The use of soft power in digital public diplomacy (original) (raw)
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The Use of Soft Power in Digital Public Diplomacy: the Cases of Brazil and India in the EU
Croatian political science review, 2021
The focus of this comparative study is on the use of soft power in the digital public diplomacy of two Global South players, Brazil and India, in EU member states. The main objective of this research is to find out how their embassies use digital diplomacy in communication through their official websites and to identify which soft power resources they dominantly use. Quantitative content analysis and thematic analysis were used to analyze the categories and subcategories on the main menu and special banners on each embassy's home page, and the associated content. Unlike the Indian embassies, which fully embraced digital diplomacy 2.0, the Brazilian embassies do not utilize the full potential of digital diplomacy and primarily remain reliant on websites only. According to this research, the Brazilian embassies in the EU use film as a dominant soft power resource in their digital diplomacy, while the Indian embassies use yoga as a powerful diplomatic tool. Still, both approaches are not enough to attract European publics. There remains a lot of space for improvement and better usage of soft power resources and digital public diplomacy potentials in communicating the powers of Brazil and India in EU countries.
Journal of Liberty and International Affairs, 2023
The main objective of this article was to examine how Germany, Italy and Spain practice digital public diplomacy in Eastern Partnership and Central Asia countries in 2022, i.e., how they promote their countries through their embassies" Facebook profiles. Three research questions posed by the authors were: 1) Which social networks and applications have embassies of Germany, Italy, and Spain used in the countries of Eastern Partnership and Central Asia to inform and communicate with different audiences?; 2) Which soft power tools were dominantly communicated by the German, Italian, and Spanish embassies on Facebook profiles in countries of Eastern Partnership and Central Asia during 2022 to promote their own countries?; and 3) Are digital diplomacy tools of Germany, Italy, and Spain, that they utilize to promote their own countries and communicate with the public of Eastern Partnership and Central Asia, following their foreign policy focus? The authors have used quantitative content and thematic analysis to answer these questions. The results were presented with the use of descriptive statistics. The authors" findings indicated that digital diplomacy 2.0 is standard practice for Germany and Italy in Eastern Partnership and Central Asia. Less information was available regarding Spain"s digital diplomacy efforts. The research"s findings further demonstrated that Germany and Italy exhibit greater interest in the Eastern Partnership and Central Asian countries compared to Spain, which was concordant with their foreign policy focuses.
DIGITAL DIPLOMACY AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR FOREIGN POLICY
Greenfield Journal of International Relations and Security Studies (GJIRSS), 2022
Digital Diplomacy is the talk of the town in the corridors of international diplomacy. Digital diplomacy as an instrument or tool for foreign policy is the transformation of traditional way of foreign relations to a more advance method. Digital Diplomacy is the growing use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and social media platforms within the conduct of Public Diplomacy. This is believed that the medium has changed but not the message. Instead of talking to foreign publics over the radio, one now communicates with them through a twitter and other channel through the internet. The paper adopted soft power theory to analyze the work; soft power describes the utilization of positive attraction and persuasion to achieve foreign policy objectives. The paper finds out that one of the benefits of digital diplomacy is its ability to foster two-way communication which has improve the practice of foreign policy. Also, the paper discovers that there are challenges faced by digital diplomacy one of which is cyber security; the rapid spread of information which is often an advantage for digital diplomacy, can also turn out to be a great disadvantage. The paper concludes that technology is an asset that can greatly benefit those who use it in the right way; it is not a requirement and should not replace all parts of diplomacy. That when it comes to international affairs, technology will never replace the expertise that can be gained from sending diplomats to foreign countries to view these places first-hand.
Established in 2002 as an independent and dedicated unit under the term 'Taskforce' by the US State Department, e-diplomacy has widened its scope, simultaneous to the growth and spread of internet. While a few still believe that the significant evolution on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has not altered diplomacy intrinsically, there are many who see it as a generation shift, as social media tools, like Twitter, leading the stage. Rise of Narendra Modi, the 15th Prime Minister of India, to the helm of Indian politics brought into limelight the application of digital tools for diplomatic purposes, be it external affairs, defense, public relations, etc. This paper aims at bringing out an understanding of issues related to e-diplomacy from an Indian polity perspective. It tries to cover and extend the experiences of Indian politicians or offices making use of digital tools to serve diplomatic purposes, and the intricacies therein, citing various case studies.
The increasing importance of media, especially digital media, in society has been studied widely, from identity formation to activist movements. In international relations studies digital media’s impact has focused considerably on public diplomacy 2.0. This focus has caused a more holistic view of digital diplomacy to be neglected. This study explores how digital media’s impacts as a part of mediatization are seen within the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. Semi-structured interviews with 11 officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were conducted. These led to the creation of three thematic fields. The first one looks into how the agency of the Ministry is seen to be impacted by digitalization. The second section looks into how community building is seen as essential. And the third part investigated how the ministry evaluates the impacts of digitalization on other ministries of foreign affairs in the light of its own experience. The finding is that the ministry is expanding into a new digital sphere and that in the process of so doing the Ministry is not a tabula rasa, but it mirrors the cultural and political context of the country within the online sphere.
The spread of new media has been the main force accelerating the trend of globalization in human society in recent decades. Digital communication has brought human interaction and society to a highly interconnected and complex level, but at the same time challenges the very existence of intercultural communication in its traditional sense. Especially it is becoming obvious for Millenial generation who has grown up with laptops, smartphones and other changes in technological communications. It is under this circumstance that the necessity to investigate the challenges and opportunities of the relationship between digital communication and international public relations emerged. The study presented here uses the results of the analysis of 23 popular on-line Challenges that contribute to overcoming intercultural barriers and successfully attracting the attention of the international target audience. It explores destinctive characteristics of content used to effectevly work with Millenials from different countires of the world. These defined features made it possible to distiguish challenges and opportunities which can be taken into accoint in developent of international public relation approach. Suggestions for future research are presented in the conclusion.
Introduction: The Digitalization of Public Diplomacy Towards a New Conceptual Framework.pdf
Recent years have seen the digital disruption of diplomacy. The global proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and mass adoption of social media networks created a new set of opportunities and challenges that diplomacy had to grapple with. Alongside the ability to manage consular crises in near real time and shape a nation’s image, diplomats had to contend with calls for more open and transparent forms of diplomacy as well as develop a digitally literate diplomatic corps . The disruptive nature of digitalization has also been evident in the realm of public diplomacy. Digitalization has enabled diplomats to interact with foreign populations, establish global virtual embassies and overcome traditional gatekeepers such as the news room elite. Yet digitalization has also seen the rise of an opinionated online public that is clamouring to be heard as well as the transformation of social media into competitive framing arenas in which multiple actors vie over public attention and support. More recently, digitalization has become a tool for strategic use of dis-information and mis-information. It is amid this backdrop of digital disruption that this issue of the Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior (RMPE) aims to offer a more comprehensive understating of the current state of public diplomacy.
The Usage Of New Media In Cultural Diplomacy: A Case Of Turkey
This study attempts to reveal new media usage in cultural diplomacy which is acting by Turkey. The interactions between governments in culture, art, education, science to improve relations are defined as cultural diplomacy. New media could be an important sphere to consolidate relations and dialogue between states in diplomatic affairs. Cultural diplomacy is also acted as a soft power tool to control and effect public perceptions. The function of new media in cultural diplomacy is considered with a quantitative research by applying a case study in this study. The official Twitter accounts of Foreign Ministry of Turkey are examined in a month period in terms of their content. It is seen that there is a more need to lessen disagreements, to change the misperception about publics, to repair governmental relations by acting cultural diplomacy in Turkey. The governmental organizations should add new communication channels like new media to get feedback of different voices, values, opinions. If communication means are used to support exchanging information and culture, thus the gap between publics may diminish. Diplomatic facilities, events or activities could be reported to the publics instantly by using new media.