The NY Times Magazine published a great story this weekend by Jesse Lichtenstein titled “Digital Diplomacy” that focused on the State Department’s very proactive stance in using new tools and technologies to advance the department’s sweeping mission.
Traditional forms of diplomacy still dominate, but 21st-century statecraft is not mere corporate rebranding — swapping tweets for broadcasts. It represents a shift in form and in strategy — a way to amplify traditional diplomatic efforts, develop tech-based policy solutions and encourage cyberactivism.
The story is a must-read, but that’s not the point of this post. As I dove into the article, the author pointed out that two of the leaders of State’s efforts, Jared Cohen and Alec Ross, were some of the most-followed Twitter users in Federal government:
On Twitter, Cohen, who is 28, and Ross, who is 38, are among the most followed of anyone working for the U.S. government, coming in third and fourth after Barack Obama and John McCain. This didn’t happen by chance. Their Twitter posts have become an integral part of a new State Department effort to bring diplomacy into the digital age, by using widely available technologies to reach out to citizens, companies and other nonstate actors.
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Jared Cohen, left, and Alec Ross. They rank #4 & #5 Fed employees on GovTwit. Photo: Michele Asselin for The New York Times.
Jared Cohen, left, and Alec Ross. They rank #4 & #5 Fed employees on GovTwit. Photo: Michele Asselin for The New York Times.
Declaring Cohen and Ross the third and fourth most followed in government struck me as odd, mostly because the standard statistics GovTwit.com automatically generates charts Cohen and Ross in the top 50, but not up toward the top 10…or so I thought.
So I did a bit of digging, reviewing the GovTwit directory sorted by follower numbers. Using that method I found that Cohen ranks as #31 and Ross directly behind him at #32 overall of the nearly 3,000 IDs listed in GovTwit (as of 7/19/2010).
Now, the great thing about GovTwit, in my humble opinion, is that it includes IDs from all facets of the business of government. The directory includes individuals, agencies, contractors, academics, state/local, gov outside of the U.S. and more, all tagged by keywords. While this makes finding a wide variety of gov-related Twitter IDs easy, it doesn’t allow easy viewing of which U.S. Federal employees using Twitter may have the most followers. So while Governor Schwarzenegger may rank #5 overall in GovTwit (as ranked by number of followers), for the purpose of the NY Times story, he doesn’t get counted.
Looking only at individuals’ U.S. Federal Twitter IDs (removing government agency Twitter IDs, media and the like), Cohen and Ross actually rank as #4 & #5 with regard to Twitter followers. NASA’s Mike Massimino takes the third slot. Since I took the time to go through the data, thought others may be interested as well and decided to share here.
Below are the Top 10 individual Federal Twitter IDs. All links open to their GovTwit directory profile, which lists follower stats, date joined, site rank and more.
Top 10 Federal Twitter IDs
#1: @BarackObama (#1 overall)
#2: @JohnMcCain (#6 overall)
#3: @astro_mike (#14 overall)
#4: @JaredCohen (#31 overall)
#5: @AlecJRoss (#32 overall)
#6: @astro_jose (#36 overall)
#7: @PressSec (#47 overall)
#8: @jimdemint (#81 overall)
#9: @clairemc (#86 overall)
#10: @astro_127 (#87 overall)
4 comments
Ari Herzog July 22nd, 2010 at 12:17 am
I don’t understand. The NY Times was correct, then?
Steve Lunceford July 22nd, 2010 at 7:31 am
@Ari, sorry if it wasn’t clear. The NY Times had them ranked #3 and #4; as mentioned in next to last paragraph and the list, they actually come in at the #4 and #5 spots. So the NY Times was incorrect.
Steve Lunceford July 22nd, 2010 at 11:58 am
Just took an interesting call from the NY Times. While they researched the GovTwit/Twitter data and originally were going to run a correction (even sending me a draft), they ultimately decided against running.
According the the researcher who contacted me today via phone, they debated the point and while conceding that @Astro_Mike is a federal employee who has higher follower numbers than @jaredcohen or @alecjross, they netted out that the *intent* of the story’s point was that they were 3rd/4th most followed in the political/appointee worlds.
While I agree it’s a nit, I learned in J-school that “facts is facts” and if you get them wrong you simply correct and move on; strange for such a small thing that a “newspaper of record” such as The NY Times doesn’t want to simply update the story to reflect the facts versus relying on the reader’s ability to discern the author’s intent.
Beth July 22nd, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I think @Astro_Mike should be on the list. But no, he’s not political. He has a higher appointment — space.
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