World Leaders Use Social Media

Real Leader’s Tweet  — Digital Daya  presents data that 15 percent of the world’s 163 countries are represented by political leaders or governments on Twitter.

Huffington Post presents a list of 15 world leaders who tweet —  old news from mid-March 2010.  Probably more now. 

No10 Muzzeled: 10 DowningStreet twitter updates will be restricted during the run up to the UK election.

Estonia knows about the value of online communication.  The cyberwar of April 2007 disrupted government, media and banking during days of distributed denial of service attacks. Estonia is preparing for the next cyber meltdown.

Chile’s President and Cabinet use Twitter and blogs  for direct interaction with citizens.  Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India may have a blog somewhere, but I didn’t find it.  Meanwhile, here is a November 23, 2009  interview with Prime Minister Singh presented by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.  

And here’s one Head of State who isn’t happy about tweets and blogs about his family life.

Social Media :: Diplomacy and Democracy

Who formulates best practices for social media in government? 

In the U.S., there are several groups who establish governance for using social media for government communications and collaboration.  Webcontent.gov   provides general guidance.  Web Manager University offers orientation for web professionals new to government practices vis a vis social media. The  Web Content Managers Forum may have restrictions for membership.

At the Department of State, The Public Webmasters Symposium offers best practices for eDiplomats. 

In a quasi e-treaty, Estonia and Spain have signed a safer social networking agreement.  The signatories pledged to advise the European Commission of their  self-declaration and to explain how they plan to implement the provisions described in the agreement. 

Read more about the principles here:  http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/social_networking/eu_action/selfreg/index_en.htm

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/social_networking/eu_action/index_en.htm