The Risks Of Digital Leadership
Reflecting on the Role of Social Network Platforms in Our Lives
The latest US elections have shown us how communication between leaders with their voters and people have changed due to the extensive use of Social Networks.
Both Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump used social networks to reach their potential crowd of voters. Their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts were managed and utilized as a direct channel to their voters. We saw followers and social network users engaging on both sides. Like in the real world we saw the better and worse side of people on our virtual world of social network. We saw happiness, sadness, anger, empathy and violence.
We saw how 140 characters could lead to a “pendulum effect” and tilt a whole chunk of the population to believe and act in a certain way.
However, as Donald Trump was elected for the presidency, we are witnessing a whole new way of using social networks. It’s not about getting the most votes, or likes anymore. His latest use and statements through Twitter are an unprecedendent way for leaders to communicate their message. There’s no press conference or advisors to write a well-formed official statement. Internal and external diplomacy sum up with 140 character Trump writes and share his views with his followers.
This led me to research a bit more about how leaders use and manage their social accounts. What I’ve found is that leaders on social networks are looking to have conversations or listen to their voters. They publicly ignore their followers and only sending their messages across. Leadership on Social networks is a “one-way communication”
Let’s examine the Twitter accounts of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Theresa May and Benjamin Netanyahoo:
Leaders Engagement Factor
Digging into today’s leader’s Twitter and Facebook accounts we can easily get a sense of the usage patterns of leaders with their social networks. What social networks are trying to make users do is engage on their platforms — create reals conversations about important topics. This is the number one reason for a social network to grow. The problem is that these conversations do not include the leaders themselves.
The phenomena that is that leaders are dropping a statement with no continuity. I call it the “Social Leader Statement Phenomena” They are off until their next post (announcement). The conversation is about their statement engaging their followers without their involvement. The leaders do not engage or reply to their followers. They are using the platforms only to state their opinion and there it ends.
I analyzed the data behind the Twitter accounts of some of the prominent world leaders. In the analysis I checked how engaged the leaders are with their networks. How many tweets they wrote, how many likes they have made, how many followers they have and how many people in their networks they are following. To get a sense of their level of engagement I devised the “Leaders Social Engagement Factor” (LSEF). The LSEF is the ratio of the number of likes vs. the number of tweets they have made.
In addition, I devised another parameter to understand their level of engagement in the leaders’ social networks. One thing that could shed light on how today’s leaders are using their social networks is the number of their followers versus the number of people they are following. If you are an active user on Twitter or Facebook , and you really care about what people are saying and doing, you simply follow other people. One could claim that the leaders could search for people and read their tweets and posts. However, think about it, would you search for people you don’t follow on a daily basis and read their tweets? Let’s remember that these leaders tend to have more than 5M followers, sometimes close to 20M followers.
To get a glimpse and understand their usability I devised another factor which I call the “Leaders Follow Factor” (LFF). The LFF is the ratio between the number of users the leader is following versus the number of his or her followers.
What The Data Says?
I analyzed the numbers behind 10 world leaders. The data is from their official Twitter accounts as of January 7, 2017.
Here is the data shown in graphical charts that illustrates the status of the social engagement of today’s leaders and how they should improve
These results do not necessarily state that today’s leaders do not see your tweets or posts. However, we can learn several things about the behavioural patterns of leaders using their social accounts. First, the ratio between the number of people following leaders and the users leaders follow is very low. One exception for that is President Obama, whose LFF is the highest, after him Francois Holland and Justin Trudeau. Second, the way they engage with users’ content is not by liking your posts. They might tweet and address some issues, but they won’t like your post. An interesting fact is that the two leaders who has the highest LSEF values are Hilary Clinton and Theresa May, the only two women among the leaders I analyzed.
Digital Conversations
So what is the goal of social network platforms in allowing world leaders to manage their digital identity. Is it just to make statements? or is it to engage with their supporters and opposers — their follower, in a meaningful digital conversation? Do leaders should follow their followers back, reply to their posts and tweets and event invite them to share and collaborate in real life and not only in the virtual world? Do we expect leaders to like or retweet our posts, and answer our questions?
Some of the leaders do this already. Donald Trump often retweets or quote things his followers write and Hilary Clinton retweet her followers’ posts. But is this a good thing? Should private citizen join this direct digital conversation with their leaders? or is it too dangerous. After all, followers could become a tool to get more votes, or manipulate the crowds, and even hurt people’s reputations as we’ve seen lately. These are all very tough questions, and we’ll have to answer them as the usage of social network platforms increase.
Digital Transparency
Another thing I’ve noticed is a lack of transparency with how leaders are managing their digital accounts. Users may think that they are communicating directly with the president or prime minister, while in fact they are communicating with their staff members, which makes sense — they are extremely busy. Therefore, I believe that platforms must require public figures and leaders to be transparent about who is running the social activity of their social identities. This may change the content of your posts, the way you address the leaders, and you may choose a different means of communication if you know whether the leaders run the social profile themselves or other do so for them. For example, Barack Obama’s Twitter account explicitly states that “This account is run by Organizing For Action staff. Tweets from the President are signed -bo.”
The Evolution of Social Platforms and Our Responsibility
I do agree that most of the world’s leaders that I analyzed are probably not active and engaged users on these platforms, as they have many other and more important things to do such as attending intelligence briefings, meetings with other leaders, and working on reforms and legislation. Therefore, it is acceptable that they are not following and engaging daily with their followers. Most leaders have a team of advisors that run their social accounts on Facebook, Twitter etc. along with other PR and communication channels.
However, today we are facing a new reality in which the current US President Donald Trump, is actively using his Twitter on a daily basis, and runs and manages the account himself. This means a direct channel of communication from the leader to his followers. Whatever is on his mind he can just post or tweet without any policy or professional filter for his statements to run through. On the one hand, this is a new, innovative way for leadership communication using the existing power of the digital platforms most of us use today. On the other hand, this is a very biased means of communication which might in its current state be very dangerous for our democracy. Having many followers and being in a powerful position makes a psychological impact on the crowd. The leader is powerful and has an impact on the people reading his or her tweets or posts. This means that the leader’s words are not necessarily verified and could mislead people into believing in inaccurate statements. It’s there — therefore it may seem as the truth to many. The reach of millions within one click of a button, along with the power of leaders may lead to brainwash.
Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube went through a very profound and important transition in their goal and form of usage. They all started out as a personal means of communication to promote freedom of speech, and the right to say what you think. Slowly, as business models evolved for these companies, advertising slew in, they became means for business owners to communicate with their customers, and bring revenue. This transition was controlled by those companies, by changing their algorithms and allowing businesses to act by certain rules of the platform. However, the latter transition made social network platforms tools for political leaders to communicate with supporters and voters. This transition, has not been managed correctly by the social media giants. There are no rules for this game, as leaders can say and post whatever they like.
As leaders are using these social platforms many unknowns enter the equations, such as national security, diplomacy etc. Politics is a very complicated world and has a long history of methodologies and actions which are done in a certain way. The combination of politics with social media brings vagueness and ambiguity into the process. Even leaders and policy makers do not know the consequences of such usage. It seems like we will have to experiment and test actions on the go, hopefully not causing any major diplomatic or political crisis.
What Should We Do Now?
It is important that we reflect on this new reality and ask ourselves what is the role of social networks in the life of a world and nation leaders. The giants of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, have also to understand that they are not only responsible for the personal accounts and for the SMBs and large corporations that advertise and communicate with customers on their platforms. They are now a tool in the hands of leaders, to legislate, influence and set national and international policies — They have a huge responsibility.
We should discuss whether political use of social networks by leaders should be a one-way communication or a dialog between the leader and its followers. Can a leader simply say whatever he or she wants? Aren’t there any ethical standards that should be followed? The problem is that large these social media companies (Twitter, FB etc.) are affected by political policies and they might be very cautious with enforcing rules that could hurt their business.
Most of all, it is our responsibility as social media users to be critical about the way leaders are using these platforms, and judgmental not only about the content of their statements, but also about the way they use it.
What do you think? I would love to hear your ideas and thoughts about this topic. Please share them in the comments below.
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