DIGITAL DIPLOMACY
Edited by CORNELIU BJOLA and ILAN MANOR
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CONTENTS
List of Figures and Tables
List of Contributors
PART I CONCEPTS AND THEORIES
1. Introduction: Understanding Digital Diplomacy—The Grammar Rules and Patterns of Digital Disruption
CORNELIU BJOLA AND ILAN MANOR
2. Digital Diplomacy: Projection and Retrieval of Images and Identities
MARCUS HOLMES
3. From Micro to Macro Digital Disruptions: A New Prism for Investigat ing Digital Diplomacy
ILAN MANOR AND JAMES PAMMENT
4. Soft Power in the Digital Space
GARY D. RAWNSLEY
5. Researching Influence Operations: ‘Dark Arts’ Mercenaries and the D igital Influence Industry
EMMA L. BRIANT
PART II DIPLOMATIC PRACTICES
6. Diplomatic Negotiations in the Digital Context: Key Issues, Emerging Trends, and Procedural Changes
KRISTIN ANABEL EGGELING AND REBECCA ADLER-NISSEN
7. Digital Diplomacy and Cyber Defence
LUCAS KELLO
8. Digital Nuclear Diplomacy
RHYS CRILLEY
9. Digital Feminist Foreign Policy
JENNIFER A. CASSIDY
10. History and Digital Public Diplomacy: Media Disruption and Global Public Engagement Online in Historical Perspective
NICHOLAS J. CULL
11. Digital Cultural Diplomacy: From Content Providers to Opinion Make rs
NATALIA GRINCHEVA
12. Digital Propaganda and Diplomacy
PAWEŁ SUROWIEC-CAPELL
13. Ethical Challenges in the Digitalization of Public Diplomacy
ZHAO ALEXANDRE HUANG AND PHILLIP ARCENEAUX
14. Transforming International Development: Navigating the Shift toward s Digital Cooperation
LUCIANA ALEXANDRA GHICA
15. New Trends in Digital Diplomacy: The Rise of TikTok and the Geopo litics of Algorithmic Governance
ALICIA FJÄLLHED, MATTHIAS LÜFKENS, AND ANDREAS SANDRE
PART III DIPLOMATIC INSTITUTIONS
16. The Digital Hybridization of Ministries of Foreign Affairs: The Case of the Nordic and Baltic States
CORNELIU BJOLA AND DIDZIS KĻAVIŅŠ
17. Digital Diplomatic Cultures
GEOFFREY WISEMAN
18. The Digitalization of Permanent Missions to International Organizatio ns
CAROLINE BOUCHARD
19. The Digital Adaptation of International Bureaucracies
MATTHIAS ECKER-EHRHARDT
20. Virtual Diplomatic Summitry
ELSA HEDLING
21. Digital Diplomacy and Non-Governmental and Transnational Organiz ations
FIONA MCCONNELL AND ALEX MANBY
22. Digitalization of Diplomacy: Implications for Cities
EFE SEVIN
23. Digital Diplomatic Representation: The Rise of Tech Ambassadors
ANNE MARIE ENGTOFT MELDGAARD AND TOM FLETCHER
24. International Law, Big Tech Regulation, and Digital Diplomatic Practi ce
VICTORIA BAINES
PART IV DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS
25. The European Union and Digital Diplomacy: Projecting Global Europ e in the Social Media Era
RUBEN ZAIOTTI
26. NATO’s Digital Diplomacy
KATHARINE A. M. WRIGHT
27. Digital Diplomacy of the Central Asian Countries
ALISHER FAIZULLAEV
28. Chinese Wolf-Warrior Diplomacy: Motivations, Modalities, and Sites of Practice
ANDREW F. COOPER AND JEFF HAI-CHI LOO
29. Diversities and Developments in Asia Pacific Digital Diplomacy
DAMIEN SPRY
30. Digital Diplomacy in Latin America: Among Early Adopters and Late comers
DANIEL AGUIRRE AND ALEJANDRO RAMOS
31. Diplomacy in Times of Crisis in the GCC: The Blockade and the Pand emic
BANU AKDENIZLI
32. The North–South Divide, the Digital Agenda, and Digital Diplomacy
JORGE HEINE AND JUAN PABLO PRADO LALLANDE
33. International Geopolitics and Digital Games in the Nationalist Agenda of Great Powers
ANTONIO CÉSAR MORENO CANTANO
34. Digital Diplomacy during Wars and Conflicts
MORAN YARCHI
Index
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
FIGURES
Visual simplicity in action: tweets with asymmetrical quality of info rmation
Emotional framing in action: tweets with contrasting emotional vale nce
Computational personalisation in action: tweets with contrasting con nective action
Hybridity complementing face-to-face diplomacy
Exemplary COREPER I meeting agenda posted on Twitter on 22 De cember 2021
US Strategic Command tweet
ICAN’s Instagram
Rafael Mariano Grossi and the IAEA head to Ukraine
NAFO and ‘the superbonker 9000’
Soft power ‘resources’
@SweMFA coded tweets online (2021)
Sweden’s soft power ‘resources’ online (2021)
@SRE_mx coded tweets online (2021)
Mexico’s soft power ‘resources’ online (2021)
Comparative context soft power ‘resources’ online (2021)
Digital hybridization as assemblage formation
Types of Facebook pages and Twitter accounts across time
An analytical framework to explain China’s wolf-warrior diplomacy
Years Latin American MFAs joined Twitter (2009-2020)
Ranking of Latin American presence on social media platforms
The Uncensored Library in Minecraft
An H1Z1 player waves the Taiwanese flag in protest against the Chi nese majority group Red Army
Screenshot of the video game FAU-G celebrating the Indian Army in its fight to defend territorial integrity against China
TABLES
Key differentiators between digital propaganda and digital diplomac y
UN Roadmap for digital cooperation (2020)
The digital presence of Baltic and Nordic MFAs
Common themes of digital hybridization across Baltic and Nordic M FAs
Distribution of digital hybridization themes by country (number of r eferences per topic)
Distribution of the intensity of digital hybridization by country (num ber of references per category)
Distribution of digital hybridization themes and intensity by region
Key features of the three models of digital assemblages
Case selection
Data gathered per case
Logic of practice
Summary of diplomatic activities
Summary of branding activities
Descriptive information on tweets
Summary of digitization
Population, spread of the Internet, social media, and mobile connecti on in CAC as of early 2022
Social media accounts of CAC presidents as of 01 August 2023
Social media accounts and Telegram channels of CAC foreign minis tries as of 01 August 2023 (with percentage of followers’ growth co mpared to 01 January 2022)
The Twitter accounts of the foreign ministries of CAC as of 01 Janu ary 2022 and 01 June 2022
Posts on the Facebook accounts of the MFAs of CAC for the period from 01 October 2021 to 25 December 2021
Social media accounts of the permanent missions of CAC to the UN as of 01 August 2023 (with the percentage of growth in the number of followers since 01 October 2021)
The Twitter activity of the permanent missions of CAC to the UN fr om 01 October 2021 to 01 June 2022 (data from 06 June 2022)
The use of Twitter by Permanent Representatives of CAC to the UN as of 01 October 2022
Social media accounts of the embassies of CAC in Washington, DC, as of 01 August 2023 (with percentage of growth in the number of f ollowers since 01 January 2022)
Social media accounts of the embassies of CAC in Moscow, Russia as of 01 August 2023 (with percentage of growth or decline in the n umber of followers since 01 October 2021)
A Latin American conceptual mosaic of a decade of digital diploma cy
Twitter follower count of MFA institutions vs. president and FA min ister
Latin American ranking of the most followed leaders and foreign mi nisters on Twitter
CONTRIBUTORS
Rebecca Adler-Nissen, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
Banu Akdenizli, Associate Professor of Communication, Northwestern University Qatar
Phillip Arceneaux, Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication, Miami University of Ohio
Daniel Aguirre, Senior Global Futures Scientist, Arizona State University.
Victoria Baines, IT Livery Company Professor of Information Technology at Gresham College, London
Corneliu Bjola, Associate Professor, Diplomatic Studies, University of Oxford
Emma L. Briant, Associate Professor of News and Political Communication, Monash University
Caroline Bouchard, Associate Professor Department of Social and Public Communication, Université du Québec à Montréal, Québec
Antonio César Moreno Cantano, Associate Professor, Department of International Relations and Global History, Universidad Complutense Madrid
Jennifer A. Cassidy, Department Lecturer Diplomatic Studies Program, University of Oxford
Andrew F. Cooper, University Research Chair, Department of Political Science, and Professor, the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo.
Nicholas J. Cull, Professor of Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California
Rhys Crilley, Lecturer in International Relations, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Glasgow
Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt, Senior Researcher, Centre for Global Cooperation Research, Universität Duisburg-Essen
Kristin Anabel Eggeling, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
Anne Marie Engtoft Meldgaard., Tech Ambassador, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark
Alisher Faizullaev, D.Sc. and Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, Webster University in Tashkent.
Alicia Fjällhed, PhD-student at the Department of Strategic Communication, Lund University
Tom Fletcher, Principal of Hertford College, University of Oxford
Luciana Alexandra Ghica, Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Governance and European Studies, University of Bucharest
Natalia Grincheva, Programme Leader, BA Arts Management, LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore, University of the Arts Singapore Senior Research Fellow (Honorary), Digital Studio, The University of Melbourne
Elsa Hedling, Associate Senior Lecturer, European Studies, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University
Jorge Heine, Research Professor, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University
Marcus Holmes, Professor, Department of Government, William & Mary
Zhao Alexandre Huang, Associate Professor in Information and Communication Sciences, Université Paris Nanterre
Lucas Kello, Associate Professor and Departmental Lecturer, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford
Didzis Kļaviņš, Senior Researcher, University of Latvia, Faculty of Social Sciences
Juan Pablo Prado Lallande, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law and Social Sciences, University of Puebla
Jeff Hai-chi Loo, PhD student in the Global Governance program at Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo
Matthias Lüfkens, Founder of DigiTips, Geneva-Based digital advisory firm, Founder of Twiplomacy
Alex Manby, PhD Student, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford
Ilan Manor, Senior Lecturer, Department of Communication Studies, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
Fiona McConnell, Professor of Political Geography, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford
James Pamment, Associate Professor, Department of Strategic Communication, Lund University
Alejandro Ramos, Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Mexico in New Zealand, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico
Gary D. Rawnsley, Head of the School of Social & Political Sciences, University Professor of Public Diplomacy of Lincoln, University of Lincoln
Andreas Sandre, Press and Public Affairs Officer, The Embassy of Italy to the United States in Washington
Efe Sevin, Assistant Professor, Department of Mass Communication, Towson University
Damien Spry, Adjunct Research Fellow, University of South Australia
Paweł Surowiec-Capell, Senior Lecturer in Public Relations and Strategic Communication, Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield
Geoffrey Wiseman, Professor and Endowed Chair in Applied Diplomacy, Grace School of Applied Diplomacy, DePaul University, Chicago.
Katharine A. M. Wright, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, Newcastle University
Moran Yarchi, Professor, Sammy Ofer School of Communications, Reichman University
Ruben Zaiotti, Associate Professor, Director of Jean Monnet European Union Centre of Excellence, Dalhousie University
E GRAMMAR RULES AND PATT ERNS OF DIGITAL DISRUPTION
CORNELIU BJOLA AND ILAN MANOR
INTRODUCTION
As Machiavelli reminds us, innovation is not easy to implement: ‘it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things’ (Machiavelli, 2000: 10). The case of the digital disruption of diplomacy supports Machiavelli’s insight. Etymologically, the term disruption originates from the past-participle stem of Latin disrumpere ‘break apart, split, shatter, break to pieces’, where disstands for ‘apart’ + rumpere for ‘to break’ (Hoad, 2003). Its meaning is thus epistemically infused with negative connotations of discontinuity, fragmentation, and destruction. However, the context in which it is mostly discussed exudes optimistic aspirations of technological progress, political emancipation, and economic development. As discussed in more detail elsewhere (Bjola, 2018), the most fascinating aspect of technological disruption is its remarkable capacity for both destruction and creation. On the one hand, by laying the groundwork for new economic or social opportunities, new technologies stimulate new thinking and innovative practices that reinforce and sustain them in the long term. On the other hand, by disrupting traditional ways in which people work, collaborate, and research, they also create pervasive conditions for active and enduring resistance against them.
Digital diplomacy is a good example of how disruption applies to international affairs. In simple terms, digital diplomacy refers to the use of
digital technologies, such as social media and other online platforms, including virtual communication channels and the metaverse, by ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) and international organizations (IOs) to communicate with each other and the general public, conduct diplomacy, and advance their foreign policy goals. It includes activities such as sending and receiving official statements, exchanging informal diplomatic signals, participating in virtual conferences and meetings, and engaging with the public through social media and other online platforms to explain and promote their policies and positions. Digital diplomacy is thus seen by governments and IOs as a way to reach a wider audience and connect with people in different parts of the world in real-time. It also allows these organizations to be more transparent and accountable to the public, as well as to respond more quickly to events and issues that arise.
Therein lies the potential of digital technologies to disrupt traditional diplomacy and international relations, primarily by influencing how diplomacy is conducted. By making it possible for MFAs and IOs to communicate and collaborate in real-time, digital diplomacy enables decision-makers to be more efficient and effective in their bilateral and multilateral relations. This may be particularly relevant in the case of international crises as direct communication between parties in conflict can help de-escalate tensions and facilitate the resolution of disputes (Cassidy an d Manor, 2016). However, it can also create new challenges, such as the potential for the spread of misinformation and propaganda, which can further inflame tensions (Bjola, 2020). Digital diplomacy may also affect the balance of power between different countries, as it allows smaller and less powerful actors to have a greater voice and influence in international affairs. Furthermore, non-state actors such as civil society organizations and NGOs can also use digital tools to advocate for their causes and to challenge the policies of larger and more powerful actors (Hall, Schmitz, and Dedmon, 20 19).
The increasing use of virtual diplomacy, which the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated, may lead to a decline in the role of physical embassies and diplomatic missions, as governments and IOs rely more on digital channels to communicate and collaborate (Bjola and Manor, 2022). This could have implications for the ability of governments and organizations to build and maintain relationships with other countries and international organizations, which face-to-face diplomacy is supposed to foster (Holmes and Wheeler, 20
20). Digital diplomacy has also disrupted the way that public opinion is shaped and influenced, as it allows MFAs and IOs to communicate directly with the public through social media and other online platforms (Manor, 201 9). This gives them greater control over the information that is shared, but it also allows for greater transparency and accountability, as digital tools can be used to share information and engage with the domestic and international public more directly.
It is also important to note that while the terms digitized and digital diplomacy will be used interchangeably in this volume, they bear slightly different meanings. Digitization primarily refers to the technical aspect underlying the adoption of digital technologies by MFAs in their work, as when conventional means of diplomatic engagement are improved and streamlined with the assistance of digital technologies. From this perspective, the digitization of diplomacy represents the process of conducting traditional diplomacy in a digital context through the use of online platforms, training management systems, and bespoke software to deliver content and facilitate communication and collaboration between diplomats and their partners. In contrast, the term ‘digital diplomacy’ calls attention to a broader perspective of the role of digital technology in diplomacy, not only as an instrument or medium of communication and collaboration but also as a different mode of thinking about and practising diplomacy. From this perspective, digital diplomacy encompasses the process of upgrading, augmenting, and rewiring diplomacy in a digital context.1
Upgrading refers to the incorporation of digital formats into existing diplomatic tasks and activities, such as the use of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter (now X) for public diplomacy, in addition to traditional print media and television. Augmenting goes beyond upgrading by expanding the field of diplomacy to previously inaccessible areas, such as the appointment of tech ambassadors or the establishment of virtual embassies. Rewiring fundamentally alters the way diplomacy is conducted by blurring or even eliminating the distinction between offline and online diplomacy, as the process of hybridization has just begun to do. It is crucial to understand the technical aspects of the technological revolution that is disrupting diplomacy, but at the same time, we should not overlook the broader and deeper impact that digital technologies have had on the conduct of diplomacy. To truly grasp the implications and opportunities of the digital
age for diplomacy, we need to consider all three dimensions—upgrading, augmenting, and rewiring. They serve to enhance our understanding and ability to navigate the ongoing transformations within the field of diplomacy, as well as the challenges it faces in its endeavour to maintain relevance and effectiveness in the international arena in the digital age.
The purpose of this handbook is to provide an authoritative account of the disruptive role of digital diplomacy as an instrument of foreign policy. To this end, the handbook brings together a wide range of contributions to engage in theoretical reflections and case study discussions of the processes by which digital technologies have disrupted diplomatic theory, practices, institutions, and relations. It pursues four key objectives. First, the volume aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the concepts and theories related to digital diplomacy. The first thematic section thus focuses on the dynamics of technological disruption, power, identity, and influence among key players such as MFAs, embassies, private actors, and social media platforms. It endeavours to understand when, why, and how these actors exert their influence in the digital age, and how the digital transformation affects diplomatic practice and international relations. Second, the handbook offers a thematic overview of the study of digital diplomacy practices, encompassing traditional themes such as public diplomacy, negotiation, and international development, as well as emerging themes such as cyber defence, feminist foreign policy, tech regulation, ethics, and more. It engages with dominant understandings and practices of digital diplomacy reflectively and analytically, exploring the intersections of issues such as media, gender, ethics, and algorithmic governance with the theory and practice of digital diplomacy.
Third, the handbook explores how diplomatic institutions have adjusted their internal structures and cultures to stay current with digital advancements and how they are addressing regulatory challenges. It also investigates how diplomatic institutions are adapting their approach to forms and mechanisms of bilateral and multilateral representation and how digital technologies are affecting the way diplomatic organizations interact with each other and non-state actors. The fourth section of this volume provides an in-depth examination of the current state of digital diplomacy within ministries of foreign affairs and regional organizations around the world, and its impact on their operations and effectiveness in the global arena. Through an analysis of case studies and data from a diverse range of countries,
including Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, the Middle East, and more, this section explores the various approaches and strategies adopted by these institutions to integrate digital diplomacy into their operations. It also examines the challenges and barriers faced by these institutions in the adoption and implementation of digital diplomacy, and how they have been overcome.
The starting point of our discussion in this introductory chapter is the digital medium, more specifically the ‘grammar rules’ that control the logic of interaction in the digital space: visual simplicity, emotional framing, computational personalization, and engagement hybridization. We argue that these rules reflect how digital technologies have disrupted the space in which diplomacy operates. In so doing, they have challenged MFAs and IOs to adapt so that they can maintain their ability to meaningfully influence policy outcomes in the international arena. In the second part of the chapter, we examine five patterns of disruption of diplomacy under the impact of digital technologies (from below, from above, from aside, through diffusion, and through crisis) and explain how the contributions to this volume analytically illuminate each category.
THE DIGITAL MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
The Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan once famously remarked that ‘the medium is the message’ (McLuhan, 2012), a phrase that has since become emblematic for describing the social role and political influence of media technologies in contemporary societies. What McLuhan suggested was that the medium of communication is just as significant, if not more so, than the message being conveyed. This is mainly because the medium affects both how we craft the message that we seek to deliver to our intended audiences and how the message is received by the public. McLuhan’s observation was made, of course, in a particular historical context, the 1960s, when television surpassed print newspapers and radio as the main public sources of information. One could similarly argue that its meaning remains relevant today as well, in the digital age. Surveys show, for instance, that social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have outpaced print newspapers as the public’s most-frequented medium in Western countries and they might be able to close the gap with television soon enough (Shearer, 2018; Ofcom, 2019).
That being said, in what way can we actually claim that the digital medium is indeed the message, as McLuhan might suggest? What is specific about the digital medium to make it stand distinct compared with other forms of communication and to what extent does its distinctiveness have any bearing on how the message is crafted, delivered, and received? We argue in this section that the distinctiveness of the digital medium is shaped by four dominant mechanisms that control the logic of message design and communication: visual simplicity, emotional framing, computational personalization, and engagement hybridization. These four mechanisms are not entirely novel, but their combination generates patterns of digital engagement that are distinctly different from those promoted by previous mediums and channels of communication. Similarly to how grammar rules govern how we communicate verbally, these mechanisms govern how we communicate digitally. Visual simplicity affects the format and texture of the information to be transmitted, emotional framing informs the style and form of messaging, computational personalization shifts the focus of communication from macro- to micro-level alignment, while engagement hybridization allows for physical and virtual environments to integrate, complement, and empower each other.
Digital grammar rules
The main source of influence of the digital medium is data.2 This influence stems from how data is generated, stored, accessed, analysed, and used. Statistics show that 60% of the world’s population is now online and each person generates around 1.7 MB of data every second. In 2021, the total amount of data created by all digital users was about 74 zettabytes (one ZB is the equivalent of one trillion GBs), but the digital universe is expected to grow to 149 zettabytes by the end of 2024 (Andre, no date). Qualitatively, 80–90% of the overall digital data universe is made of unstructured data (i.e., information that comes in different formats that are not easily searchable and storable), out of which only 0.5% is analysed and used today (Dialani, 2020). Furthermore, new formats of data are also emerging on top of the data produced by real-world events. For example, synthetic data, that is, data artificially generated using mathematical models or algorithms, as opposed to real data, which is directly observed from the real world, is estimated to completely overshadow real data in AI models by 2030 (Goasd uff, 2022).
Rule #1: Visual simplicity: visual messages with low-quality information content travel faster and further.
The information glut brought about by the ‘data revolution’ (Kitchin, 201 4) has important implications for how people communicate online and interact socially, which in turn engenders new opportunities but also challenges for digital diplomacy. First and foremost is the growing role of visual over text-based messaging in political communication (Muñoz and To wner, 2017; Lalancette and Raynauld, 2019). As Crilley et al. point out, the visual power of digital images comes from their ability to project themselves into the symbolic universe of understandings, emotions, and purposes that inform people’s political behaviour (Crilley, Manor, and Bjola, 2020). As discussed elsewhere, diplomatic communication has traditionally been embedded in a textual-oriented culture that has favoured verbal refinement over precision (Bjola, Cassidy, and Manor, 2019: 85–86). The digital medium has, in turn, shifted attention from textual interpretations and verbal subtleties to the role of images and visual narratives in shaping people’s understanding of world events.
Weng et al. (2012) have shown that the combination of social network structure and competition for finite user attention provides a sufficient condition for the emergence of a broad diversity of viral content. However, out of the ‘soup’ of contending viral messages, those that come on top contain low-quality information, as both the information load and the limited attention of the users lead to low discriminative power (Qiu et al., 2017). In other words, the intrinsic features of social media platforms favour the formation of viral content, but the attention deficit of the users fuelled by ever-increasing information abundance acts as a filter for the quality of the viral content. Visual simplicity, that is, the prevalence of visual messages with low-quality content, has thus become the first ‘grammar rule’ of digital engagement. It encourages diplomats to communicate in an accessible manner, using visual cues and plain language. Otherwise, they risk their message going unnoticed by the target audience.
Figure 1.1 offers two examples of how effective visual simplicity could be in practice. The tweet (see Figure 1.1a) posted by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, inviting Arnold Schwarzenegger to attend the Climate Action Summit in September 2019 went quickly viral (United Nations, 2019). It has reached roughly three times the average of Likes and RTs received by the UN account, despite the scarcity of the information
provided, except for a brief reference to the actor’s famous ‘I’ll be back’ line. By contrast, the information-rich tweet posted by the European External Action Service (EEAS) outlining European Union (EU)–Asia security priorities (see Figure 1.1b), an important topic in the evolving geopolitical context, has been hardly noticed by the online public (European External Act ion Service—EEAS eu, 2019). Visual simplicity enables diplomats to engage with larger audiences, but at the same time, their message still needs to pack high-quality info in a visually appealing manner in order to make a significant qualitative difference for the audience.
Rule #2: Emotional framing: messages that evoke intense emotions stand out.
A second important ‘grammar rule’ introduced by the digital medium refers to the dominant role that emotions play in the dissemination and reception of digital messages. Studies show that messages that are more emotion-expressing are significantly more likely to be shared on social media (Chen, Yan, and Leach, 2022). Emotionally charged Twitter messages are also likely to be retweeted more often and more quickly compared to neutral ones (Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan, 2013). Part of the explanation for this trend relates to the emotional affordances made available by social media platforms, which encourage users to express, share, consume, and evaluate emotional content (Steinert and Dennis, 2022). Importantly, the valence of emotions (positive vs negative) matters as well. Positive (joy) as well as negative (contempt, guilt, or distress) emotions allow online messages to diffuse faster and stronger, while tweets infused with primary emotions like anger or fear have led to a lower yet significant impact on information diffusion (Chawla and Mehrotra, 2021). Kramer et al. (2014) also demonstrated that emotional states could be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without even their awareness.
FIGURE 1.1 Visual simplicity in action: tweets with asymmetrical quality of information
Source: United Nations (2019). Available at: https://twitter.com/UN/status/1142372405345751040 (accessed 28 January 2023); European External Action Service (2019). Available at: https://twitter.c om/eu_eeas/status/1134384253192593408 (accessed 28 January 2023).
Similar to the first ‘grammar rule’, emotional framing encourages diplomats to alter their neutral and formal style of offline communication and frame their online statements and declarations in more emotional and informal terms. Due to the nature of their profession, diplomats cannot cross certain lines of sobriety without incurring reputational costs, but conventional manners of digital interaction are unlikely to attract the attention of the online public. At the same time, they need to bear in mind that emotional framing has a constitutive effect on online audiences. Emotions not only influence how the message is diffused, but also help build cognitively consonant communities. For this reason, it makes a significant difference for a diplomatic account to be followed by an online public that is habituated to expect emotionally intense messages, positive or negative. The short-term gain that may follow from intense emotional framing may entail long-term path dependencies that eventually may undermine the strategic objectives set for digital diplomacy.
The influence of emotional framing on message dissemination and reception is well illustrated by the two tweets in Figure 1.2, posted by the
