Social Climbers
WHEN IT COMES TO social media impact, President Donald Trump was the undisputed king of the world. At his peak, Trump’s accounts had more than 88.8 million followers on Twitter and 32.8 million likes on Facebook—combined, more than any other world leader in office—and he knew how to use them.
Six months ago, in the aftermath of the Capitol Riot on January 6 that Trump stood accused of stoking, both platforms put an end to his dominance, banning his main accounts for inciting violence. Twitter’s ban is permanent; Facebook’s will lift in 2023.
Since then, Trump supporters have scrambled to keep their leader at the center of the social conversation in his absence, sharing every breathless statement from Mar-a-Lago as he gears up for a possible 2024 presidential run. Some have also jostled to claim the throne of TrumpWorld’s top influencer—a prize worth winning for those who covet power or who cherish the highest of political ambitions.
To find out who is leading this effort, Newsweek analyzed the Twitter and Facebook data of the 20 most-followed accounts in TrumpWorld—that is, those who are highly supportive of Trump, often uncritically so, or who have paid fealty to him to save or boost their careers.
The ranking covers the time period from January 8, when both platforms booted Trump, to May 8. With data from Tweetbinder (for Twitter) and CrowdTangle (for Facebook), Newsweek measured average engagement per post and per follower for each account on the platforms, using a formula that combines the two figures to arrive at a final, relative score. Those with a stronger average rate of engagement scored higher.
To be sure, this is not a work of science. The data is limited—it does not include Twitter replies, for example—and subjective decisions were made about who to include in TrumpWorld. Using most-followed accounts as the starting point also excludes influential accounts with smaller followings; these “rising stars,” are noted in a separate section at the end.
► This is an army in search of a king, a new leader on social media around whom they can rally in their War against the many factions of America’s left.
The end result: an indicative ranking of who among TrumpWorld’s most-followed accounts are able to make the biggest waves on the two primary social platforms dominated by President Trump before his ban on January 8.
This list speaks to the future of the GOP, a party led and shaped largely by those who sit outside of its official power structures. No politician breaks into the top five—or even the top seven—when ranked by ability to engage their followings. An evangelical leader, a well-known conservative activist, Trump’s offspring and prominent Fox personalities dominate.
