Bibi and Mr. Prime Minister: do different Facebook identities imply different messages for political leaders?

Abstract

PurposeSocial media has been widely adopted by politicians and political parties during elections and routine times and has been discussed before. However, research in the field has so far not addressed how a political leader's private or official social media account affects their message, language and style. The current study examined how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu uses his private Facebook account, compared to his use of his official Facebook page “Prime Minister of Israel.”Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the author identified the differences between these two digital entities using in-depth content analysis based on all posts (N = 1,484) published on the two pages over a 12-month period between 2018 and 2019.FindingsThe study’s findings indicate that Netanyahu regularly uses his personal page to address topics that are not represented on his official page, such as mentioning and attacking political rivals, presenting political agenda, and criticizing Israeli journalists and media organizations. Netanyahu's private Facebook account is also used to comment on personal events such as the criminal indictments he is facing and family affairs.Originality/valueThe findings highlight the need to investigate the different identities that politicians maintain on social media when they use personal or official accounts, sometimes on the same platform. The medium matters, yet the author also discovered that a leader's choice of account and its title are also important.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-01-2021-0004.

The “gender affinity effect” behind female politicians' social media support: facebook civil talk during Israel's 2021 elections

“…Next, since as our study was conducted on Facebook it is important to examine the unique traits of the platform in order to explain our findings. First, based on studies which identified that Facebook campaigning tends to be personal (Yavetz, 2021), populist (Ernst et al, 2019) and emotional (Bronstein, 2013), which characterizes women's style discourse on Facebook OIR 47,6 (Brandtzaeg, 2017), it is possible that these elements give women politicians a unique advantage on Facebook during campaigning. Second, our findings show that female politicians tended to post more about subjects such as welfare as opposed to male politicians (Table 8).…”

“…Since the move is in fact part of a wider trend of the personalization of election campaigns (Metz et al ., 2020), where the private life of the politician and their personality takes center stage, the nature of campaigning has become more intimate and personal. To illustrate, Yavetz (2021) found that Israel's PM Netanyahu uses his personal Facebook account (in parallel to his official “Prime Minister of Israel” Facebook page) to respond to events related to his family life with the aim of increasing sympathy towards him. In the same spirit, the nature of social media campaigning is more populist and emotional than traditional campaigning as several analyses showed that during social media campaigns, politicians tend to focus on emotional appeals in order to increase “fandom” and minimize dissent (Bronstein, 2013).…”

Information under lockdown: A content analysis of government communication strategies on Facebook during the COVID-19 outbreak

“…The use of digital media to communicate and transfer government information to citizens was significantly high during the Coronavirus outbreak days compared to routine times [ 3 , 59 ]. However, as can be seen in previous studies, various government organizations in Israel have already established the use of new digital platforms in order to disseminate information [ [60] , [61] , [62] , [63] , [64] ]. Regardless of the Coronavirus crisis, in recent years, many government organizations in Israel have adopted the use of social networks for the purpose of disseminating information to citizens and have also implemented many practices designed to increase engagement through the use of visual content (videos/photos), and up-to-date information about policy and operations [ 65 , 66 ].…”

A big-data analysis of the communication patterns of parliament members with the public on Facebook: top-down, non-inclusive and non-egalitarian

“…As of January 2015, 108 out of 120 MPs were active on Facebook in varying scopes and frequencies (Mann and Lev-On, 2016). Some leading Israeli political figures maintain both personal and formal Facebook pages that enable them to maintain parallel and distinguished communication channels with their followers (Yavetz, 2022).…”