Canada

Prime Minister Harper was the 4th world leader to sign up to Twitter in July 2007 in the footsteps of @BarackObama, however he only started to tweet in September 2008 asking his followers to “check out the new Conservative Party website.” Although the tweets are written in first person he rarely writes the tweets himself. He often tweets about his vision for the country, his government actions and important days like Canada Day, Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving. His Twitter account is also empathetic when needed, e.g. on the occurrence of natural disasters. During the election campaign in 2011 he trade 140-character blows in a Twitter exchange with his opponent, Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff (@M_Ignatieff) who had challenged him to a one-on-one debate: “@M_Ignatieff curiously, my team proposed 1:1 to TV consortium today; however, your team did not speak up.” Prime Minister Harper is not very conversational, only 5% of his tweets are @replies.