: Mexico,
OTHERS 3 0 0
Costa Rica, Colombia,
Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil,
*10 links interconnect G8 leaders between them.
Argentina, Chile.
• Others: Turkey, South
Korea, Australia, South Africa. In density %
G8 LATIN AMERICA OTHERS
G8 50%** 10% 20%
LATIN AMERICA 7,5% 48,2% 0%
OTHERS 15% 0% 0%
treebranding.com * The 10 links represent 50% of interconnectivity between G8 leaders.
16. 6. What are the brokers roles?
Consultant: Is followed and follows nodes of the same group
different from his original group.
Coordinator: Is followed and follows nodes of his same group.
Gatekeeper: Is followed by nodes different from his group and
follows nodes of his same group.
Liaison: Is followed by nodes of a different group and follows
nodes from a different group of both.
Representative: Is followed by nodes from the same group and
follows nodes from a different group.
In the next networks visualization, the size of nodes are proportional to their
treebranding.com particular brokerage score.
17. Is the most Consultant broker
treebranding.com
18. Is the most Coordinator broker
treebranding.com
19. Is the most Gatekeeper broker
treebranding.com
21. Is the most Representative broker
treebranding.com
22. In sum...
• Few of the maximum government representatives are in Twitter
• The small network size is poorly interconnected
• The global reciprocity between leaders is 45,71%. It means that almost half of the possible
links are mutual (if A follows B, B follows A)
• Latin America leaders are the best interconnected with each other, but poorly
interconnected with leaders from the rest of the world.
• UK account follows most of the others accounts, bridging them around the globe.
• Obama is not the best in Twitter.
• Twitter diplomacy network represents part of the local leadership characteristics.
A mirror of diplomacy in the social media era.
• A systematic mapping of the Twitter diplomacy would be interesting for an evolutionary
point of view.
treebranding.com
23. About Tree Branding
We area a multidisciplinary think tank specialized
in Organizational Network Analysis consultancy.
Helping Governments, NGO, Organizations and
Local Communities to uncover their network
patterns and develop their Social Capital in the
interconnected era.
treebranding.com
24. Contact info
Ignacio García
Co founder
ignacio@treebranding.com
www.treebranding.com
Headquarter office: Branch office:
São Paulo – Brazil Buenos Aires – Argentina
treebranding.com +55 11 2372-1157 +54 11 5849-8479
25. Methodological notes
To avoid redundancy, the following twitter’s accounts were merged:
• @BarackObama was merged with WhiteHouse
• (personal & function account).
• MedvedevRussia was merged with MedvedevRussiaE
• (Russian & English account)
• FelipeCalderon was merged with presidenciamx
• (personal & function account)
• RT_Erdogan was merged with cbAbdullahGul
• (Turkish President and Primer Minister)
Roles Brokerage measures (slide 15): Gould, J. and Fernandez, J. 1989.
Structures of mediation: A formal approach to brokerage in transaction
networks. Sociological Methodology: 89-126.
treebranding.com