Does Using Twitter Help Reach The General Public? An exciting question that you would like to answer spontaneously with “yes”. But with the European Central Bank, which examined the subject in a recent study, things are a little different.
For two decades, the monetary watchdogs have for the most part acted with scientific aloofness and communicated accordingly: from expert to expert. Not from monetary politician to citizen. Even today, the speeches of the central bankers are in many cases an impertinence for inexperienced people. Without a master’s degree in economics, you hardly understand anything. ECB President Christine Lagarde wants to change that. When she took office in 2019, she promised that the central bank should get closer to citizens and communicate more easily.
The Frenchwoman has long answered the question about the benefits of Twitter for herself. As head of the International Monetary Fund, Lagarde already made extensive use of the social network. In the meantime 707,000 people follow her, that’s around 50,000 more than the ECB can show. Hardly a day goes by when Lagarde and her team do not post anything. In many of the photos she shares, she shines, seems approachable. In addition, there are summaries of press conferences in short sentences, but also congratulations on the new job of a friend or colleague, as well as praise, for example for constructive meetings with politicians in Brussels.
Lagarde goes out into society and works on important issues beyond the brittle monetary policy, including climate protection and women’s rights. She likes and masters this agenda setting, virtually and in real life. So this week at an on-site visit in Frankfurt. The occasion: 25 years of the Frankfurt Rhein Main business initiative. Lagarde stood at the desk dressed in black and quickly brought the around 120 guests to their side: A few sentences in German, a short quote from Goethe, the son of the city, plus something personal: “I sometimes ride my bike through Frankfurt Helmet so that nobody recognizes me. ” Already there were laughs and standing ovations at the end.
It was her first public appearance in Frankfurt since the outbreak of the corona pandemic. The ECB photographer took photos for Lagard’s Twitter account, where they were shared the next day. The text for this: “We, the ECB, are happy to have Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region as our home.”
The Bafin does not tweet at all
Incidentally, the ECB takes Twitter much more seriously than the German financial regulator Bafin. The German authority does not have its own account to this day. The Bafin had to expressly point this out again in February, due to current events. “The Bafin became aware of a fake account in their name with the Twitter news service,” said a press release.
But back to the initial question and the in-house ECB study: Does the central bank reach the non-experts in society via Twitter? The sober, but Twitter-compatible answer: The use of the social network is “no road to nowhere”.