Tim Rogers, de The Nicaraguan Dispatch, me consulto por email porque yo creo que Daniel Ortega no tiene cuenta en Twitter.

Mi respuesta la incluyo en un reportaje sobre el uso de Twitter por parte de nuestro presidente, pero dado que mi respuesta fue más larga (y porque me gusta dar todos los colores, no solo lo publicado), copio aquí la respuesta completa que compartí con Tim por correo electrónico en mi versión local de ingles.

Well, i don’t have direct access to Daniel Ortega communication strategy, but what I see is this, and this is my personal opinion on why he is not using twitter:

He doesn’t use Twitter because he doesn’t feel the need to. There is not a direct necesity in his everyday life to log in to a website or smartphone to post random messages. That doesn’t mean the Presidency (as an office or institution) does not reads twitter, or include it into their overall strategy.

It is fun when a president celebrates a sports victory (EPN), or posts it is trapped in a terminal (Laura Chinchilla), or celebrates «four more years» (Obama). Those are semi-personal messages. Ortega rarely publishes personal details on the media, and when i say rarely you don’t see photos of himself in Cuba (except that one time with Fidel few years ago), or in Venezuela, or anywhere. You only see him in official events, speeches, conferences, presidential meetings.

Then there’s the way he talks. He talks slowly, for many minutes, or hours. Twitter is not fit for that. Look at Fidel, his official twitter only posts links to his lenghty articles. Once again, Fidel is a writer, Ortega not. Ortega commands, he doesn’t write too much.

(I would like to add Rosario Murillo is much of a writer compared to him, she could be a hit on Twitter)

Finally, there’s the strategy. All state media (Pueblo Presidente, Canal 6) and family owned media (Canal 4, El 19, Canal 13, etc) have twitter accounts. The Juventud Sandinista has twitter account, and the JS and INATEC continually train student and young leaders in the use of social media for broadcasting the official agenda, events, news and victories. They lead media campaigns, use social media and #hashtags to re-inforce them, to make it feel like if a volume of people are celebrating and sharing their messages. And with every campaign, there’s the monitoring of social media.

Is he alone in this? I can’t remember if Jose Mujica have a twitter account, but the Presidencia de Uruguay does. The Presidencia de Nicaragua doesn’t have an official twitter but they do have a twitter for El Pueblo Presidente, which is a semi-official news agency.

My final quote? Is not relevant if he personally have a twitter account. That’s the least of the problems to point at his work.