Digital Diplomacy

Social media is fundamentally changing the way governments engage with their citizenry and position themselves on the global stage. Washington and many other world...

This World Leaders Forum program featured an address by The Honorable Matthew W. Barzun, Ambassador of the United States of America to the United...

Hashtags and 140 characters are becoming the norm in how we talk about anything. What we’re currently doing, what we think about that article...

Today, diplomacy does not only take place behind closed doors, but can be followed by everyone on social media. What earlier took a long...

When asked what is the enlightenment, Kant answered “Enlightened is man’s ascension from his self-imposed immaturity”. When reviewing the study of digital diplomacy, 2019 is the year of maturity. In 2015, scholars mainly asked who? Who manages the digital accounts of MFAs/embassies and multi-lateral missions? This was an important question. If digital diplomacy managers were former journalists, then perhaps diplomats viewed digital tools as new means for framing government communication. If, on the other hand, digital accounts were managed by social media wizards, then perhaps MFAs focused their efforts on attracting digital publics. An important activity given that without the public, one cannot practice diplomacy. Lastly, if digital accounts were managed by diplomats, then perhaps MFAs viewed Facebook and Twitter as foreign policy tools. Answers, we soon discovered, were diverse. While some MFAs hired former journalists, others hired social media experts while still others trained ve..

The Crimean Crisis has been regarded as a turning point in the relationship between Western Europe and Russia. The Crisis, which burst onto the scene in December of 2013, saw strongly worded tweets followed by troop convoys, financial sanctions and the expulsion of diplomats. In the wake of the Crisis, governments in Western Europe came to regard Russia, and not terrorism, as the greatest threat to national security. The new fault lines drawn around the Crimean Peninsula were soon evident in multi-lateral forums that were plagued by paralysis. A world in which Russia and Western Europe do not collaborate is one in which the Security Council is reduced to a debating society while UN agencies such as the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) are rendered irrelevant. Yet the Crimean Crisis was not just a diplomatic crisis. It was a digital crisis which forced diplomats and their institutions to re-conceptualize how they use digital technologies. Prior to the Crisis,..

From ‘ghost users’ to ‘cyborg bots’, a BIRN investigation shows how nationalists in North Macedonia, Greece and beyond are unleashing automated armies on social...

In the absence of access to privileged diplomatic channels, rebel groups engage in more public relations with foreign elites, international organizations and civil society...

Both positive and negative technological developments are jolting the world at “unprecedented speed”, the UN chief said on Thursday, underscoring the need to “maximize...

The concept of cyber diplomacy is often associated with digital diplomacy, electronic diplomacy or computer diplomacy. Overlapping use of these concepts raises confusion over...