Among the election leaders, SPD chairman Tomio Okamura has the most Facebook followers. The profile of Prime Minister and ANO Chairman Andrej Babiš is the most followed on Twitter, but this platform is dominated by the representatives of the SPOLU coalition. Ivan Bartoš, chairman of the Czech Pirate Party, is the most successful on Instagram. That’s according to an analysis by Newton Media which focused on social media performance of the leaders of eleven political parties with the potential to enter the Czech Parliament.
Facebook is dominated by Tomio Okamura, who is currently followed by 302,000 users. Andrej Babiš has about 18,000 followers less, but he is the most prolific of all election leaders on Facebook. During the two summer holiday months (July 1 – August 31, 2021), he published 545 posts, which is three times more than the ODS leader Petr Fiala and even ten times more than the ČSSD chairman Jan Hamáček. On average, this means that the prime minister (or his marketing team) publishes almost nine posts a day.
However, Andrej Babiš’s contributions do not provoke as many reactions as Tomia Okamura’s posts. “Out of the five most successful social media entries across all media channels published by election leaders this summer, four belong to Tomio Okamura. He gained the most interactions under a video in which he challenges the Minister of Health, Adam Vojtěch, not to put “muzzles” on citizens again or when he opposes alleged discrimination of unvaccinated citizens in CNN Prima News. Both videos have over 8,000 shares,” says Jitka Adamčíková from Newton Media.
Andrej Babiš won the imaginary pre-election competition for the most influential post with the three-word status “I’ll tell the truth tomorrow”, which had over 40,000 interactions (likes, comments, shares). “It is evident that in the style of communication of this particular contribution, the Prime Minister followed up on the now almost legendary sentence “I will probably buy something tomorrow”. Interesting (not only from an analytical point of view) is the fact that announcement of the upcoming communication aroused more interest and discussion than the information itself,” points out David Kursa, an expert in data and communication. While the posts of Tomio Okamura are mostly shared, especially by his supporters, contributions of Andrej Babiš are mainly commented on, both his supporters and critics. The marketing team of the head of ANO thus succeeds in constantly gaining attention in social and traditional media with similarly provocative positions.
Among the election leaders, Ivan Bartoš has the third largest number of fans on Facebook, followed by Robert Šlachta and Petr Fiala. However, Bartoš publishes relatively few posts on Facebook and is significantly less active than Robert Šlachta or the leader of the Tricolor movement Zuzana Majerová Zahradníková, who are among the most prolific contributors on Facebook right after the chairmen of ANO and SPD. In case of Robert Šlachta, the high number of fans of his Facebook page is also interesting due to the relatively short time of the account’s operation. “In less than two years, Robert Šlachta managed to get almost 80,000 followers. In terms of the size of the fan base, he was able to overtake, for example, ODS chairman Petr Fiala, who has been communicating via Facebook for more than eight years, or Jan Hamáček, whose profile was created more than twelve years ago,” points out Jitka Adamčíková from Newton Media.
The situation on Twitter is completely different. Although it is dominated by Andrej Babiš with 456,000 followers, the greatest interactions were aroused by the contributions of Markéta Pekarová Adamová, one of the leaders of SPOLU coalition. When comparing the success of communication on Twitter and Facebook, a fundamental difference of users of these social networks can be seen. “Representatives of the coalitions SPOLU and Pirates and STAN are much more successful on Twitter. It is obvious that their target group is far more represented on this social network. However, in terms of the overall impact, we are talking about the total number of hundreds of thousands of users on Twitter, while there are millions on Facebook,” says David Kursa. Regarding the communication of individual chairmen on Twitter, recent months show a significant improvement for Marian Jurečka. „Although he has relatively few fans, some of his tweets can match the contributions of Markéta Pekarová Adamová, Andrej Babiš or Ivan Bartoš in terms of user involvement,” adds Kursa.
Pekarová Adamová is also successful on Instagram, which Andrej Babiš completely ignores (of the eleven election leaders, apart from Babiš, only Vojtěch Filip does not use it). With more than 40,000 followers, it is Ivan Bartoš who is the strongest on Instagram. The second place belongs to the already mentioned Pekarová Adamová followed by Tomio Okamura. Although the chairman of the SPD is very active on Instagram – during the summer holidays he produced almost twice as many contributions as Pekarová Adamová and Bartoš combined, his posts provoke less reactions. During the summer, the number of people who followed his profile even decreased. While the shots of Bartoš behind the mixing console at the pirate festival in Dolánky near Turnov evoked over 6,000 interactions, Tomio Okamura’s contribution with a photo from Mácha’s Lake, which was his most influential summer contribution on Instagram, gained only one-fifth of DJ Bartoš’s reactions.
