Digital Diplomacy and International Organisations

Autonomy, Legitimacy and Contestation

Corneliu Bjola, Ruben Zaiotti, Corneliu Bjola, Ruben Zaiotti

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000215052
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Organizaciones intergubernamentales

This book examines how international organisations (IOs) have struggled to adapt to the digital age, and with social media in particular.

The global spread of new digital communication technologies has profoundly transformed the way organisations operate and interact with the outside world. This edited volume explores the impact of digital technologies, with a focus on social media, for one of the major actors in international affairs, namely IOs. To examine the peculiar dynamics characterising the IO–digital nexus, the volume relies on theoretical insights drawn from the disciplines of International Relations, Diplomatic Studies, Media, and Communication Studies, as well as from Organisation Studies. The volume maps the evolution of IOs' "digital universe" and examines the impact of digital technologies on issues of organisational autonomy, legitimacy, and contestation. The volume's contributions combine engaging theoretical insights with newly compiled empirical material and an eclectic set of methodological approaches (multivariate regression, network analysis, content analysis, sentiment analysis), offering a highly nuanced and textured understanding of the multifaceted, complex, and ever-evolving nature of the use of digital technologies by international organisations in their multilateral engagements.

This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy, media, and communication studies, and international organisations.

1
GOING DIGITAL

Choices and challenges for international organisations

Corneliu Bjola and Ruben Zaiotti

Introduction

The global spread of new digital communication technologies has profoundly transformed the way individuals, states and businesses operate and interact with the outside world. The present volume explores the impact of digital technologies, with a focus on social media, for one of the major actors in international affairs, namely international organisations (IOs). IOs such as the European Union, the Commonwealth Association, and the United Nations have increasingly embraced social media as tools to manage their internal and external communication. Whether as organisations or as individuals representing them, IOs have established an active digital presence on the most popular social media platforms, from Twitter to Facebook and Instagram. In turn, a growing number of private users and groups around the world are virtually engaging with IOs, following their social media accounts, sharing information about them, and commenting on their actions. As a result of these developments, IO bureaucracies, which until recently have been perceived as rather obscure and impenetrable, have become more visible and “sociable” on the global digital stage.

Due to their rapid spread and potential impact on the management of global affairs, digital technologies have started to attract the attention of International Relations scholars (Jackson 2018; Carpenter and Drezner 2010; Copeland 2013; Bjola and Holmes 2015; Hocking and Melissen 2015; Pamment 2016). These scholars recognise that the dynamics that characterise the current “global information age” (Simmons 2011), an era defined by “the ability of individuals to create, transfer, and access information globally” (ibid, 595, emphasis added), have created new opportunities for international actors to enhance their power on the international stage. Simply put, digital technologies are perceived to act as “influence amplifiers,” helping governments and IOs to increase their diplomatic clout in a manner that they might not otherwise be able to achieve. Social media, as a popular form of communication, enhance these opportunities thanks to their global reach and ability to connect a broad spectrum of private and public actors (Ghannam 2011, 6).

One of the most promising areas of research on the role of social media in international politics is the emerging subfield of “digital diplomacy,” which has been broadly defined as the use of social media for diplomatic purposes (Bjola and Holmes 2015, 4). Studies on digital diplomacy have examined how political leaders and foreign policy officials use new technologies to increase their engagement with foreign audiences, highlighting how social media platforms have become an influential foreign policy tool (Khatib, Dutton and Thelwall 2012). These works show that the adoption of digital technologies has transformed the traditional practices of diplomacy, especially those involving communication with local stakeholders (or what is known as “public diplomacy”; Melissen 2005; Cull 2019). With social media, public diplomacy is no longer restricted to the relay of information, promising instead “the interactive construction and leveraging of long-lasting relationships with foreign publics” (Bjola and Jiang 2015; Kampf et al. 2015). With the emergence of digital diplomacy, foreign policy officials have become directly involved in the shaping of public opinion and advocacy activities. The digital diplomacy literature has also examined the role that social media has had in shaping national images and “brands,” and the efforts that democratic and authoritarian regimes have deployed to manage their country’s reputation on the world stage (Manor and Segev 2015; Bulovsky 2019).

By focusing on foreign affairs ministries and officials, the digital diplomacy literature has thus far analysed the role of social media in world politics through the prism of states and their interactions (Pelling 2016; Hocking and Melissen 2015; Spry 2019). The state-centrism of research on digital diplomacy is apparent from the dearth of studies on IOs and other actors digitally active on the world stage, such as NGOs (Seo et al. 2009; Thrall et al. 2014; Pagovski 2015; Hocking and Melissen 2015). The literature on digital diplomacy has also paid less attention to the organisational implications of the emergence of new communicative technologies for international politics. These issues have been addressed more explicitly by works in the field of Communication and Media Studies (Watson and Hill 2015), and, more specifically, the subfield of Organisational Communication (Livingstone and Lievrouw 2006). This literature emphasises how social media are part of a “communications technology revolution” that has “redefined the relationship between producers and receivers of online information” (Carpenter and Drezner 2010, 256).

One of the key insights of this scholarship is the recognition that the flow of information is a source of power (Marlin-Bennett 2013). This insight is valid for social media as well. Social media, as tools of direct communication, allow for circumventing traditional media organisations, thus providing more control over public communication (Van Dijck and Poell 2013). Social media also inspire organisations to articulate network connections within and outside their boundaries (DeNardis and Hackl 2015, 762; Jackson 2018). The organisational communication literature also highlights how the impact of digital technologies for organisations is not limited to its public relations dimension. Social media influence the functioning of organisations in all the phases of the policy-making process, from agenda-setting to decision-making, planning, implementation and policy evaluation (Bjola 2017; Bjola and Ren 2019).

While mainly focused on the role of communication in “domestic” settings, the organisational communication literature has branched out to examine “global” communicative dynamics beyond national borders (Thussu 2009/2018; Alleyne 2016; Murphy et al. 2003). When IOs have been explicitly addressed, however, the focus has been until recently on the role of traditional media and communication tools (Gilboa 2005; Dimitrov 2014; Risso 2014). Works in this field have started to expand to include IOs’ use of digital technologies, highlighting the growing role of social media within these organisations’ public relations strategies (see, for instance, Ecker-Ehrhardt 2018b; Dimitrov 2014; Corrie 2015) and their “operational” functions in crisis management situations and the provision of public services (e.g. disaster relief; Gao et al. 2011).

These works, however, are not yet part of a coherent research program and lack systematicity. Moreover, there is still limited engagement with debates occurring within the International Relations-inspired literature on digital diplomacy; despite the apparent overlap in terms of themes addressed in both literatures, these bodies of scholarly work have not been in dialogue with each other yet. In bringing together these two literatures, the present volume seeks to fill the gaps in the existing literature by offering a theoretically grounded and empirically driven analysis of the impact and implications of the emergence of digital technologies as communicative tools for international organisations. The volume’s premise is that IOs’ engagement with social media, while sharing some of the experiences of other “domestic” public and private organisations (e.g. national governments, NGOs), raises a series of unique theoretical and empirical questions about the role of communication, technology, and power in global affairs, questions that to date have not been the object of in-depth academic scrutiny (Jackson 2018).

These questions, in turn, stem from some of IOs’ key distinguishing features as organisations and the context in which these entities operate, namely the international system. IOs, like other public organisations, are complex bureaucratic structures of different sizes and resources that operate according to specific decision- and policy-making procedures. What distinguishes IOs as public organisations is their status as semi-autonomous entities created to address specific common global problems, and that operate in a setting (the international system) characterised by the lack of central authority (Simmons and Martin 2002). The following sections elaborate on these issues, focussing on four analytical themes that will inform the contributions to this volume: 1) the nature of the IOs’ “digital universe”; 2) IOs and digital autonomy; 3) IOs and digital legitimacy; and 4) IOs and digital contestation.

International organisations’ “digital universe”

The first theme addressed in the volume relates to the structure and dynamics that characterise IOs’ presence on social media. The broad reach of IOs’ presence and activities means that the community of social media users engaging with IOs is global, and it encompasses a multitude of individuals and groups that are active both within and outside these organisations around the world. This global network involves a multitude of users and accounts active both within and outside these organisations. Within IOs, accounts are run by secretariats, agencies, member states’ delegations, and by staff members in their personal capacity. Outside IOs, the network comprises accounts run by various stakeholders such as NGOs with consultative status, pressure groups, companies, individual citizens (journalists, experts, advocacy organisations, corporate lobbies) in countries around the world. These actors play different roles and have different influences on IOs’ social media communication practices. In the organisational studies language, these actors function either as “gatekeepers” or “liaisons” or “bridges,” depending on whether they mediate interactions with the outside world or convey communication upward within the organisation (Thussu 2018). The ongoing digital communication that occurs among these actors create the IOs’ global network. This network’s spatial configuration, “thickness,” and location of major “nodes” vary due to IOs’ different sizes and degree of presence and penetration on social media, the activity of its users, and the salience of the global issue IOs are addressing at a particular time.

This unique configuration of the IOs’ digital universe is reflected in the structure, form, and content of the communicative practices that take place within it. These practices take place between organisations, downward from the organisation to the stakeholders, and upward from stakeholders to the organisation (Mumby and Kuhn 2018). These practices can take different forms (textual and/or visual) depending on the platform used (e.g. tweets, FB posts), and their content can be either formal or informal. The informality of communication is one of the most significant innovations of social media for IOs, as these entities have traditionally been quite cautious and restrained in their external communication. As Cornut states (2019):

Traditionally, diplomats are expected to uphold a certain level of decorum, but this tweet crosses the boundaries of propriety. In the digital era, it is socially acceptable to present information in non-formal ways on social media as long as the message is clever and – to the point … The ability for a diplomat to have a cheeky/clever outlook on current events has a positive effect as it aids in promoting his/her country’s position. Not only does a clever response effectively summarize complicated events, making it easier for regular citizens to understand, but its humorous nature also contributes to the popularity of the Tweet itself – resulting in a more widespread message.

Besides mapping IOs’ digital universe, the volume also seeks to examine its origins and evolution. The exponential rise and expansion of IOs’ reliance on social media raise questions about the rationales and the conditions under which international organisations have adopted and used social media. One of the most prominent arguments is that IOs have become digitally active because of the mimicking of norms and practices developed within domestic politics and outside (Cho 2014, 381). In this reading, IOs are replicating what other public and private organisations have been doing domestically in their public relations efforts. Another potential reason for why social media have become so popular in IOs is the result of the emerging trend towards the personalisation of international politics and diplomacy (another example of “spilling over” from domestic politics; see Marlin-Bennett 2013), a trend that has emphasised the role of the personal(ised) communication in promoting a particu...