The public rewards the Benny Gantz for his decision to go on a political visit to the United States despite the opposition of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the conversation about him online was relatively positive in the last week. This is according to a special study conducted by the business intelligence company “Bazila” for Maariv.
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The data collected this week in a study at Maariv’s request analyzes the amount and content of online discourse about Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Galant and Benny Gantz. From the picture that emerges, experts in Azila will curse the “sympathy index”, which monitors the general public sentiment that dominates the discourse about politicians on websites and social networks. In general, the public sentiment towards the politicians continues to be very negative since the massacre in the south, but this week one issue helped the politician register a much better sentiment than usual: Gantz’s trip to Washington.
Unlike Netanyahu and Galant, Gantz approaches a balanced score, which shows that the number of negative conversations about him was the same as the number of positive conversations. In the last week, the company’s experts located almost 250,000 interactions on the network that revolved around Gantz, and unlike most politicians, only about half of the discourse was negative towards him. As a result, Gantz’s sentiment score stands at minus 3.5, with most of the positive – and also negative – discourse stemming from his political trip to the United States, which Prime Minister Netanyahu opposed. And what’s more: the statements of Yair Netanyahu, the Prime Minister’s son, regarding the trip went well with Gantz, who received support from surfers for them.
In contrast, Netanyahu’s sentiment score was very low and stood at minus 8.4 – which represents a slight improvement compared to last week, when the discourse towards him was even more negative and his score stood at minus 9.0. However, the discourse about Netanyahu was much more extensive compared to the other politicians with almost 510 thousand interactions dealing with him.
Netanyahu receives sympathetic reactions in almost every discussion in which he is mentioned, in a significant number of cases regardless of the topic of the discussion – including regarding Gantz’s trip to the USA. This trend was not detected among the other two politicians examined. At the same time, during the period under examination, there was an increase in the number of negative reactions against Netanyahu, Most of them regardless of the topic of discussion: iron swords, maintaining the coalition, motivated by personal interests, avoiding elections, etc. The issue of Netanyahu’s absence due to “the flu” and his statement regarding “land for every warrior” raised the scope of the critical discourse around him, with an emphasis on unreliability.
Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Mark Israel Salem, Flash 90)
The discourse surrounding Defense Minister Galant was characterized by a much lower number of interactions compared to Netanyahu and Gantz: 121 thousand. Gallant’s sentiment score was minus 4.4, with the main criticism of him in the various online discussions coming from Netanyahu’s supporters. The minister’s statement regarding the conscription law earned him relatively positive reactions. The minister enjoys a positive message and sentiment with a relatively low negative rate, which resulted from his statements regarding the conscription law as well as from the support of surfers who see this as “an act of heroism”, proof that he is not motivated by considerations to preserve the coalition and that he is “a worthy replacement for Bibi”.
The Basila company uses advanced tools to monitor the discourse on social networks and the main websites in Israel. Analysis of the company’s data may indicate changes in public attitudes at an early stage, possibly before they are expressed through additional means such as periodic election surveys.