It has become a habit for Argentinian politicians to open personal Weibo accounts, where they post opinions, rally votes, or simply share photos. The number of "fans" on social networks has become an important metric for measuring their personal influence. However, recently released data shows that the number of fans of these public figures contains a significant amount of "water content".
Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner places great emphasis on using social networks to gather popularity. She frequently posts personal photos on Weibo or makes sharp remarks different from official statements. This unique personal style has garnered her approximately 2.2 million fans, placing her at the top of the social media rankings for leaders in Latin American countries.
According to recent data from the social network Twitter, only 52% of Cristina's Twitter fans are real users, while "zombie fans" account for 48%. This data is almost consistent with the results of a survey conducted by another network company called "Ficker" on the quality of social media fans. The survey showed that "zombie fans" on Cristina's Twitter account accounted for 43% of the total fan base.
From the survey data of both companies, it is not just Cristina who faces the embarrassment of "zombie fans." Mauricio Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital, is the politician with the second-highest number of fans after the president, with a total of 569,000 fans. However, 36% of them are "zombie fans."
David Kaplan, the initiator of the Twitter fan audit, stated that when technical personnel audit the quality of fans, they verify user account information, including activity level, last login time, the number of fans for the account itself, and interaction frequency with other users, to determine whether they are "live fans" or "zombie fans." A most obvious sign of "zombie fans" for politicians is that they never post updates, have no fans themselves, and belong to the same political party as the Twitter account owner.
According to professional analysis, although there are many websites in Argentina offering "zombie fan" selling services, it does not necessarily mean that all these "zombie fans" are purchased, and even the Twitter user themselves may not know how many "zombie fans" they have. Another scenario is that social networking sites, in order to attract users, continuously add fans to some large accounts to inflate the number of fans.
Kaplan said that under normal circumstances, for Twitter accounts with a large number of fans, the number of real fans only accounts for half of the total. This Twitter audit is mainly aimed at evaluating the true quality of fans, making the competition for the number of fans on Twitter more transparent.