February 14-2014
Although a great deal of attention has focused on President Rohani’s use of Twit- ter, he is actually not a major figure in terms of the number of followers he has drawn.
A new study of Twitter use by world leaders tracks 133 figures and the number of followers they had attracted as of December.
Rohani ranked 36th on the list with less than 4/10ths of 1 percent as many followers as President Obama, who was in first place.
That comparison may be a bit unfair since Obama totally dominates the field with 40.5 million, 10 times as many followers as the number two on the list, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia.
But Yudhoyono has 27 times as many followers as Rohani.
Perhaps most intriguing is the fact that four of the top seven are leaders in Muslim-majority countries—Indonesia, Turkey, Jordan and the UAE. They each have more than 2 million followers on Twitter. And they are each moderates politically.
Rohani, however, had only 152,542 followers, which put him just below Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and just above Lebanese President Michel Sleiman.
Here are the top 10, all those with more than 2 million followers:
President Obama US 40.5
Pres Yudhoyono Indonesia 4.2
Pres. Abdullah Gul Turkey 4.1
Queen Rania Jordan 3.0
PM Dmitry Medvedev Russia 2.8
Pres Cristina Fernandez Argentina 2.5
PM Moh. Bin Rashid UAE 2.4
Pres Enrique Pena Mexico 2.4
Pres Juan Manuel Santos Colombia 2.3
Pres Dilma Rousseff Brazil 2.1
The listing was compiled by the Digital Policy Council, a think tank based in Washington, DC.