The Green League: Who are the Greens with the biggest social media following? – May 2022
In a new monthly column, Bright Green will be taking a look at Greens on social media. We’ll be breaking down who in the UK’s Green Parties have the most followers with a rolling league table. And we’ll be providing analysis of why some people are making more of a splash than others.
The criteria
To make the cut in the Green League, someone must:
- Be a member of at least one of the UK’s Green Parties (the Scottish Greens, Green Party in Northern Ireland, or Green Party of England and Wales)
- Have at least 25,000 followers across all their social media channels (for now, we’re just looking at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok), or have at least 20,000 followers on a single social media channel.
- Where an individual has more than one account on the same platform, we have only included the followers on the account they primarily use for their work within the UK’s Green Parties.
Who makes the cut in May 2022
15 people made it into May 2022’s Green league.
There’s no surprises who has topped the table. The Greens’ sole MP Caroline Lucas sits at the top, with nearly three times as many followers as the second placed Green. She’s the most recognisable Green face outside of Scotland and has more followers on Twitter than the chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak and the deputy leader of the Labour Party – so you’d expect her to be in first place.
Just three other Greens have over 100,000 followers across all their social media channels. Former Green Party of England and Wales leader Natalie Bennett, former MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber Magid Magid and co-leader of the Scottish Greens Patrick Harvie are all over that line, sitting in second, third and fourth place in May’s Green League.
Of the 15 Green League members:
- Four are in the Scottish Greens, three of which are sitting MSPs (Patrick Harvie MSP, Ross Greer MSP, Lorna Slater MSP and Adam Ramsay)
- Four are former leaders of the Green Party of England and Wales (Caroline Lucas MP, Natalie Bennett, Sian Berry and Jonathan Bartley)
- Four were once in Members of the European Parliament (Caroline Lucas MP, Magid Magid, Molly Scott Cato and Keith Taylor)
- Two are currently in the House of Lords (Natalie Bennett and Jenny Jones)
- Three are current or former members of the London Assembly (Sian Berry, Jenny Jones, Caroline Russell)
- Just one is a current or former deputy leader of the Green Party of England and Wales (Amelia Womack). There is also only one journalist (Adam Ramsay) and two academics (Molly Scott Cato and Rupert Read).
There are a few more interesting facts about our 15 Green League Members:
- All 15 have more followers on Twitter than any other platform, with the single exception of Keith Taylor who has 1,600 more followers on Facebook than Twitter.
- Just two of this month’s Green League have more than 5,000 followers on Instagram.
- Very few of May’s Green League members have an active presence on TikTok. Our top TikTokers are Ross Greer and Natalie Bennett – both of whom have fewer than 1,000 followers on the platform.
Who didn’t make the cut in May 2022
In some ways it is just as interesting to look at those who didn’t make the cut, as those who did.
Notably, there are currently no figures from the Green Party in Northern Ireland in this month’s Green League. However, the party’s current leader Clare Bailey isn’t far off making the cut. She joins a number of other high profile Greens including Maggie Chapman, Carla Denyer and Zack Polanski who are sitting a little below the line.
Neither of the Green Party of England and Wales co-leaders (Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay) made it into this month’s Green League. Denyer needs to find another 8,000 followers to meet our criteria, while Ramsay needs another 16,500.
As with the top 15, there are very few high profile Greens below the line who are active on TikTok. The biggest Green TikToker outside of our top 15 is deputy leader of Brighton & Hove Council Hannah Clare, who’s racked up 459 followers.
The Green League – Full table, May 2022
- Caroline Lucas – 689,000 followers
- Natalie Bennett – 230,000 followers
- Magid Magid – 174,500 followers
- Patrick Harvie – 116,000 followers
- Molly Scott Cato – 73,000 followers
- Sian Berry – 69,000 followers
- Amelia Womack – 65,500 followers
- Jonathan Bartley – 65,500 followers
- Jenny Jones – 63,000 followers
- Ross Greer – 54,000 followers
- Rupert Read – 37,500 followers
- Caroline Russell – 34,000 followers
- Lorna Slater – 31,000 followers
- Adam Ramsay – 30,500 followers
- Keith Taylor – 26,500 followers
Think someone is missing from this list? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter or Facebook.
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Image credit: GPEW – Creative Commons
Keith Taylor’s accounts don’t seem to be active anymore, should they still be included?
This article is interesting and well written, but I’m not sure it’s really in keeping with the general Green Party philosophy to pay too much attention to league tables. GP policy is to abolish them in schools. I’m not into social media, but I wonder whether there may be some double counting going on? In other words, could some of the followers on different social media be the same people? Could some of them even be bots? I hope this will be kept as a rough way of looking at activity on social media, not a way of judging which Greens are the most effective.