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Media Instagram Donald Trump

Indian Prime Minister Modi tops the list of most followers on Instagram among world leaders, report states

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By Laurie Fullerton, Freelance Writer

April 12, 2017 | 4 min read

Former US president Barack Obama has lost his top spot as the most followed world leader on Instagram, surpassed this week by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi with 6.8 million followers, according to a Burson-Marsteller study on world leaders and Instagram.

The third most followed world leader is current US President Donald J. Trump who has 6.3 million followers. Pope Francis remains a popular leader as well and comes in third with 3.7 million followers, just ahead of the White House account which estimates they have 3.4 million followers.

Over the past year, there has also been a 673% growth in the followers of Indonesia’s president Joko Widodo.

The study looks at the activity of the 325 Instagram accounts of heads of state and government, and foreign ministers over the past 12 months using aggregate data from Facebook's CrowdTangle tool. On January 20, 2017, the White House Instagram account, set up under President Obama in January 2012, and its posts were archived on the @ObamaWhiteHouse Instagram account.

A new Instagram channel was set up for the Trump administration, but so far the that has only posted 33 times, and the transition account has lost more than 100,000 followers as Obama supporters have unfollowed the Trump White House Instagram account.

Interestingly, the popular Modi, who had only posted 53 photos during the period of the survey, received an average of 223,000 interactions (comments and likes) for each post. That is followed by Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is in second position with 141,000 interactions and Pope Francis' Instagram posts, which received 138,000 interactions on average.

At 9.67%, the Turkish President has one of the highest interaction rates, which is the total number of interactions divided by the number of posts and the average number of followers over the past 12 months.

The world leaders on Instagram study also found that 140 of the 193 United Nations member states maintain an official Instagram account, four more than in the 2016 study. 73 heads of state, 38 heads of government and 28 foreign ministers maintain personal pages on the platform, which tend to get better engagement than institutional accounts.

World leaders using Instagram are increasingly tapping into the full range of Instagram features. They use Instagram for breaking news stories and favor videos, while the selfie has taken the place of the traditional handshake photo for world leaders and diplomats.

"Burson-Marsteller's second installment of the World Leaders on Instagram study demonstrates the popularity and effectiveness of visual communications in the public sector," said Don Baer, worldwide chair and CEO, Burson-Marsteller. "Leaders around the world are creating online communications that convey global social and political context while also sharing a sense of personality and creativity. Leaders of business and all other sectors can learn from governments' use of Instagram."

Other key findings include that President Trump tops the most interactive world leaders ranking with 114,554,016 total interactions. He is followed by Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in second place, with 89,090,894 interactions and then Pope Francis with 45,408,641 interactions.

Additionally, the Government of Brunei has the most active account, posting on average 16 times per day. It is far ahead of Kuwait's Ministry of Foreign Affairs which posts 6.6 times per day and Ghana's Nana Akufo-Addo who posts 4.7 times per day. Further, world leaders have taken to Instagram's new video feature – sharing video posts has more than doubled over the past 12 months and videos receive an average of 2,027 more interactions than simple photo posts.

Media Instagram Donald Trump

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