2013_12_12_Papa_twitter

Pope Francis is the second world leader with the most followers on Twitter, after Barack Obama. The @Pontifex account has 10.75 million followers, second only to @BarackObama, who has 40.45 million. This was highlighted by Professor Francesc Pujol, of the Media, Reputation and Intangibles Center of the University of Navarra, on the first anniversary of the premiere of the Pope's official Twitter accounts.

This center has analyzed the main variables of the Pontiff's impact on Twitter (issue of followers, retweets received, mentions received on Twitter, etc.), coinciding also with his election as person of the year 2013 by Time magazine and his appearance as the topic most commented on Facebook during this same period.

The report of the University of Navarra compares the Pope's impact variables with those obtained by all the world leaders present on this social network . In total, it analyzes 39 leaders, who have more than 400,000 followers on Twitter.

According to work, the 213 tweets published from the Pope's official account have generated 4.16 million RT (retweets) and 1.84 million favorites. Thus, he becomes the third leader in the world in issue of RT. Likewise, the @Pontifex accounts have been mentioned during the month of November 2013 in 510,000 tweets, ranking fourth in the world.

Finally, the professor at School of Economics highlights that since June of this year he has gained 3.5 million followers, an increase of 49%: the fourth fastest growing of all the world's leaders.

One of the great communication phenomena of the 21st century

On the occasion of the publication of this report, Francisco Pérez-Latre, professor at School of Communication at the University of Navarra, said that the Pope"is already one of the great phenomena of public opinion and communication at the beginning of the 21st century. In his opinion, the nomination as person of the year by Time, which other Popes have already received, is another milestone in this sense. "The Pope is a major player in world public opinion: social media are accelerating that aspect of his figure, inside and outside the Catholic Church," he explains.

Its nine Twitter accounts (Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese, French, Latin, German, Polish and Arabic) "are becoming one of the global voices of reference letter in digital environments," says the expert. Of these, the one with the largest audience is the Spanish account (4.3 million followers), which over the summer surpassed the English account (more than 3.3 million).

For Professor Francisco Pérez-Latre, the effectiveness of Pope Francis' communication lies in what he says, not in how he says it. "In a way, his strategy consists in spontaneity, in the 'lack of strategy'. Difficult to pigeonhole into the usual media categories, the Pope is traditional, but not conservative. In Francis he highlights one of the most relevant dimensions of communication and the media: bringing people together."