Global Agency Ranks AMLO As The 14th Most Influential Leader On Twitter

The fact that President López Obrador has more than 20 million followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, makes it evidently clear that he is no pushover when it comes to social media.

The Mexican president has been currently ranked as the 14th most influential leader on Twitter by a global communications firm, Mexico News Daily reported.

Only 13 leaders are more influential than AMLO on Twitter, according to the 2022 Twiplomacy World Leader Power Ranking issued by the New York-based company BCW on Wednesday.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Joe Biden of the US, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoan of Turkey came in first, second, and third, respectively.

To measure the influence of world leaders, BCW created an algorithm that “assigns a tailored weighting to variables including mentions, tweets, retweets, reach, impressions, follower changes, likes and follower count” of world leaders.

BCW said that “engagement matters most” regarding the level of influence on Twitter, which has hundreds of millions of active users.

Despite not being a particularly active Twitter user, López Obrador often posts something to his 9.3 million-follower account at least once per day, even if it is merely a video of his morning news conference.

Among the several reasons AMLO took to the microblogging site in the past weeks were to acknowledge his meetings with Ecuador President Guillermo Lasso and Colombia President Gustavo Petro, lament the passing of actor Héctor Bonilla, post footage of his “counter-march” in Mexico City and many more.

Many Twitter users often share and like his posts, which regularly draw thousands of comments and likes.

The president has described social media as "blessed" because of the opportunity it gives him to have direct interactions with his followers.

Obrador has also criticized the repression of some users, most notably former US president Donald Trump, who was blocked from Twitter and Facebook after the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Even though López Obrador has never used Twitter with the same frequency, forthrightness, and ferocity with which Trump tweeted, he is a divisive figure on social media (as he is offline), with ardent followers of the president and strident critics using the so-called "digital town square" as a venue for mudslinging and name-calling in a seemingly never-ending slanging match.