The piece points out that while a large proportion of politicians are enthusiastic – or at least regular – users, readers and responders on 'X', it ranks rather low as far as the general population is concerned.
According to cited research by the Latvijas fakti market research company in 2023, 90% of the Latvian population is on social networks in one form or another, and 79% admit to logging on at least once a week. 57% say they do so every day or almost every day. Social networks are used more often by younger people, with higher education and a higher income level.
Meta/Facebook is actively used by 54% of respondents, Instagram by 19% and TikTok by 11%. Next come Telegram" (10%), the Latvian domestic social media network Draugiem (9%) and only then X/Twitter (5%).
According to Iveta Kažoka, political scientist and director of the research center "Providus", part of the explanation for politicians' fascination with 'X' may lie in the decline of newspapers.
"Editorials were very influential [in the heyday of newsprint]. Politicians thought that the media shaped the mood of the public and were able to formulate more precisely what this public was thinking," said Kažoka.
With the decline of print media in Latvia, as elsewhere, exacerbated by the subsiding fortunes of the Diena daily which was once the national newspaper of record, politicians looked about for new daily signals of the public mood – and felt they had found the answer with Twitter despite its near-total lack of filtering, or what used to be called 'editing'.
There is also the fact to be taken into consideration that while newspaper column inches were of strictly limited proportions, in cyberspace there are no such constraints and commentators can in theory keep on gushing indefinitely.
You can read the full piece here, with Part 2 to follow.
