Croatia

Croatian President Ivo Josipović stopped tweeting over Easter 2011, focusing his social media activity on Facebook, where he has over 85,000 likes. The Croatian President was very conversational with one third of tweets being @replies to his followers. His Twitter team also has a sense of humour: on the day of the presidential elections on 27 December 2009 he tweeted: “Pssssst. A few hours...” with a link to U2’s Beautiful Day video. After his election the account has become less active and conversational tweeting only 27 times in 2010 and 2011 before becoming dormant on 22 April 2011.

The social media team of the Croatian government is one of the most active and innovative teams, organizing tweet ups for 50 lucky followers at the prime minister’s office or asking their followers to complete the sentence: "Croatia after 21 years ..." to celebrate independence day. While Prime Minister Milanović is not personally on Twitter his team really engages with its followers. Half of all their tweets are @replies. They also mention a follower in almost every single tweet frequently thanking them for their “constructive responses”. The Croatian government tries to connect via Twitter with other world leaders and is well connected via Twitter with the governments of Montenegro and Slovenia. In January 2012 the government of Montenegro congratulated Croatia on their successful EU referendum to which Zagreb replied: “@MeGovernment Thank you, you can count on our support and help during the negotiations with the #EU.” At the end of June 2012 the Croatian government tweeted “congratulations” to the @MeGovernment in Podgorica for the start of EU accession talks.