Latvia

The Twitter profile of the President of Latvia was registered on July 7, 2010 under President Valdis Zatlers. Tweets were written by his communication staff and tweets by the former President were signed VP, meaning “Valsts Prezidents” (State President in Latvian). Most of tweets are about the President’s daily duties – visits, decisions, proposals, opinion. President Zatlers often entered in dialogue with his followers. Since Andris Bērziņš became president on 8 July 2011, the communication became rarer with only 73 tweets compared to 430 tweets the year before. The current president does not write tweets himself any more. The most popular tweet was written under President Zatlers: “If 10,000 signatures are collected for publishing the real beneficiaries of offshore companies, then the president will submit this initiative to parliament.”

Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis joined Twitter on 24 May 2009. Almost half of the tweets of the Prime Minister are retweets including retweets of other government accounts such as tweets from the Cabinet of Ministers (@Brivibas36), as well as the media coverage about his work. From his personal tweets, the highest number of retweets was for greetings – on the occasion of national holidays or congratulations to Latvian athletes, or condolences to victims of tragic events like the terror act in Norway or the air crash of the Lokomotiv hockey team, as well as tweets on the Language referendum – against Russian as the second official language. His most popular tweet is a photo of actor Jackie Chan wearing a hat of Latvian folk hero Lāčplēsis, a gift from the Prime Minister. Valdis Dombrovskis tweets mainly in Latvian but important messages for an international audience are written in English such as: “Greece should learn from Latvia”.

The official account of the Latvian government keeps its followers abreast of the government’s activities and current events not only related to politics, but also to charity and other social movements. The activities of Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis are often covered including. The account answers questions of its followers but its tweets are not often retweeted. One of the most retweeted tweets is the tweet in which the account asks @Facebook to allow Latvia to create the user name “Latvia” on Facebook. The most popular tweet is the link to the opinion of various economists about the book of Prime Minister Dombrovskis telling how Latvia has overcome economic crisis. The account asked for retweets and promised the book for to five lucky retweeters.