Save

Military Public Diplomacy 2.0: The Arabic Facebook Page of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Spokesperson

In: The Hague Journal of Diplomacy
Authors:
Tal Samuel-Azran Sammy Ofer School of Communications, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya Herzliya 4610101 Israel

Search for other papers by Tal Samuel-Azran in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
and
Moran Yarchi Sammy Ofer School of Communications, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya Herzliya 4610101 Israel

Search for other papers by Moran Yarchi in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Download Citation Get Permissions

Access options

Get access to the full article by using one of the access options below.

Institutional Login

Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials

Login via Institution

Purchase

Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):

$40.00

Summary

The Arabic-language Facebook page of the Israeli Defense Forces’ spokesperson has attracted a massive following in the Arab world and serves as an interesting and unique case study towards understanding the effect of a military public diplomacy initiative. Content analysis of the Facebook page reveals a mixture of power and deterrence messages, with posts designed to emphasize shared values. Analysis of audience engagement with those messages — measured by ‘likes’, ‘shares’, comments and negative feedback — surprisingly reveals that shared values’ messages generated a similar level of engagement to other messages, which may show that the content does not play a significant role in users’ engagement. In addition, the analysis reveals that during periods of heightened intensity in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, followers’ engagement and negative feedback rose dramatically. This study provides a unique perspective of the relevance and effectiveness of military public diplomacy in the era of online social networks.

Content Metrics

All Time Past 365 days Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 1243 258 15
Full Text Views 303 16 0
PDF Views & Downloads 168 36 0