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To explore a potential relationship between politicians’ media background and social media success through an analysis of content and engagement strategies adopted by three consecutive Israeli prime ministers on their official Facebook pages.

A detailed comparative content analysis of a total of 1,242 posts published by three Israeli prime ministers – Benjamin Netanyahu, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett – on the same official Facebook account, “the Prime Minister of Israel,” during their respective terms. Metrics like engagement rates, content distribution and media type utilization were considered.

All analyzed prime ministers exhibited consistent messaging strategies, suggesting a standardized approach to digital political communication. However, we found no correlation between a politician’s media background and their success on social media. Instead, decisive determinants of engagement outcomes were factors like longstanding political exposure and familiarity.

The observed uniformity in leaders’ messaging strategies indicates a prevalent standardized approach in digital political communication, revealing potential avenues for innovation and diversification.

This research challenges the prevailing notion that background in media inherently benefits digital political engagement, emphasizing the significance of political experience. The results provide new insights into the evolving landscape of political communication. Using signaling theory to evaluate how digital content reveals leaders’ intentions and credibility, our findings provide new insights into political communication in the digital era.

The purpose of this study is to examine the information distributed on social media by government ministries. In addition, this study seeks to categorize and identify the characteristics of the highest engaging government social media posts.

This article is based on content analysis to examine the work of Israeli government ministries on Facebook. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze 6,292 posts posted over a six-month period, and a sample of 230 of the most popular posts was analyzed qualitatively.

Findings indicate that government ministries primarily direct and link to internal Facebook pages, with few, if any, referrals to official government websites. In addition, the types of content that generate the highest levels of engagement are classified as operations and events or symbolic acts (e.g. greetings or condolences) and are containing visual content as photos or video clips.

This study contributes to the literature on the topic in several ways. First, it presents findings from a cross-national study of government authorities and organizations that operate and serve diverse populations in a multicultural country. Second, this study presents a novel examination of information strategies by government organizations with focusing on the characteristics of links, media types, content and posting frequency.

The aim of this study is to examine the information needs and information seeking behaviors of Israeli citizens during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in 2020, with an emphasis on the dissemination of digital information by government agencies.

The research approach underlying this investigation is of the “case study” type, employing semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted with 24 Israeli citizens regarding their perceptions and experiences with government information and government services during the first months of the coronavirus.

The findings of this study reveal that most participants indicated feelings of media fatigue as a result of increased exposure to news media and social media, to the point of experiencing information overload. Second, participants described feeling a lack of clear information and poor access to accurate health and official information at the outset of the COVID-19 crisis in Israel. Third, participants in the authors’ study noted that most of the information to which they were exposed about the virus came to them through communal connections such as friends and family, via social media and messaging apps like WhatsApp. In general, the participants expressed satisfaction with the quality and availability of the data and extensive information of government ministries on social networks, together with a lack of satisfaction due to difficulties in usage and a lack of clear information on traditional government websites.

The findings present the information acquisition and the experience of citizens in situations of national emergencies and crises, in a new light, through a focus on the dissemination of government, health and news information.

This study evaluates how publicly available archival documents shaped online discussions about allegations that thousands of children were kidnapped during the 1950s in Israel, known as the Yemenite children’s affair. It examines if access to historical records leads to more informed and rational public discourse, especially on social media.

Using content analysis, this study examines Facebook posts from media outlets, politicians, NGOs and public groups between 2016 and 2021 to understand how the Israeli State Archives’ release of over 300,000 documents affected support of the kidnapping.

Despite extensive archival information debunking the kidnapping theory, public opinion and discourse largely continued to support it. This suggests a complex interaction between information availability, preexisting beliefs, echo chambers and group allegiances, suggesting that access to factual data alone may not effectively challenge established beliefs in online public settings.

Since data were collected only from Facebook, our conclusions cannot be generalized to other platforms. The study relies only on publicly accessible data and does not establish causality between exposure to information and shifts in opinion. Our findings show that disclosing archival information does not significantly benefit public political discourse on contentious topics but also point to the advantages of mediating information by politicians, NGOs and journalists.

As a unique case study, this research contributes to understanding the role of historical archives in digital-age public discourse. It highlights their potential and limitations in facilitating informed debate and deliberation, emphasizing the complexity of influencing established beliefs with factual data.

The current study seeks to present and examine the strategies, management and dissemination of information on social media platforms by Israeli government organizations and agencies.

The article uses the “Case Study” approach, through semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted with directors in charge of the use of social media in government departments.

The findings indicate that government agencies tend to favor Facebook over other social network platforms, in order to reach the widest possible audience. They do this by adhering to the platform's limitations, such as regularly using sponsored advertising to increase reach and visibility, and also by publishing visual content, such as videos and images, at the expense of text. In addition, the impact of respondents to adopt social media outweighs the use and importance awarded to traditional government websites. A clear preference is evident toward cultivating and strengthening existing information on social media at the expense of further developing official websites.

Findings and conclusions from this type of research can help digital media directors and content editors in government agencies, to improve the quality of their content and improve the accessibility of the information they share online. In addition, the findings of the study strengthen the growing body of knowledge focused on the relationship between government ministries and social media.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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

This study aims to find ways to bridge the gap between workplace design and research. Exploring the design process from general design aims to site-specific design makes the process visible to support workplace design research.

Participatory design methods were used to understand employees’ needs and preferences in work-related situations to support the design process. The design process was divided into three phases. The office was temporarily refurbished for the intervention study, and evaluation data was collected with qualitative methods.

Participatory design-generated data revealed typical knowledge work needs, such as the need for privacy, interaction, exposure and preferences for the atmosphere in the workspaces during different situations. The authors identified the following key points to obtain design data: design aims, affordance design and site-specific multidimensional design. An intervention study in a small organisation revealed that lack of activity-supporting spaces created undesirable overlaps for focused work, collaborative work and client communication.

The findings of this paper are explorative and limited to a small knowledge work company. The present approach identifies valuable data collection points in different design phases of workplace design processes. Sharing knowledge from practice to research and vice versa could inform research and improve workplace design.

This study makes the workplace design phases more visible. It supports finding new ways to study the connection between the user-needs and workplaces; and understanding how different design solutions impact workplace experiences, such as satisfaction. This study also brings focus to understanding the versatile needs of small organisations and their workplace design.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of self‐serving attributions by service providers in reaction to customers' perceived negative and positive behaviors.

Questionnaires are completed by 398 service providers.

The hypotheses, supported by the results, are that service providers would make more external attributions of negative customer behaviors and more internal attributions of positive behaviors. However, the external attributions of negative behaviors are expected to be positively related to burnout because it conflicts with the organizational message regarding the customer's rights. Attributions are found to mediate the relationship between frequency of customers' behaviors and burnout. Empowerment is positively related to internal attributions of both positive and negative behaviors.

The study is conducted with a convenience sample and does not represent a broad spectrum of the service sector. Customers positive and negative behaviors are explored through respondents' self‐reports. Furthermore, the service encounters, namely a one‐time service interaction or a long‐term service relationship are not differentiated.

Self‐serving attributions made by employees do not always accord to managerial policy. In order to minimize the conflict between the organizational notion of the customer's rights and service provider's self‐serving attributions, management must make a clear distinction between customer negative behaviors and service failure. While service providers should assume responsibility for correcting failures, they should not be blamed for customer negative behaviors. Furthermore, management should encourage the internal attribution of positive customer behaviors.

While in most contexts the attribution of negative events externally is found to have a positive effect, the effect of such attribution in the service context is not obvious. The notion of the customer being always right suggests that in the case of a conflict, the service provider is wrong by default. Making external attributions of negative customer behaviors conflicts with organizational standards as well as creates a gap between the service provider's external behavior and his/her internal state. The research question addresses the mediating role of such attributions in the relationship of the frequency of customers' behaviors and service providers' burnout. In additon, to address this issue more fully, the scope of customer behavior beyond the adverse behaviors examined in previous studies is broaden.

This paper aims to explore and compare the roles of brand’s experiential and transformational benefits in formation of consumer-brand relationships. Focusing on cosmetics consumption, the study investigates how brand’s experiential benefits (brand experience) and transformational benefits (self-esteem and self-expression) could impact the strength of consumer-brand relationships.

Data analysis was performed using structural equation modeling technique. The sample consisted of 373 university students, who completed self-administered questionnaires.

Results show that brand experience and self-expression have significant positive impacts on consumer-brand relationships. Brand experience plays a more important role, compared with transformational benefits, in this process. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Future research could study possible transformative experiences across various industries. It could also use a more divergent sample that better represents general population.

This study is among the first in the literature to investigate the impacts of emerging sources of brand value, i.e. experiential and transformational benefits, in formation of strong consumer-brand relationships. It is also among the first to compare the predictive power of those two types of benefits in shaping brand-related outcomes.