With more than one million followers, the Mexican newspaper El Universal has more Twitter followers than any other newspaper from among the top 100 dailies in Latin America, according to a website that ranks newspapers' popularity.
Second behind Mexico’s El Universal is another newspaper named El Universal, this one from Venezuela, with more than 756,000 followers. In third place is the sports publication Meridiano, also of Venezuela, with more than 588,000 Twitter followers
The Twitter ranking, derived from the site 4International Media & Newspapers, includes the most-popular newspapers in Latin America with more than 100,000 Twitter followers. The 4IMN website measures newspapers' websites' popularity using an algorithm based on three search engines, so not all Latin American newspapers with more than 100,000 Twitter followers are included on the site's ranking.
Mexico is the country that boasts the most newspapers – five - with more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. The numbers of Mexican newspapers' Twitter followers are astonishing when compared with last year’s numbers: El Universal, Excelsior, Reforma, La Jornada and Milenio have more than doubled their popularity on Twitter since February 2011.
According to a recent study from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellency in Journalism, news organizations use Twitter mostly as a RSS feed and for self-promotion, rarely reaching out to their followers, reported the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The Twitter presence of news organizations and journalists has prompted debates and controversies about how the social media site is shaping journalism. While some journalists and analysts believe that using Twitter creates a more collaborative form of journalism, others argue that it turns journalists into gossips. Reporting live is not exclusive to journalists or news organizations anymore, turning Twitter into a breaking news source, as, according to GigaOM, Twitter allows almost anyone to act like a journalist.
According to the Twitter rankings, most - 16 - of the Latin American newspapers with more than 100,000 followers are located in South America. Two were in the Caribbean: Diario Libre from the Dominican Republic and El Nuevo Dia from Puerto Rico. None were in Central America.
Below are the ranking results:
1. @El_Universal_Mx - 1,065,084 followers
2. @eluniversal - 756,215 followers
3. @MeridianoTV - 588,760 followers
4. @ElNacionalWeb - 548,374 followers
5. @JornalOGlobo - 468,779 followers
6. @Milenio - 432,349 followers
7. @Estadao - 358,341 followers
8. @elespectador - 326,557 followers
9. @UNoticias - 297,530 followers
10. @elcomercio - 265,599 followers
11. @lanacioncom - 259,771 followers
12. @elmostrador - 241,034 followers
13. @diarioole - 222,846 followers
14. @REFORMACOM - 217,802 followers
15. @latercera - 196,103 followers
16. @clarincom - 182,553 followers
17. @infobae - 151,348 followers
18. @lajornadaonline -134,090 followers
19. @Diario_Libre - 132,803 followers
20. @elcolombiano - 121,427 followers
21. @eluniversocom - 130,118 followers
22. @ElNuevoDia - 120,758 followers
23. @Excelsior_Mex - 110,663 followers
