Diplomacy in the Digital Age
- By Brian Hocking and Jan Melissen
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail China.org.cn, October 26, 2015
A management concern that will be touched upon briefly in our discussion is that digitalization presents problems related to the administration of knowledge to public and private sector organisations. Noting that this was the first digital challenge in the State Department, Hanson identifies the key issues as: locating knowledge resources within the organisation; identifying centres of excellence; promoting knowledge transfer and reducing knowledge wastage through movement of personnel; and maximizing resources by alerting managers to waste and duplication. In the case of the State Department, the Office of eDiplomacy is one of the key units working on knowledge management through a range of platforms and programmes.
Policy management and negotiation
The digital revolution has been accompanied by fundamental changes in international negotiation. Alongside traditional agendas and procedures, negotiation also embraces knowledge construction and framing discourses on key events. In many situations it has become a process in which the objective is to define a problem and identify ways through which it can be managed, rather than rational convergence of negotiators towards a solution as in classical round-the-table talks. The wider and indeed public context in which international talks take place has become more prominent, thus making prenegotiations or what Harold Saunders termed 'circum-negotiations' more important. Whilst digital technologies have not created these instances of diplomatic transformation, they are now key elements in the ways in which they evolve and, crucially, they have created more opportunities for outside influences on state-to-state talks.
What is the right mix between 'online' and 'offline' diplomatic activities? Hybridity blurs the distinction between these two forms. Nonetheless, there is a debate to be had as to the utility of, for example, social media in specific diplomatic domains. What are the risks and rewards of their use? In viewing the key function of diplomacy as 'change management', Holmes identifies two forms of social media involvement in negotiations: the first is a result of top down 'exogenous shocks' – as with major geopolitical/geo-economic crises. The second is associated with bottom-up incremental change – as witnessed in human rights and environmental agendas, for example. The first category is much more likely to involve problems of human relationships and, therefore, of trust. On the one hand, in digital settings access to online resources permitting face-to-face interaction is diminished, which makes it harder to 'read' interlocutors and measure their sincerity. Digital technologies such as videoconferencing raise questions regarding their impact on trust. Research on digital behavior in negotiations – such as using smart phones for texting during the deliberations – suggests that 'multi-tasking negotiators' achieve lower payoffs and are seen as less professional and trustworthy.
On the other hand, social media are hugely valuable in diplomatic domains where the objectives are complex policy management and incremental change. Digital tools excel in the fields of data gathering and analysis and provide the resources for virtual collaboration. Ali Fisher and others have argued that incorporating big data into 'data-driven diplomacy' can be advantageous. Fisher sees the future as one for fruitful collaboration between diplomats and data science.
Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)