Politicians in Lebanon have been increasingly embracing Social Media over the last year and their Social Media activity will continue to grow at a much higher rate in 2013. Think Media Labs has been monitoring, documenting, and analyzing the Social Media activity of the politicians and has compiled and summarized this data in this detailed analytical report. After going through this report you will know who is active, who is a late comer to the political Social Media scene, who is more social than others, who has more followers, when are they having slow months.

1. thinkmedialabs.com 1
Political
Social Media
Lebanon and Elections 2013

2. Table thinkmedialabs.com
of Contents 2
1 Executive Summary
3 Key Findings
12 Think Media Labs and the Elections
14 Elections of Lebanon 2013 the Social Media Challenage
16 Challenges for Politicians and their Teams
18 Online Advertising
24 Looking Forward Recommendations
30 General Observations
33 Tweets
61 Followers
86 Methodology
87 Legal Disclaimer
88 Think Media Labs Services

3. Executive Summary 1
“
thinkmedialabs.com
For the elections
Think Media Labs has
developed specific
election Social Media
trainings, orientation
sessions, and detailed
reports for political
Ayman Itani
candidates, their teams,
“
Founder and CEO of Think Media Labs Politicians in Lebanon have
been increasingly embracing
Political parties Social Media over the media entities and
and candidates
last year and their Social
Media activity will continue
journalists, NGOs, and
“
are learning
to grow at a much higher election monitoring
rate in 2013. Think Media
how to use Labs has been monitoring, organizations.
documenting, and analyzing
Social Media the Social Media activity
of the politicians and has are expected to fuel the growth of political social media
with more compiled and summarized and will prove to be critical for some candidates. Political
this data in this detailed parties and candidates are learning how to use Social
knowledge and
familiarity, out
“ analytical report. After going
through this report you will
know who is active, who is
Media with more knowledge and familiarity, out of necessity.
Their teams are already gearing up for the elections by
improving their skills, learning about the latest Social Media
of necessity. a late comer to the political
Social Media scene, who is
tools, experimenting with different social channels… For the
elections Think Media Labs has developed specific election
more social than others, who Social Media trainings, orientation sessions, and detailed
has more followers, when are reports for political candidates, their teams, media entities
they having slow months... and journalists, NGOs, and election monitoring organizations.
Upcoming elections in 2013 Please refer to page 12.

4. Executive Summary
thinkmedialabs.com 2
The
methodology and approach
we followed is that we are specialized in:
Social Media Business Intelligence. We have gathered
and processed political Social Media data for more than one year
and presented them in this report (with no political analysis) for you to
do your own. If you are into political analysis and have been monitoring the
offline behavior of politicians, our studies have a wealth of data that will allow you
to match political analysis to political Social Media activity for assessing the online
behavior of politicians during incidents, tough times, troubled political periods,…
Think Media Labs has created the first and only standard for Lebanon’s Social Media
elections monitoring and online activity of politicians. Politicians from the different
parties get in touch with us on a monthly basis to get our latest reports to measure
the activity of their teams as well as that of their competitors. Media institutions,
journalist, and embassies very frequently reach out for data on Political
Social Media to provide insight and contribute to the reports they are
.preparing .
.Let us jump into the data

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S ca Me i A t i o L b n s P liin .
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8. thinkmedialabs.com Think Media Labs and the Elections
13
Social Media training for:
politicians and the teams
(community building, ad execution,…)
media institutions and individuals
(how to monitor, what to look for, what to analyze,…)
NGOs monitoring the elections
Social Media Business Intelligence Platform: politicians
and their team have their own dedicated interface that
they check their growth, the activity of their followers,…
Competitive Insight where we provide insight on their
competitors

9. thinkmedialabs.com The Social Media Challenge 15
@ Independently of the adopted election law (as of this
writing the different parties haven't agreed on a law)
political Social Media will be a significant participant.
This is a challenge for politicians and their teams
#
especially that some basic techniques of Twitter are not
mastered such as the proper use of hashtags (a basic
and powerful building block of Twitter).
Resources will be spent in online advertising (refer to
page 18).
Political teams will receive training.

10. thinkmedialabs.com Challenges for Politicians and their Teams 17
• Effectively identifying Social Media data of interest
to them (refer to page 12 for Social Media Business
Intelligence)
• Spending effectively their budget
• Analyzing and reporting to management the data with
recommendations forward
• Creating relevant and engaging Branded Content
to boost the discussions on Social Media (beyond the
traditional political repertoire)
• Effective Mobile Strategy

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S ca Me i A t i o L b n s P liin .
o il da cit f e a e e oica s
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12. thinkmedialabs.com Key Findings 10
Mr. Saad Hariri and Mr. Najib Mikati
are the only politicians with their
account verified by Twitter.

13. thinkmedialabs.com Online Advertising 19
Ad budget spending has been growing month on month
and more politicians are using it, especially Facebook.
This is a collage of ads used by politicians throughout
different times of the year.

14. thinkmedialabs.com Mobile 20
Politicians
are exploring
growth
into mobile;
however,
it is very
experimental
at this stage.

15. T i i as mmay rs naino te
hs s u r pe e tto fh
S ca Me i A t i o L b n s P liin .
o il da cit f e a e e oica s
vy t
19
$4
B y h fl
u te ul
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es o

16. thinkmedialabs.com Social Media Activity after Election 21
Whether a politician
wins or loses, he /she
might not be as active
or as interested in
Social Media post
election.
That remains to be seen.

17. thinkmedialabs.com Politicians are Competing in a 23
Communication Space that is New to Them
“ “ Politicians are gradually
starting to realize how
Social Media differs from the
one-directional method of
communication of mass media.

18. thinkmedialabs.com General Observations 31
More and more politicians With political topics varying,
are involving team members many hashtags are created
to help them keep their by the community as the
Social Media feeds regularly discussion grows (and
active. sometimes snowballs).
Many of these hashtags
Politicians who understand don›t stick and many of
the medium well are them do (example: hashtag
putting a lot of efforts being #blamebassil).
considered as an active
member of the community
(arranging tweet ups, live When on TV they don›t
tweet question and answer mention frequently their
sessions, …) Social Media experience
unless the presenter brings
Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui is up the topic, and it is usually
known to use Social Media in the context of «who has
to channel user complaints more followers»
of Internet and mobile
networks to technical teams
for review and intervention.
#ThinkMediaLabs

19. thinkmedialabs.com Politicians are Listening 32
There are doubts
that politicians are
not listening to their
audience (electors).
Via Social Media they
are listening but are
they acting on citizen
issues that are another
question. We will let
you be the judge of that.

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S ca Me i A t i o L b n s P liin .
o il da cit f e a e e oica s
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23. thinkmedialabs.com Tweets 59
Politicians with very little activity on their Twitter accounts prior to 2012 and
became active in 2012 are Ms. Bahia Hariri, Ms. Nayla Tueni and Mr. Atef
Majdalani, Mr. Ibrahim Kanaan, and Mr. Fouad Makhzoumi

24. thinkmedialabs.com Tweets 60
The political party of Mr. Jumblat formally announced on
September 11, 2012 that Mr. Jumblat has no official account on
any of the Social Media channels. As such the data we had earlier
was removed from our study.

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28. thinkmedialabs.com Methodology 86
For general listings, the order of the politicians is
done in alphabetical order by last name, except
when they are being ranked against certain criteria
(followers, activity …)
There may be certain gaps in the early months of the
year due to either the politician was not active during
that time or that we didn't have that data at the
time. In some of these cases, we have estimated the
activity for completion or comparison purposes.
Most of the data is Twitter data. The analysis upon
request is by monitoring their full online presence
(web, Facebook, twitter, mobile,…)

29. thinkmedialabs.com Disclaimer 87
Think Media Labs L.L.C and its individual contributors,
system operators, developers, sponsors or anyone
else connected to Think Media Labs L.L.C disclaim
all warranties, whether express, implied, statutory, or
otherwise, including without limitation warranties of
merchantability, no infringement, fitness for a particular
purpose, and any warranties or conditions arising out
of course of dealing or usage of trade of any results or
consequences presented in this analysis.

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31. thinkmedialabs.com Think Media Labs Services 88
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