India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is among the most followed politicians in the world on both Facebook and Twitter, tucking in behind Barack Obama, the telegenic and media-savvy US president.
Source: Asian Review
India has nearly four times the US population, but lower internet penetration, so which leader is more effective? Juggle the statistics, and the case can be made that Cambodia’s Hun Sen or Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong engage with a higher proportion of their much smaller national constituencies.
Lee has about 1.12 million Facebook followers in a country of 5.6 million people. He also has nearly 380,000 followers on Twitter, which has never been that popular with Singaporeans. Lee’s posts go beyond work, with travel snaps and ruminations, but no seriously negative comments survive on his page.
Leaders in Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam pay social media little or no heed. Were Facebook not banned in China, the country with the largest hard copy newspaper circulations after India and Japan, President Xi Jinping might be giving Modi and Obama a run for their money.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s state counselor and foreign minister, let two of her three Facebook accounts go idle when she assumed power in April. She is a confirmed social media Luddite: “Our lifestyles are changing nowadays as technology improves,” she wrote to the Nobel-Myanmar Literary Festival recently. “Now our children waste a lot of their time on computer games, internet games and social networks. Children read less because the use of technology has increased.”
Suu Kyi might be wrong there. “Previously, I spent much time reading books, but I have lately engaged with Facebook because I can read novels for free,” said Kheng Ratha, 19, a Cambodian law student.
Despite Thailand’s professed interest in becoming a Southeast Asian “digital economy hub,” Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and his cabinet also remain old school. The prime minister chairs the Committee for Digital Economy and Society, but has only a press office Line account that others feed. With no Facebook or Twitter accounts, and a tendency to erupt at journalists, Prayuth’s favored conduit remains a televised chat every Friday night, during which he airs whatever is on his mind. Yingluck Shinawatra, Thailand’s prime minister until she was deposed in 2014, meanwhile, has 5.7 million Facebook likes.
Social Media Addiction
