Social media as a tool for diplomacy

Old fashioned classic state-to-state diplomacy is no longer deemed sufficient by most governments. Diplomats are now required to become active in the network society. A part of this new job description is public diplomacy. One can separate public diplomacy into two parts: internal public diplomacy and external public diplomacy. The former is an attempt to build towards a better national reputation. External public diplomacy has a different target group, it tries to build a positive reputation under a foreign public. Afterwards it tries to facilitate a policy change by harnessing the aforementioned good will. However, this “new” way of diplomacy is not the only change that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had to implement. Utilizing technology has become even more important for governments. This awareness for the potential of technology has trickled down to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The internet has made the world even more interconnected than before. Furthermore, the invention of the internet also led to the establishment of various social media platforms. Users of these platforms can almost instantly send out messages to their friends or family. Subsequently, these platforms have become objects of interest for the governments trying to participate in public diplomacy. The main reason for this is that social media allows them to reach their target audience more easily. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands tried to implement the idea of public diplomacy and social media in their policies in 2013. An advisory commission set out all the opportunities for the Dutch government regarding new modern diplomacy. However, this document did not explain how exactly these opportunities should be achieved. Interviews with several diplomats showed vast differences of implementation. Furthermore, coded social media messages showed that the Dutch diplomats hardly carried out external public diplomacy. They were mostly focused on a Dutch audience. Additionally, the hypothesis that diplomats would abuse their freedom of implementation for the pursuit of self-interests was rejected. Only one case was found whereby the diplomat deviated from his mandate. There were several reasons for these two main findings. First of all, diplomats copied the social media behavior of their Minister. Who sets out what kind of behavior is appropriate for diplomats. Additionally, there were external, internal and personal causes that led to the rejection of the hypotheses. Afterwards several recommendations were set up to improve the social media use of the Dutch diplomats. An example of one of these is the necessity of going into dialogues with the public. Simply making statements does not lead to any kind of results. Topics need to be discussed if they want to have any kind of impact.