Mouthpiece of millennials and politicians: why we still don't use Twitter

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Viktoriia Hubareva

24.6% of all active Twitter users, i.e. out of 330 million monthly users, are journalists. The site administration provides such data in the summary of 2020. In addition, there's an interesting fact in the statistics: 80% of this social network are "wealthy millennials."

Twitter is a marketing tool used by 67% of companies, and 89% of world leaders are registered on Twitter, which makes this social network not only a place with funny curiosities but also an arena for developing political games. For example, on April 19, Spanish politician Francisco Jose Contreras was blocked on Twitter after he commented on an article about a transgender man who reported that he became a father after the birth of a child:

"A man cannot get pregnant. The man doesn't have a uterus and ovaries," the politician wrote.

And although Contreras was banned from the social network for only 12 hours, the news quickly spread around the world, and, quite possibly, the image of an LGBT-intolerant person will attach to the politician, which may even affect his future career.

We also remember the Twitter account of former US President Donald Trump was blocked because he tweeted about the rigging of the presidential election and provoked an attack on the Capitol, which forwent human lives. As Dmytro Plakhta, a political digital strategist and media researcher told Rubryka at the time, Trump lost a significant part of his social capital because Twitter was an effective tool for foreign figures for interacting with the electorate.

Promoting one's own image, establishing contacts with other fellow politicians and diplomats, distributing one's own opinions and views, the ability to react quickly to international events, communication with citizens, the ability to track public sentiment and reaction to various events, happen on social media in the digital age. Twitter remains the most popular platform for foreign officials, but it's still not very effective for Ukrainian politicians. Why? We addressed this question to Dmytro Plakhta again.

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