By the year 2022, more than 60% of the global GDP will be generated digitally. Over the next ten years approximately 70% of new value created in the global value creation will be based on digitally enabled platforms [World Economic Forum 2019]. On December 1, 2014, the Republic of Estonia launched its e-residency program. The initial goal of this policy program is the empowerment of entrepreneurs worldwide, independently of their political and economic background and it lifted Estonia’s reputation to the next level in business and tech circles worldwide [Antson 2019].

The program became a crucial part of the Estonian’s marketing strategy [Kimmo et al 2018]. For this, the planned conference poster will answer the following questions with a gender-sensitive approach: Who shapes the discussion about e-residency on the social media platform Twitter?

Researching on e-residency online and in particular on Twitter is of interest for various reasons.
So far, there is only a small body of literature on the e-residency available [i.a. Aavik et al. 2017, Tammpuu et al. 2019]. Additionally, there has not yet been published any analysis of the online discourse about e-residency in popular data banks or journals. For this, it appears that no in-depth pertinent research has been done on the matter despite its significance. Besides this, previous research already analysed the strong connection between political communication and Twitter [Stieglitz et al 2017].
Understanding the actors and their networks which shape the online exchange on Twitter is an important contribution for a) creating an understanding of the Estonian online nation marketing network and to b) to deepen research on one aspect of inclusive e-initiatives such as the e-residency program.