Purpose

Social 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/approach

In 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.

Findings

The 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/value

The 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 review

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-01-2021-0004.

中文翻译：

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比比和总理先生：不同的 Facebook 身份是否对政治领导人意味着不同的信息？

目的

社交媒体在选举和日常活动期间已被政治家和政党广泛采用，并且之前已经讨论过。然而，迄今为止，该领域的研究尚未解决政治领导人的私人或官方社交媒体账户如何影响他们的信息、语言和风格。目前的研究调查了以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡如何使用他的私人 Facebook 帐户，以及他使用他的官方 Facebook 页面“以色列总理”的情况。

设计/方法/方法

 在这项研究中，作者根据2018 年至 2019 年 12 个月期间在两个页面上发布的所有帖子 ( N = 1,484)进行了深入的内容分析，确定了这两个数字实体之间的差异。

发现

该研究的结果表明，内塔尼亚胡经常使用他的个人页面来处理他的官方页面上没有出现的话题，例如提及和攻击政治对手、提出政治议程以及批评以色列记者和媒体组织。内塔尼亚胡的私人 Facebook 帐户还用于评论个人事件，例如他面临的刑事起诉和家庭事务。

原创性/价值

调查结果强调有必要调查政治家在使用个人或官方账户时在社交媒体上保持的不同身份，有时是在同一个平台上。媒介很重要，但作者也发现领导者选择的账户和头衔也很重要。

同行评审

本文的同行评审历史可在以下网址获得：https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-01-2021-0004。