Influence of political leaders on sustainable development goals – insights from twitter

Abstract

PurposeThe importance and criticality of sustainable development goals is witnessed by 195 member countries. For its full-fledged adoption and implementation, it needs to be understood by masses and political leaders are critical agents those engage diverse communities through social media such as twitter. Therefore, in this study focuses on how political leaders can influence the sustainable development goals through Twitter.Design/methodology/approachThis study examines the social media conversations of political leaders on Twitter. Social media analytics methods such as sentiment mining, topic modelling and content analysis-based methods have been used.FindingsThe findings indicate that most political leaders are primarily discussing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) “partnership for goals” and “peace, justice and strong institutions”. Many other goals such as “clean water and sanitation”, “life below water”, “zero hunger”, “no poverty” and “educational quality” are not being focused on.Research limitations/implicationsThis study offers implications in terms of collective decision making and the role of policy makers towards the goals of promoting SDGs. The authors highlight how political leaders need to involve key stakeholders in this journey.Originality/valueThis study scores and provides a cohort-specific prioritization of the leadership within these countries with regard to SDGs, which could be beneficial to the society.

Does digital economy promote sustainable development: Case of EU countries?

“…It could promote consuming more, which is not a concept of sustainable consumption. Grover et al (2021) analysed political leaders' communication through Twitter. They found that politicians who promote sustainable development ignore the following goals: clean water and sanitation, life below water, zero hunger, no poverty and educational quality.…”

Innovational duality and sustainable development: finding optima amidst socio-ecological policy trade-off in post-COVID-19 era

“…The exploration of the existing literature related to SDGs highlight the researchers focus on diverse topics such as performance indicators of food loss reduction (Al-Dalaeen et al, 2021), the influence of political leadership on the SDGs (Grover et al, 2021), information decision system-based framework design (Modgil et al, 2020), the impact of technological innovation on achieving SDGs (Sinha et al, 2020), humanitarian decision-making (Mari c et al, 2021), etc. However, the investigation into the effect of technological innovation attaining the SDGs and on the social indicator such as unemployment has not been paid enough attention.…”

“…Hence, it can be concluded that technological innovation can be an instrumental factor in achieving SDGs in the post-COVID world. Recently, scholars have argued for increased usage of digital media to raise awareness for SDGs (Grover et al, 2021), usage of technological innovations to hasten meeting sustainability goals (Girbuz and Ozkan, 2020). Gupta et al (2021) in a recent call for papers for this special issue highlighted the need for technological innovations to achieve SDGs in the post-pandemic world.…”

Factor structure and interpretation on the Thai-Social Media Engagement Scale (T-SMES)

“…Apart from utilizing social media to communicate and update information in everyday life, the user's purpose at the time drives the user's intention to use it. For example, students' intentions to use social media for learning (Balakrishnan, 2017), tourists' intentions to plan and take vacations (Parra-L opez et al, 2011), consumers' intentions to purchase goods and services (Lal, 2017), employees' intentions to look for employment (Karacsony et al, 2020), political leaders' intentions to engage the public and mobilize policies in support of economic, social, political, or sustainable development goals (SDGs) (Grover et al, 2021), and patients' and health professionals' intentions to use social media for medical services (De Angelis et al, 2018). As a result of this trend, social media utilization will be higher than usual.…”