The two faces of digital diplomacy: dialogic public diplomacy and space for user motives

2019-05-13This dissertation employs two frameworks to investigate digital diplomacy, defined here as the use of Internet-based media by international actors to engage or communicate with foreign publics in order to advance policy-related goals. The first conceptualizes digital diplomacy as dialogic public diplomacy. It uses thematic content analysis to identify the type of activities contained in the Facebook and Twitter digital diplomacy of six properties of three disparate international actors—the United States, Sweden and India—according to Cull’s (2008) taxonomy of public diplomacy activities. These nations are selected because their foreign relations bureaucracies are expected to evince different organizational attitudes and stances toward participatory digital culture and the embracing of technological risk. Content analysis and a comparative approach are then used to identify the presence of dialogic communication in the same Facebook and Twitter digital diplomacy. In this section, the output of the three nations’ MFAs is compared against that of three separate digital properties—ShareAmerica, Sweden.se and Indian Diplomacy—established by the same nations but with the explicit or implicit guiding mission to establish dialogue or conversation with publics. Third, the operationalization of dialogic communication is updated to accommodate the common but socially significant practices of re-tweeting, hyperlinking, hashtagging, and the growing use and prominence of multimedia. The latter two objectives are accomplished by placing these digital practices within the framework of Kent and Taylor’s (1998) principles for Internet-based dialogic communication in public relations. The second framework employed is proposed by this dissertation: digital diplomacy as space for user motives. It utilizes an exploratory, publics-centered approach and qualitative content analysis to investigate the motives behind the commenting of publics in response to digital diplomacy that elicits particularly strong response: the tweet or Facebook post most responded to in the time period considered, published by the same accounts of the nations examined in the first two sections of the study. The final section of the dissertation uses 10 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with willing participants in the Twitter digital diplomacy of the above actors in order to triangulate the data and analyses in parts two and three of the study. Interview responses are analyzed thematically. Noteworthy results indicate 1) the dominating presence of international broadcasting and advocacy activities in the digital diplomacy considered; 2) the emergence of a novel type of public diplomacy activity, classed as social media diplomacy; 3) a pattern of these actors setting the stage for dialogue but failing to actually engage in dialogue with publics, which is consistent with the literature; 4) one actor, Sweden.se, that is consistently replying to public commenters—and thus adhering to the elusive principle of Dialogic Loop, the most crucial but seldom realized component of Kent and Taylor’s (1998) principles; 5) socio-technical practices like re-tweeting, hyperlinking, hashtagging, and the use of multimedia are not indicative of the presence of realized dialogue with publics; 6) more than half of the public comments analyzed could not be affirmed to address the topic or theme of the relevant digital diplomacy, while more than one quarter of the comments did not address the relevant topics or themes; 7) an array of motives for public commenting on the digital diplomacy, many of which did not appear to align with the goals of the digital diplomacy actors; 8) interviewees voiced skepticism (hostile skepticism and reasoned skepticism) and optimism (cautious optimism and wistful optimism) about the nature of communication facilitated by digital diplomacy; and 9) interviewees voiced instrumental motives (perspective sharing; issue-based; watchdog/guardian of values; and derisive public guidance); national pride/admiration motives, and platform-based motives for participating in digital diplomacy. Implications for extant theory, theory-building and for practice are discussed in the concluding chapter