Netanyahu Final Contextual Analysis

I chose to analyze Mr. Netanyahu's public Facebook page. I also used other pages for reference, as well as a few comment sections and threads of various social media pages, linked in the report. 

This research was fascinating and more challenging than I expected. There were two major barriers I came across - and naively did not consider. First, I do not speak or read any language other than English. This fact was going to cause a huge setback. Fortunately, Google and Bing have amazing translation technology tools. The second challenge, which I did not think about before my research, is the cultural norms and customs of a country in which I am obviously unfamiliar.  

The political system is in the middle of a revolution across the world. The average person has more say than ever before and the politicians are still trying to figure out what role social media plays in politics. 

Will politics become as shallow as social media?

Or will the world change with the times - giving each person more power?

While some of the brightest minds in the world are figuring out what role social media will play in social issues; politicians are using this tool to gain votes, popularity and power.

Benjamin Netanyahu did what many would have thought impossible in today's modern world - coming from behind to stay in power, and doing so unsuspectingly. Social media has played an increasing role in elections since 2008. What made Benjamin Netanyahu's run for reelection successful? The answer can be found in social media. I will explore the Physical, Psychological, Social, Temporal and Cultural context to illustrate how social media has changed the landscape of politics.

Many times throughout the blog I compare Obama's page to Bibi's (Netanyahu's). This is only done for context purposes - as many Americans have little working knowledge of foreign politics.

Physical

While the location of the election took place in Israel, many people across the world were able to “chime-in” with their thoughts about Israel’s Prime Minister, via social media.

Psychological

Just before Election Day in Israel, Netanyahu posted a video asking for questions and said, “In a few minutes I will be here to answer your questions.” What I noticed - using Facebook’s translating tool - was the lack of questions. Most were comments that solely praised Netanyahu. These comments can be indexed under two categories:

1. Pure praise of the leader
2. Praising the leader, then asking easy questions.

The post clearly had a major effect on the undecided/swing voters reading the comments of praise. This alone played a huge roll in how voters perceived him. The praising questions lead to abnormally happy postings. When you compare Netanyahu's page comments to that of other political leaders, there was an appearance that the world loved Bibi.

    
  When Obama posted the same style of post days later - giving a lucky fan the chance to meet the President - things were not as positive. The most powerful man in the world's Facebook page (Obama's) seems to be a place for trolls. While there were some positive, there were many more negative - and quite a few satirical - questions and/or comments to the United States' President. 

    
  Netanyahu’s Facebook is much more positive than one would expect. When everyone seems to love someone it’s hard to be the one who steps out in disagreement. An exploring swing voter would feel awkward not loving the man, especially since the historically cynical internet seems to love him - at least on his own page. Viewing Bibi's Facebook page, users truly love Bibi, and in  a tight election it is important to show overwhelming support - which Netanyahu did.

      I found no evidence that any posts were hidden, but I also know one can easily hide posts without anyone knowing - keeping the posts visible to the writer so they are unaware that their post is not visible. The psychological warfare of gatekeeping social media for political issues is an issue all its own.  

Social

As of March 31, the top two Israeli political parties accumulated over 170,000 likes on their Facebook pages. The Zionist Union had 154,764 likes while there were 18,894 likes for the Likud Party - which Netanyahu is a part. How can a candidate win if their party has so few likes on Facebook when compared to the other? 

Comparisons of other political pages show the likes a person receives is more important than the party. For example, the Democratic party page has more likes than the GOP; however the committee pages likes are flipped showing the GOP committee page having more likes than the Democratic committee page. Likes to a party page do not seem to be a clear indicator of who will win; a better predictor may be what person has more likes. Bibi's Facebook page has many more likes than his 
opposition. This again helps his perceived popularity to swing voters - his page wall looks more like a wall of love than politics. Many other political parties did not even have a Facebook campaign, a sure way to lose an election.

The Likud Party page is interesting in the analysis of Israeli politics and Bibi. The first thing that stands out when one looks at the Likud Party page is that Netanyahu is the clear figurehead of the Likud party.

This image became the profile picture for the Likud party days before the election, as Bibi became the figure for a stonger Israel, making him more than just a politician. Looking at other political parties pages around the world, a profile picture like this is not common. Most seek to keep to their logo's even during election season (they do change the cover photo). By making Bibi's face the page profile picture not only shows complete support, but the image suggest he is the only one that can save Israel.

A key in how Netanyahu won the election was attributed to his supporters who instead of grasping onto ideals, they gravitated toward the person because of his likable imaginary portrayed on Facebook. The same can be said about USA in its past few elections. Just as Obama became the figure for Hope and Change, Bibi become the figure for a safer, stronger Israel that would not back down. Aligning a group with a person may make a party much more social media friendly, compared to a large bureaucracy. What goes viral on my Newsfeed tends to have the theme of an individual not a large group. 

The second aspect and perhaps more notable aspect about the Likud party page is that posts were much more negative compared to Bibi's during the course of the election.  

Both official posts and comments on the page were more condescending, negative and more hate filled than Netanyahu's page. This allowed for Bibi to keep his lovable, grandfather-family-man image clean yet still send out negative press in an attempt to spark a fire under anyone involved. This gave lovable Bibi plausible deniability - which is huge, especially towards the end of the election - when he articulated controversial statements - which won him the election. 

Keeping the negative and positive posts on different pages is a brilliant move. This lets the negative come out on the institution, but keeps the person's credibility clean in a world where what people think about you personally influences how they view you. This can give more ability and opportunity to say very pointed things if you have a reputation for being sincere. The strong words were also aided in the war of words, being highlighted across other pages of the internet.

After Netanyahu gave his speech to the United State Congress, the YouTube comment sections on the video started to light up. Not surprising that most of the comments were negative (I would post images of the post but as normal YouTube comments are very vulgar - feel free to do your own scrolling) about Netanyahu. Most of the negative comments came from people from countries that have never been friends with Israel. The old proverb, “An enemy of my enemy is my friend,” rings true in the come from behind victory. If a group of people who you hate and they feel the same toward you, dislike a political leader, this only enhances your desire to vote for him/her - your enemies' least favorite. The negative comments made on social media, intended to destroy Netanyahu, only helped him win. 

Even "allies" political leanings can be part of the reason why Netanyahu won at the last second. According to a Breitbart article, this was the key reason the votes turned the way the did. "There are many reasons that Netanyahu surged toward the end. But they all boil down to one: enough Israeli voters knew that a loss for Netanyahu meant a victory for Obama. And they weren’t going to stand for it."

In class we discussed how a thought germ spreads. The ironic thing about the thought germ with Bibi is not everyone involved in the germ got to vote. By bashing Netanyahu the only thing the other side did was send his supporters to the polls.

Temporal

What makes social media powerful is how fast a message can be sent. What made Netanyahu’s campaign/career so potent is his fluid use of social media. His posts not only came at the right time and with the right topic, but he dominated any Newsfeed. As part of my research: I liked/stocked a few pages from Israeli politics, resulting in Netanyahu having dominated my Newsfeed ever since. His post were not only friendly - going with his family man image - but intriguing, showing his life as well as politics. A poster can't just start a successful social media campaign, generally it takes time. Bibi's longer presence on Facebook gives him an advantage over his social media newbies oppositions. He has even taken out the time to fill up his Timeline with old photos of his personal life, from years ago. 

From February 1st to his election win, at least 58 posts streamed across the Newsfeed of those who hit the like button. Rarely did a day go by without a post, all while keeping his professionalism and more importantly his persona, allowing Bibi to have open communication with supporters. Having an established Facebook, the posts would not come off as spammy because of the preset standard he had already established with users. A few times nothing was posted for 24 hours, but when the posts restarted after the unusual break there was a barrage of posts - usually more than three. Skipping a day of posting makes posting multiple times in one day much more tolerable to the follower. I believe even non posting days were planned out for travel or to lighten up the load on followers feeds, in preparation for the election storm.

There was not a trend of favored times to post. Most of the post appeared to be happening either during the actual event or shortly after - giving the feeling you were right there with him as it happened. When you are as popular as a person as Bibi, any post would end up at the top of one's Newsfeed based on likes alone.

Benjamin Netanyahu's win shows how quickly the tables can turn, on the dominate public opinion. Social media has forever changed how politics will work around the world. The question may no longer be who won the debate, but who won the "likes" - on a "personal level"- and who was able to manage the complicated world of social media the best. Creating a page for the purpose of winning an election is not enough, you must be engaged throughout your career.

Conclusion

Social Media has changed politics from a local endeavor to a global one, anyone can watch speeches presented from across the ocean in their living room while discussing their thoughts about whether the elections really affect them or not. In an age where anyone can go viral in seconds, knowing one misspoken word can derail a whole campaign, who wins will no longer be decided at the polls but also on social media. Voters are making a shift from looking at party platform to looking at the person. Years ago you belonged to one political party and that's just how you voted - for life. I believe this is becoming the biggest change of ideology for present day and future elections because we are a world connected to social media. As information becomes easier to find, hiding under a political banner/party is becoming extremely difficult. Individuals' beliefs have become more well known and each person has an equal say because of instant feedback. I believe the political landscape as we have seen with Netanyahu is becoming more volatile. This is just the start of a massive paradigm switch of how voters will chose who to support. Social media is already changing the world and looks like it has started to forever change the landscape of public discourse.

Facebook page analysis

My original Facebook plan is here I choose to keep the post separate because of how long each is.  

My Facebook Campaign is over; it was a fun experience and I learned a lot about myself and social media as I managed this page and a few others over the course of the semester.  I ended with 205 likes and a pretty good following of engaged people on the site. Yes, Grandma was one of my biggest contributors, but I managed to gain some people from an ad who have continued to liked most my posts since liking the page. 

I captured two of the three demographics I had hoped I would reach, by the end of the semester. The three demographics were:Grandmas, Small Business Owners and Young Music Teachers. 

The demographic least engaged was the business owners. 

Here were my proposed demographics:

Grandmas - While grandmas - age 45-65 and over - was one of my largest demographics, 

Bell - 65 and retired - enjoys having people over for open houses and gatherings. She is always looking for background music to play during parties. Bell uses social media to keep up with the grand kids and to pass along political propaganda supporting her political view points.

Male Business Owners - The male business owners were my weakest demographic, yet I still managed to gain a small following. Allen - 45 and works 40 plus hours/week - a small business owner who spends many hours at a computer doing payroll and other mundane tasks - doing as much of the business legwork himself as well. During the long hours sitting at his computer, Allen likes to play background music to keep him going. He is not the very active on social media but does follow a few people who share a few common interests.

Band Teachers - The majority of band teachers are male, so it is not a surprise that the male 18-24 year olds were larger than the females in this demographic. Male and female combined - this was my largest reached group - but also happens to be my largest personal friend circle. This fact makes me wonder how accurate the results truly are (I do know every band teacher and band teacher wannabe in the city). 

Mrs. Jay - a 24 year old school teacher - teaching music at an inner city school. She struggles to find composers that her students can relate to while providing a positive learning experience through classical music. Unlike the celebrities of "pop" music - her students' preferred listening choice - she is always trying to find a composer who is cool enough to keep their attention, while keeping the integrity of a classically trained musician.

As you can see the large chunks of people that liked my page were near or inside my target demographics.  

There are also fans on the page that claim a language other than English as their first language. Tamil is an African language, statistically small and an unimportant group in language statistics. The fact that I was able to reach people that may not speak English, shows the power of the language of music.  

My most popular posts were the Exclusive Facebook posts - my page was the only place they would ever hear the posted music. This demonstrates the need for people to feel included and close to an artist. If the content on the page is nothing special, they will not be engaged and will continue to search for another place to get this "fix." Asking questions did not go over as well as I had hoped. I either got no response or friends acting more as trolls - it was all in good fun. I did notice that unless the post had music understandably, my fans did not want any part of it. 

At times I reached more people than had liked my page - coming from the help a share - but a few times the post was never shared and I still managed to reach over my original like amount. 

I bought about half of my likes - but it was worth it. 

Part of why this ad was so successful was I started it the day of the Super Bowl

I discovered that people would visit my site, check out new posts and listen immediately - not waiting around for it to appear on the Newsfeed. After trying a wide range of different posting times, I learned that my best shot to reach as many people as possible was to post in the early morning - people could look at it when they wanted, even if most the viewing happens in the evening.

Over the past few weeks my page numbers have decreased, with a few spikes. Most of it is due to the lack of posting. As school activities got crazy, I did not post as much toward the end of this assignment. Another reason is because the majority of my posts are piano compostions my fans are getting tired of just piano. My saxophone video went off the charts, but when I returned to the piano - even though the quilty of music went up - the numbers continued to decline. Since my posts were not everyday, I did not keep the audience engaged which in turn made my later posts less effective. Also, fans were not as impressed with compostions that took a few days to write vs. writing music every few hours.

This was interesting to me because I posted my music to bunch of different sites, all linking to facebook and apparently nothing came out of it.

My original plan did involve more videos to show the process but due to time, it was difficult to find a videographer and also get the sound quilty I wanted/needed for videos. Guess I need to invest in a GoPro. 

The greatest lesson I learned was that consistency matters. When posting on a daily basis, the audience was much more engaged in the material I had to share -  even when it was sub-par. I compared this to a more random posting - every few days - and daily was much more effective. The rule: In Social Media, absence does NOT make the heart grow founder - because someone else will take your place in the World Wide Web.  

I would do two things differently if I were to start the page over:

1. I would be more social.

I have always been more reserved about sharing my personal life. Posting publicly to a site is not my norm but to be successful on Facebook that is how you reach your audience. When I posted day to day, I got a few likes/comments but the next song I posted seemed to benefit from me giving away some of my social currency.

2. I would have an archive of music ready to go.

This page was based of my 30 Days of Improvisation. While that was a success, it became a struggle to write music for fans to hear. To promote oneself or another personality, having a completed portfolio of work to fall back on for any artist - when time does not allow for creativity - is essential. 

Rough Draft--- Netanyahu Context analysis

This research was fascinating and more challenging than I thought. The first of two barriers I came across - and naively did not think about - was the fact I did don’t speak or read any other language other than English (fortunately, Google and Bing have amazing translation technology tools).  

The second challenge - which I did not think about before my research - is cultural norms and customs.

Physical

The location of the election took place in Israel, yet many people across the world were able to “chime-in” with their thoughts about Israel’s prime minster, through social media.

Psychological

Just a before Election Day in Israel, Netanyahu posted a video asking for questions and said, “In a few minutes will be here to answer your questions.”  What I noticed as I used Facebook’s translating tool was the lack of questions. Most were comments that solely praised Netanyahu. They are indexed under two categories:

1.      Undecided/ swing voters reading the comments of praise would/could play a huge roll in how voters perceived him.

2.      

      Questions that seemed to start with praise - most the time.

When comparing Obama and Netanyahu posts, Obama’s did not have the same love Netanyahu’s did. The most powerful man in the world’s (Obama) Facebook site seems to be a place for trolls. While there were some positive, there was many more negative - and quite a few satirical - questions and/or comments to the United State President. Netanyahu’s Facebook is much more positive than you would expect. Is this because trolls only live in the United States? When everyone seems to love someone it’s hard to step out in disagreement   

Social

As of March 31, the top two parties in Israel Facebook pages posted 154,764 likes for the Zionist Union and 18,894 likes for the Likud Party - which Netanyahu is a part. How can a candidate win if their party has so few likes on Facebook - compared to the other? I quickly looked up the Republican and Democrat parties and found - at first glance - Republicans have more likes than Democrats. (And the Democrats are considered the more tech savvy party?)

What stands out in each search is that Netanyahu and Obama both have more likes than any other politician, and more than their own political party. This is possibly the key in how Netanyahu won the election. Instead of his supporters grasping onto ideals, they gravitated toward the person. I think the same can be said about USA in its past few elections. Aligning your group with a person makes you and your party much more social media friendly compared to a large bureaucracy. What goes viral on my Newsfeed tends to have the theme of an individual not a large group.

Temporal

What makes social media powerful is how fast a message can be sent. What made Netanyahu’s campaign/career so potent is his use of social media. His posts not only came at the right time and with the right topic, but he dominated a Newsfeed. I tested this as part of my research: I liked/stocked a few pages from Israeli politics and Netanyahu has dominated my Newsfeed ever since. When I compare the times he posted in relation to important events and talking points, he knows the prime time to post.

Cultural

After Netanyahu gave his speech to the United State Congress, the YouTube comment sections (on the video) started to light up. Not surprising that most of the comments were negative about Netanyahu and most of the negative comments came from people from countries that have never been friends with Israel. The old proverb, “An enemy of my enemy is my friend,” rings true in the - come from behind – victory. If a group of people who you hate and who hate you in return, dislike a political leader, of course I would vote for him/her. I have to wonder if the negative comments made on social media only helped Netanyahu win.

Censored

This morning I woke up and one of the pages I managed had a spammy post in a comment section. I quickly got onto Facebook to delete the post to my surprise what did I find?
I was able to "Hide" the post so the only people who can see the post are the poster and their friends.
Censored and they will never know. The implications of being able to hide post without the person ever knowing is fascinating.

Facebook Advert

 Having run a few Facebook adverts for pages before I decided try promoting a post this time to see if any thing was different, I am considering running it to see how successful I am but my cheap self is winning out right now.

The post I am doing is my most viewed video on the page with the numbers coming in at

270

People Reached

46

Likes, Comments & Shares

38

Likes

8

On Post

30

On Shares

7

Comments

4

On Post

3

On Shares

1

Shares

1

On Post

0

On Shares

28

Post Clicks

13

Clicks to Play

0

Link clicks

15

Other Clicks

This is what the final ad would look like. I choose very specific wording for the ad so that I could market a precise group of people. Keeping it simple and to the point was the best idea. Louie Armstrong once said, "If you have to ask, you'll never know." I feel the same is true for my ad: If you have to ask why I write or post what I do, then I am pretty sure you are not part of my target market. 

Instead of trying to find people to fit my ad, I created an ad with a specific type of person in mind; attempting to market to that one person. 

As stereotypical as it is - I choose to market only to African American's. They are the dominate ethnic group listening to Gospel Saxophone. 

I also moved the age audience to 25-65 since my own age group is not as interested in Jazz-Gospel music. When I discovered I could cut out a specific generation, I realized this was more applicable to my page. The people that seem to like Jazz are either old or very young, but not a lot of listeners in between - making the ability to cut out generation X helpful in marketing my music to the group of people who are more likely to like it. (This data can also be seen though research as well as on my page's like data.)  

The last thing I found interesting was my ability to discriminate people based on their "likes" from other pages. Why would I do that? The reason: the other pages may not be trying to reach the same demographics as I am for this particular page, so I chose to exclude fans from a few pages because most the fans from a particular page, would not like my page anyway. 

Climate Change #Barriers

One of the most powerful resources of social media is that almost everyone is connected to the world. From the comfort of my couch I can communicate with virtually anyone. What makes social media so powerful is also its greatest weakness. Social media's ease of access  can channel people to seek out information that makes them comfortable, despite the wide variety of views given on many social media sites.

I started my research at Twitter. I searched the #’s: #climatechange, #climatechangehoax, #AlGore (poster boy for Global Warming) and various other hashtags with climate change in mind. Sadly, my fears were correct: both sides of the argument can be found "going at it" by name calling - with little to no dialog in the middle. Displaying charts and graphs of who knows what. The same platform that has sparked numerous ideological revolutions more commonly used to support a group's think and flame across the aisle. People seem to use their selected platform not to learn, but to push their own views on others.

What I found most interesting were how few people I could find that think Global Warming is a hoax or even opposed the issue, despite the numerous anti-climate change posts - which dominate my news feed. A closer look at the actual groups or the “people” sending the tweets, it becomes apparent that it is a small minority who are publicly announcing to the world: “Climate Change is a hoax!” This started my thinking about the “spiral of silence” and how most people may feel the same way about Climate Change but the more vocal minority keeps the majority quiet and less active in the fight for our planet. 

Another issue to social media advocacy: once on the internet these topics just don’t die. I recall a story about a Barbie book going viral a few months ago. The stories online would have led you to believe the book was recently published but the real publishing date was over a year before it went viral.  Once something gets placed on the internet, it just doesn't die. If a partial truth or a good lie or even an outrageous fact attracts the right gatekeepers, the information can be used and the story may be able to gain momentum - making facts from ideas that may have originally been fiction. 

One of the biggest ideas regarding the Global Warming “hoax” that people have latched onto  - like leeches - in their arguments against the cause is the record snow fall data in many parts of the country each winter. When there is an understanding of Climate Change and how the change in climates - warm as well as cold - are all important factors, we can begin to discuss how our weather affects the world. Unfortunately, the original terminology - Global Warming - is keeping most people arguing about the climate as the country and many parts of the world experience long cold winters and hotter summers. But the fact is that Global Warming has melted into Climate Change is a grave concern. Because we have created two terminologies for the same problem, and one is flawed we have created two outspoken oppositions with no solutions in sight. Global Warming has become just another argument. Are we confronting a problem or a definition?

As long as we continue to fight the terminology, we can expect to avoid finding any solutions and only running into a giant barrier. 

My Contextual Analysis will be on Netanyahu.

My Contextual Analysis will be on Netanyahu. Starting from the speech he gave a few weeks ago to congress. I will look at how social media influenced how he was perceived across many cultures and how it influenced the his election win.