In the
politics of many countries, social media has taken a front-and-center position
in election campaigns. During the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the social
networking service Twitter was heavily utilized by the candidates for
campaigning and communication. 31 million politics-related tweets were sent out
by American Twitter users on Election Day alone.
In Haiti, Twitter and other social
media services have not reached this level of significance. The Haitian
population has a very low rate of internet access (10.9%),
while radio is the foremost means of transmitting and receiving news. Of the
1.44 billion worldwide users of Facebook, a mere 202,600 users are registered
as Haitian – 20 percent of Haiti's population, and a far cry from the 58 percent
usage in the United States.
Although most Haitian politicians
and candidates standing for high office have social media accounts, they fail
to attract a large number of followers to these accounts, and fail to engage in
any significant way using social media. For instance, Dr. Maryse Narcisse,
presidential candidate for Fanmi Lavalas, widely seen as Haiti's most popular
political party, has just 383 followers on Twitter. Senator Jean Charles Moise,
of the well-known Pitit Dessalines platform, has 1,725. Most candidates hover
around this level, with at most several thousand followers.
Despite this apparent lack of
engagement from Haitian politicians with Twitter, a few candidates have far
more followers than others, reaching into the tens and hundreds of thousands.
Former Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe – who registered as a Presidential
candidate but was later disqualified – has 84,000 followers. His lawyer, Salim
Succar, has a whopping 625,000. Succar also has had a sudden rise in followers,
from just over 100,000 in February 2015, to the 625,000 in July.
On Twitter, it is not uncommon for businesses and
individuals to seek to amplify their influence by using fake followers. In
fact, there are a number of businesses that can provide consumers with thousands
of automated Twitter accounts. To give one example, “Devumi Social Media
Marketing” will provide an account with 10,000 followers for just $74 USD. These
accounts are do not belong to real people; nor do they do tweet or retweet.
They exist solely to inflate one’s follower number.
The mere presence of an unusually
high number of followers, or even a certain number of verifiably fake followers,
does not imply that a user has purchased them. Almost all Twitter accounts will
have some fake followers, as “bot” accounts follow as many accounts as they can
to camouflage their purpose and appear more like real accounts. The higher the
percentage of one's followers that are fake however, the more likely it becomes
that the user could be projecting an image of internet influence with cash.
The site TwitterAudit.com
analyzes users’ legitimacy based on the ratio of followed to following, the
number of tweets, and the date of the most recent tweet. Based on this
algorithm, the site estimates what percentage of a user's followers are in fact
real humans.An
examination of a selection of Haitian political actors and journalists yielded
the following results
Name
|
Occupation
|
Number of Followers
|
Percentage Fake
|
Salim
Succar
|
Attorney at law
|
623,000
|
80%
|
Michel Martelly
|
President
|
122,000
|
59%
|
Laurent Lamothe
|
Former Prime Minister, Disqualified Presidential Candidate, Peyizan
|
83,500
|
70%
|
Evans Paul
|
Prime Minister
|
77,000
|
89%
|
Sophia Martelly
|
First Lady
|
56,700
|
64%
|
Carel Pedre
|
Journalist
|
39,200
|
20%
|
Frantz Duval
|
Journalist
|
36,400
|
63%
|
Jean Renel Sanon
|
Former Minister of Justice and Public Security
|
5,600
|
34%
|
Rothchild Francois
|
Minister of Communication
|
4,596
|
34%
|
CEP Haiti
|
Provisional Electoral Council
|
2,438
|
19%
|
Jean-Charles Moise
|
Former Senator, Presidential Candidate, Pitit Dessalines
|
1,695
|
27%
|
Maryse Narcisse
|
Presidential Candidate, Lavalas
|
376
|
17%
|
Jacky Lumarque
|
Disqualified Presidential Candidate, VERITE
|
44
|
20%
|
Highlighted users, those with a number of fake followers higher than 50% percent, all have
a high likelihood of having purchased some fake followers. Given that the Twitter
average user has a minimal rate of fake followers,
those with much higher rates likely sought out some of their fake followers. Additionally,
there is a striking discrepancy in the number of followers between opposition
politicians – many of whom have large support within the Haitian electorate –
and politicians close to the Martelly administration. The only person found
with over 10,000 followers who does not also have a high rate of fake Twitter followers
is journalist Carel Pedre.
If these political figures have intentionally sought out fake Twitter followers, the rationale behind this remains unclear. It seems unlikely, given the low usage of the internet, and even lower usage of social media in Haiti relative to peer nations, that they hope to gain substantial votes using these methods. To speculate, perhaps a broad social media presence is increasingly seen as necessary for legitimacy in a relational context with other countries. Candidates may also expect that apparent social media success provides them legitimacy in the U.S. and other countries where important decisions about Haitian elections are often made. This perceived requirement may lead politicians to attempt to create the illusion of a vast internet following in a nation that is still behind its neighbors in internet infrastructure.
By Andrew Weiss, Elections Intern at the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.
