Coronavirus: World leaders grow their audience on Facebook

Kampala, Uganda | Julius Businge | World leaders have seen their follower numbers grow exponentially in March 2020 as citizens are looking for guidance on matters COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest 2020 World Facebook rankings by BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe).

During the month of March, the 721 pages of world leaders analyzed in the study have added 13 million new page likes, a 3.7% increase which is almost half the growth of these pages enjoyed overall over the past 12 months. The pages of Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and those of the governments of Austria, Estonia and Italy have more than doubled their page likes in March 2020.

Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is still the most popular world leader on Facebook with more than 44.7 million likes on his personal page and 13.7million likes on his institutional Prime Minister of India page. U.S President Donald Trump is the second most popular leader with more than 26 million likes. But Trump dominates the rankings for the most interactions with 309 million comments, likes and shares on his Facebook page over the past twelve months, ahead of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro with 205 interactions.

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo – Addo is the most popular leader in Sub-saharan Africa with 1.6 million likes ahead of Rwanda’s Paul Kagame. Other leaders in East Africa including President Yoweri Museveni, now at 760,000 likes, have recorded significant growth in numbers on their Facebook pages.

BCW, Chief Innovation Officer, Chad Latz said the growth in numbers is as a result of the online members of the public wanting to know information on coronavirus issues/announcements.

As of April 30, a total of 3.19 million COVID-19 cases have been confirmed worldwide; 973, 000 have recovered and 228, 000 have died of the virus.