Diplomacy in the Digital Age
- By Brian Hocking and Jan Melissen
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 26, 2015
The potential of data science is to draw large data sets into the study and practice of diplomacy, and allow diplomats and scholars to become comfortable engaging with and analyzing increasingly large and unstructured data… However, the use of data science must maintain a focus on issues meaningful for diplomacy – and provide insights relevant to diplomacy. The emphasis must be on the diplomatic rather than the data challenges.
To illustrate the ways in which some of these issues play out in practice, we focus on three cases providing images of how online and offline diplomacy functions in different contexts.
1. The Iran nuclear negotiations
The experience of the ongoing Iran nuclear talks fits most closely with traditional foreign policy. It focuses on the military security agenda and the processes surrounding the P5+1 negotiations which privilege confidentiality over transparency. The pattern of the Lausanne phase of the negotiations in March 2015 was marked by the usual practice of deadlines regularly missed, imminent departures and last minute 'breakthroughs'. The 600+ journalists accredited to the talks had limited access to the hotel where the negotiations were held. Digital technology made an appearance in the shape of secure videoconferencing between President Obama and the US negotiators.
Surprisingly, a key role was performed by a very traditional mode of communications technology: the mobile whiteboard. Under-secretary of State Wendy Sherman hit on the idea of the whiteboard as a means of illustrating what she called the 'Rubik's cube' of complexity comprising the negotiations. The whiteboard was wheeled around the negotiating rooms as she and John Kerry met Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif and his team. This had an advantage for the Iranians as it avoided paper documents which had to be taken back to Tehran. But it also showed its dangers when a US negotiator inadvertently used a permanent marker to write down classified calculations.
Whilst tweeting was a feature of the talks, the principal role for social media was in 'selling' the outcome of the negotiations to domestic audiences. The 2013 talks were also marked by Foreign Minister Zarif's embrace of social networks and the creation of a new website, Nuclearenergy.ir, which aimed at explaining the history and motives of Iran's nuclear programme. Zarif used social media platforms extensively on his return to Tehran – both to defend the deal at home and to 'frame' it from an Iranian perspective for an international audience. As one observer noted: 'Twitter diplomacy has helped President Rouhani maintain public support, bolstering his leadership image abroad. The contrast to his predecessor could not be starker.'
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