Follow The Leader: Cambodians, Including Prime Minister Hun Sen, Making Big Waves On Social Media

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Follow The Leader: Cambodians, Including Prime Minister Hun Sen, Making Big Waves On Social Media

Forbes | 4 February 2016

Cambodians may not always agree with the decisions made by Prime Minister Hun Sen, but there’s at least one they do support: the use of Facebook and the Internet.

In the past month, Hun Sen has encouraged civil servants to use smartphones and new technology, created his own mobile application and website, and encouraged the population to engage with him on Facebook, leading him to garner more “likes” than the country’s opposition leader, Sam Rainsy.

Now, a new report shows social media use in Cambodia is booming with almost 42 percent more Cambodians logging on—mainly to Facebook—compared to last year.

Active social media users increased from 2.4 million to 3.4 million, while active mobile social users increased from 2.2 million to 2.9 million, according to figures from the 2016 Digital Yearbook, released last week by the marketing firm We Are Social.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen looks at a smartphone with a scout during a CPP ceremony marking the 37th anniversary of the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in Phnom Penh last month. (Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP/Getty Images)

Those figures reflect similar growth in the number of active Internet users, which rose from 3.8 million to 5 million, fueled mostly by cheap access to smartphones and the mobile web.

“There’s a massive growth in smartphones all over the world, and in Cambodia, these handsets are affordable, especially among young people,” said Simon Kemp, the report’s author.

In September, a survey of more than 2,000 Cambodians conducted by the Open Institute, a Cambodia-based NGO dedicated to teaching locals about technology, put the number of social media users, mostly from Facebook, at 3.18 million, the number of mobile social users at 3.08 million and the number of Internet users at 3.2 million.

It also showed more Cambodians were turning to Facebook and the Internet for news.

“The Internet is advancing as the main source of news for users. It has already surpassed radio, and if the present trend continues, in one or two years, the Internet will be the most important source of news in Cambodia, surpassing television,” said Javier Sola, program director of the Open Institute. “The government’s Facebook pages are now where to look for information. They are adapting to the ‘cooler’ way of communicating to the youth.”