Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is increasingly known for savvy social media skills and use of digital forums to reach out to his electorate, and he’s using these methods to attract and maintain a base of support among Israeli youth.
The prime minister's Twitter account has more than 1.5 million followers, and his Facebook page has 2.4 million. By the way, he has more than one Facebook page, and the 2.4 million refers only to the most popular one. Netanyahu also corresponds with world leaders on his Facebook account; thus, he received congratulations on his electoral victory from India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi — in Hebrew. In addition to all of this, he has a popular Instagram account with 630,000 followers. These accounts were especially active during the elections, utilizing video clips, announcements, reports and an initiative called Likud TV, a supposedly private news network that was disseminated on the party’s Facebook page. Its avowed goal was to sideline all major media outlets — Netanyahu claims the media is hostile to him, his family and Israel’s entire right-wing public — and transmit messages directly to his constituency. For that purpose, TV emcee Eliraz Sadeh was enlisted to conduct well-orchestrated interviews with Netanyahu; these interviews attracted numerous viewers and were widely shared.
