Khairy vanished from Twitter, while other UMNO leaders become less active on social media platform

In the current Information Age, social media plays an important role in promoting a political candidate, which could potentially affect the election results.

Former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi admitted that Barisan Nasional (BN) lost numerous seats to Pakatan Rakyat in GE-12 due to the latter’s utilization of social media. Consequently, BN leaders also leveraged on the power of social media.

However, BN was defeated in GE-14, and Pakatan Harapan has took over the government for more than a year. Are BN politicians still active on their social media after their defeat in the last general election?

In this article, we will look into the Twitter activities of several top leaders in UMNO – Najib Razak, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Hishamuddin Hussein and Khairy Jamaluddin.

According to media intelligence, Khairy produced the most tweets in the first four months of 2019, compared to the other UMNO leaders.

In January, the former UMNO Youth chief made more than 300 tweets, whereas Najib and Hishammuddin Hussein barely made 100 tweets each. On the other hand, UMNO president Zahid Hamadi was below the radar in that month as he was on his garden leave.

However, Khairy suddenly “disappeared” from Twitter in May, as he only made 6 tweets. In contrast, he made 189 tweets in April. Later, he completely stopped tweeting from June.

Meanwhile, Zahid Hamidi started to be active again in June after he returned from his garden leave. However, the number of tweets he made in June and July barely reached 100 tweets monthly. He “disappeared” from Twitter in August.

While for feedback, Najib received the highest number of retweets and mentions, despite Khairy being more active than the former UMNO president in the first four months of 2019.

But the trend of feedback received by Najib on his Twitter was on a declining trend, just like his tweeting trend. Yet, he remains as the most popular UMNO leader to be retweeted and mentioned on the social media platform.

Meanwhile, Hishammuddin who was more active than Zahid, shared the same fate as the latter by receiving a low number of retweets and mentions.