The Facebook Presence of Female Israeli Politicians

The next speaker in this ICA 2018 is Moran Yarchi, whose interest is also in the uses of social media in election campaigns. But few recent studies have specifically examined the uses of social media by female politicians: much of the work on the role of women in politics still focusses on other matters, including mainstream media representation.

The present study focusses on Israel, where women make up only 27% of the Members of the Knesset. Media coverage continues to focus on male politicians, and the focus of such coverage is also more on personal matters, while for women considerably more attention is paid to their fashion and personal life. This also means that women might be especially likely to use social media – which afford them greater control over their message – to engage with their voters.

Israel is also a useful country for study as it has relatively frequent elections. The present study examined the messages posted on Facebook by some 33 male and female politicians of similar political status in the week leading to election day in 2015. Male politicians received more attention in the mainstream media, but female politicians generated more likes and shares, yet not many more comments or a greater number of participants on their pages. This is largely independent of party, age, or other obvious factors.

The rhetoric of male and female politicians appeared largely similar; female politicians used Facebook more strongly to present themselves, and they also took a somewhat more feminist approach in their posting. This may make us more optimistic for the future, as such activities may then also lead to a better representation of women in politics.