Diplomacy in the Digital Age
- By Brian Hocking and Jan Melissen
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 26, 2015
The relationship between foreign ministries and embassies
A key characteristic of the MFA as an integral diplomatic network, as noted earlier, is the distribution of roles between the 'hub' of the system and its 'peripheries'. This comprises one of the features of MFA's nodality: it gathers and transmits information, processes and employs it for goal attainment. Digitalization touches can provide an added resource for both elements of the system, and it can help to change the relationships between the two parts of the subsystem and their roles within it. Digital technologies have had an impact on both dimensions. Significantly, they have also strengthened the linkage between them. The adoption of secure e-mail systems in the 1990s, for example, has been seen as providing an opportunity to redistribute policy making functions from the centre to the periphery, and to change established hierarchical patterns of information distribution. Consequently, the flow of information can become less a 'hub and spoke' and more a network-like or reticulated system in which the relationships between centre and peripheries are becoming closer and more complex. But the jury is still out as some diplomats claim that the more recent deployment of ICT has tended towards increasing micromanagement from the centre and reinforced hierarchical structures rather than what was the intention: enhanced operational effectiveness.
Associated with this, are the organisational resources available to MFAs in an era of growing scarcity. Again, this is not new. The concept of 'virtual diplomacy' in the 1990s was bound up with the call for expanded representation, resulting in greater demands on post-Cold War era diplomatic networks. Technology provided part of the answer as MFAs experimented with new means of establishing presence in more economical forms than the traditional embassy. Later developments in ICT have more profound implications as the purpose and forms of representation in maintaining diplomatic presence are questioned.
In the world of digital diplomacy, information flows within national diplomatic systems and between MFAs become more complex. Embassies embed themselves through social media in networks linking embassies, their own MFAs and other parts of their government, as well as host MFAs. Ilan Manor has examined this phenomenon in the context of the 'social network' of embassies in Israel (see Diagram 4.1). Noting that this is surprisingly limited with only eleven of the eighty-two embassies accredited to Israel with active Twitter accounts and a presence on Facebook, it nevertheless demonstrates the possibilities of social media in reinforcing nodality. Not only do embassies follow their own MFAs, they can create a social network of foreign embassies in a host country and follow its MFA. Manor notes the opportunities that such a network can offer:
If the ministry is followed by other embassies it is able to effectively disseminate foreign policy messages to other countries. Moreover, if it follows foreign embassies' digital diplomacy channels, the local MFA can gather information regarding foreign policy initiatives of other countries. In the case of Israel, the Israeli MFA is located at the very heart of the local diplomatic social network…
There is however no one-size-fits all for communications strategies. As Archetti notes in her discussion of the deployment of social media by foreign diplomats based in London, the character of media strategies is not technologically determined. They reflect the environment in which such media are used and the role of diplomats as agents in their local settings. Facebook, Twitter and other digital tools may well be useful but outcomes are dependent on contexts and the behaviour of diplomats as social agents.
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