Cleavages and Links

Abstract

In the past decade, the Internet has extensively penetrated the political landscape in Israel. A variety of actors, including parties, Knesset members, NGOs, and more, have realized the significance of using the Internet to promote their goals and have established an online presence via a variety of platforms. Consequently, the Internet is becoming a fertile ground to study Israeli society with its multiple cleavages. This chapter analyses how the ideological cleavage in the Israeli society is manifest online, through the linking patterns between political Websites. Link analysis is used to study political visibility and centrality online, to map the channels of information flow between the various political actors, and to identify recognition and discourse networks between the various political actors. From the link analysis of the sites of some 200 political parties, MPs, and NGOs, we found no links between right-wing and left-wing political sites; each side in the political spectrum conducts a different linking strategy. Most of the sites of political parties and MPs received no in-bound links from the other political sites. On the other hand, NGOs have a central role in the online political networks in Israel and maintain a relatively dense linking network.