Diplomacy in the Digital Age
- By Brian Hocking and Jan Melissen
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 26, 2015
Finally, does a technology tend to reflect and enhance existing social trends or mark a new departure in human affairs? The telegraph was a hugely significant innovation, it tended to reinforce broader trends such as other modes of faster communication, patterns of economic development, social change and the expanding role of government. Similarly, digital innovations are epiphenomenal, an expression of broader patterns of change, and as such the term 'digital diplomacy' can be seen as a metaphor for profound change in policy environments demanding diplomatic adaptation.
Big data
Big data affects diplomacy in a number of ways reflecting developments in the changing relationship between government and society, and radical changes facing the business community and wider the economic environment beyond the scope of this study.
The 'big data' phenomenon is characterized by the sheer growth in the quantity of digital information that is being produced and stored on a daily basis and, crucially, the fast-growing capacity for automated analyses of such data. In 2000 only 25% of the world's stored information was in digital form; by 2014, the figure had increased to around 98%. The terms 'big data' and 'open data' are sometimes used interchangeably, but are not synonymous. Governments or companies may disclose information as part of an 'open data' policy, mostly in the interests of transparent governance. By contrast, 'big data' accessible to a variety of organizations are generated inadvertently by use of the internet and the telephone. Whereas there is considerable suspicion of potentially 'Orwellian' government utilising 'big data', international organizations in particular can take advantage of 'big data' to enhance their legitimacy. The UN Global Pulse initiative, for instance, is applying data mining to social causes, using 'Big Data for Development', and the World Economic Forum is also studying 'Data Driven Development'.
The growth of 'datafication' means that, almost imperceptibly, size permits the acceptance of inaccuracy. There is a discernible trend in the direction of causality being replaced by correlation, and a risk of trivialization of the distinction between the two. It is important to underline such crucial differences, as it is to bear in mind that 'big data' cannot be used to make a prognosis of future developments. The potential for policy lies in the capacity of 'big data' to detect certain patterns in human behaviour and the characteristics of groups of people – but this young field is fraught with risks of inappropriate use, for instance when large swathes of information are used in a deterministic fashion for 'profiling' of individuals and groups. For some, a danger is the gradual triumph of data over politics as governments come to accept the immutability of huge swathes of information over political debate and policy choice, and the application of common sense to human affairs.
'Big data' can be used on a continuum ranging from crisis management support to speeding up policy-making and negotiation processes, mapping social movements in the interests of tailoring diplomatic initiatives to local needs, policy evaluation with real-time feedback, and using big data for policy planning purposes. Foreign ministries are acutely aware of the fact that access to large data bases has implications for diplomacy's age-old functions, including information gathering, and the combination and analysis of large swathes of information particularly carry the promise of improved service delivery, for instance in consular diplomacy. Here, the short-term challenge is to have a good website for preventive use, service automation for travelling citizens by means of mobile apps, and to make use of social networking sites and text messaging services in crisis situations, whilst the scope for collaboration with the savvier private sector is evident. In the wake of the spring 2015 Nepal earthquake, governments used Twitter to communicate with their citizens and Google advertised 'Person Finder', which helps tracking people in the aftermath of natural and humanitarian disasters.
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