Foreign Policy in the Age of Digital Diplomacy: A Comprehensive Report

This report delves into the evolving landscape of digital diplomacy, examining its profound impact on foreign policy and international relations. It explores how nations leverage digital tools, particularly social media, to shape foreign policy, engage with both domestic and international audiences, and navigate the complexities of global communication. The report defines digital diplomacy, also known as ediplomacy, as a crucial tool for achieving diplomatic objectives through the strategic use of digital platforms. It analyzes the opportunities and challenges presented by digital diplomacy, including information sharing, negotiation, and the potential for risks such as information leaks and cyber security threats. The report provides examples of digital diplomacy in practice across the globe, with a focus on the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, and India. It also discusses critical issues, such as the role of social media in political discourse, the challenges of maintaining pace with technological advancements, and the potential for misuse of digital platforms. Overall, the report underscores the importance of digital diplomacy in the 21st century and its implications for the future of foreign policy.

Running head: DIPLOMACY
Digital diplomacy
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Introduction
The modern era cannot imagine its life without the presence of Internet. There have been
many revolutions in the field of Internet over many ages and these changes have affected all the
aspects of life and on among them are International Relations. One of the most important key of
the foreign policy is Diplomacy. This has also been transformed by the effect of revolution. This
topic examines the research statement “Foreign policy in the age of Digital diplomacy and its
impact on both foreign and domestic citizens”, which would further elaborate on the factors
that how nations are utilizing the tools of diplomacy while pursuing the foreign policies. The
paper further inspects the challenges and opportunities; the media offer for the diplomatic
operations and raise arguments that nations cannot bear the loss of lagging behind. The 21st
century is an era of scientific advancement and development. It is a time when life has become a
rat race and no one wants to fail in any aspect. All the industries have to carry on a huge amount
of research and development activities in order to understand the increasing and changing pattern
of the demands of their customers. As a result of which, the companies are adopting all the
modern means of technology within their production process. No company wants to fall back in
this era of huge competition. Hence, they are always trying to gain sufficient knowledge about
the usage of all the modern scientific and technological means (Bijola and Holmes 2015). Digital
Diplomacy and the activities in internet entirely provide assistance in projecting the foreign
policy of the state to both foreign and domestic citizens.
Digital diplomacy renders promises for conducting global relations, a few is known from the
point of view of certain perspective that the way digital diplomacy can be conducted to certain
degree of limitations, success within the zone of diplomacy and the way the nations are utilizing
the strategies to make the growth of foreign policies effective. The paper further unearths the

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diplomatic activities and the way it promotes challenges and opportunities with new policies
developing around the internet.
Discussion
What is meant by the term Digital Diplomacy?
Digital Diplomacy also known as ediplomacy is one of the very useful and important
tool for achieving diplomatic objectives. It is a method, through which nation designs the
international policy and make the efforts coordinated in order to influence activities of decision
making process and attitude of the International Governments through the initiation of
negotiations, dialogue and violence. The digital diplomacy, a new form of diplomacy has been
interpreted, understood and defined. According to Manor and Segrev (2015), diplomacy
primarily identifies the increasing usage and utilization of social media platforms in nations so
that it can gain sufficient amount of knowledge from the different foreign policies and the
objectives and control reputation effectively. The authors that the presence of digital diplomacy
can be found in two levels, foreign ministries and embassies, which are located across the world,
have noted it. Through its maintenance of operations on these aspects, countries can frame out
international policy and messages of nation branded as a rare characteristics of local citizens in
terms to traditions, value, history and culture, thereby allowing the approval of their foreign
policy and the image, which has been aimed to be promoted.
Lewis (2014) has defined this diplomacy as the utilization of the digital instruments for
initiating communication by the diplomats in order to transmit information to the public. Hanson
(2012) has defined digital diplomacy as use of internet and innovative technologies of
information and communication to render support in order to carry out diplomatic aims.

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The United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) elaborated its
understanding of the concept of digital diplomacy in relation to the foreign policy. Digital
diplomacy is the process of solving the problems of foreign policy through internet. It is regarded
as a convenient method of diplomacy through a separate transmitter. It is through the use of web,
that people can listen, evaluate and engage the foreign policy matter in many interesting ways. It
is even possible to enlarge the scope of understanding and transmit directly with the government
as well as with the society. However, the question arises, why it is significant to use digital
diplomacy? It is significant in the sense that it makes the users to update them with the
ideologies and policies of the politicians and accordingly, if the person does not consider digital
debate, he can lose by default the argument. Therefore, in order to provide both the policy and
information advices to the governments, the ministries of foreign have depended on their staff
and their diplomatic vision, the confidentiality of international relations communication and their
way to entry to foreign decision makers (Bijola and Jiang 2015). The Governments has to depend
on their respective ministers of foreign such a way that can explain the national interest in the
best way possible.
Negotiation is one of the most important tools in the field of foreign policies. It is
considered to be very important and very useful in case of achieving the diplomatic objectives.
Diplomatic negotiation processes are very important in case setting up international relations
between countries and also between international organizations as well. Among the seven
methods, negotiation is the first useful instrument that is used to settle many disputes between
countries. In case of international relations between two countries or two organizations, there can
be many sensitive issues like conflicts, mismatch of opinions and several other such problems. If
these issues are not properly and timely handled then these can also lead to war and consequently

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it would lead to the disruption of peace. Hence, negotiation appears to be the most important tool
in case of solving such disputes. This is because negotiation is a process that starts in a peaceful
way by following methods of enquiry, persuasion, arbitration, judicial settlements and several
other things.
Origin of Digital diplomacy can be traced down to the public diplomacy, which is an
important form practicing diplomacy. It is defined from the perspective of, the instruments
utilized by the states to have a clear idea of cultures, behavior and attitudes, manage and build
relationships, manipulate thoughts and mobilize activities to make their values and interests
active. Sotiri 2015has argued that bringing a larger number of public into the equation of
diplomacy has enhanced many important stakeholders, who are taking participation in the field
of International diplomacy, from the state-to-state interactions to the international non-
governmental organizations and international Government organizations.
Digital Diplomacy across globe
Digital diplomacy is largely based on the usage of internet. In the modern day scenario,
the most easy and quick means of sharing information is through the social networking media.
As international relations require the sharing of many new polices and business decisions within
a very short period of time and across far and distant regions, the social networking media like
face book, twitter, blogs often become very handy and useful. Schwarzenbach (2015) noted that
the largest transformation Twitter has given the foreign policy the entry to the real information
and international engagement irrespective of political status of Nation. The first and foremost
foreign ministry to set up dedicated unit of ediplomacy was the United States Department that
has given birth to a taskforce on e-diplomacy in the year 2002. It has 160 full time employees

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engaged in the platform of social media, who are functioning across 25 different offices. The
primary reason of creating the Office of eDiplomacy was to overcome the obstacles in
knowledge making its contribution to the attacks 11 September and to bring improvements the
State Department ability to transmit and share knowledge. After 9/11, the foreign policy of
America became quite proactive, keen to penetrate because of the consistent agenda of digital
diplomacy (Bijola and Jiang 2015).
Other foreign ministers across the globe have started to welcome diplomacy. The UK
FCO is having Digital Diplomacy office which is engaged in wider range of activities of
ediplomacy. Sweden is also very active in the promotion of digital diplomacy, especially by
following the strategy of online communication of the countries minister of foreign affairs Carl
Bildt, who became the best connected leader in Twitter. In the year 2008, France has been
indicated that the soft power of the country is believed on the digital technologies, while the
foreign affairs department of Japan and Poland use a wide and extensive of the networks of
social media (Holmes 2015). Furthermore, Germany turned to the platforms of ICT to the crowd
source opinion and innovative ideas from the people that have fed into its year 2014 review of
foreign policy. Israel is successful in while matching its assaultive traditional diplomacy with
one of the important active units in the world of digital diplomacy, which has worked harder to
influence the outcome of US-Iran nuclear deals.
A larger number of embassies are now having interactive based websites and accounts in
Facebook and increasing ambassadors are actively present in Twitter, though certain accounts of
social media are performing better. Some good examples can be Australia’s High Commission
had made an attempt to answer live session of Question and Answer. Hashtags like
#innovationXchange have been performed by the Twitter account to promote initiatives and

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stakeholders in the discussion (Holmes 2015). A report stated that, Twiplomacy in the year 2016
revealed that social media is regarded as an important communication mode for the Governments
around the world and Twitter has become one of the important channels for choice to conduct
diplomacy.
In the continent Asia, in the field of digital, India is leading the way. The country has
continued to invest in constructing its online outreach despite the constraints found in resources
(Pamment 2016). The country has used Twitter to the excellent effect in order to gear the
successful emptying of more than 19000 citizens from India from Libya during the start of civil
war, which took place in 2011. India has started experimenting with the various ways in order to
link overseas and local audiences through the application of mobile apps, live streaming of any
issues or situations and through a responsive presence of social media (Pamment 2016).
Critical issues surrounding digital diplomacy
Digital diplomacy is not free from any kinds of criticisms. The utilization of social media
media in the field of politics has added danger. It has been pointed by the diplomats of United
States that Information regarding breaking the international crises that once upon a time took
place days or hours for the officials of government has played a good time to the audiences, not
only through television and radio, but also over the internet. Ironically enough, for the creators of
policy, immediate propagation about the events both near and far has proved to be useful for the
audiences (Holmes 2015; Pilegard 2016). In the other words, it can be stated that Digital
diplomacy is carrying risks, which includes information leakages, anonymity of internet users
and hacking. The most recent example is interference of Russia in the US election in the year
2016. The Government of Russia began its process of hacking through its attempt to infiltrate an

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election technology of America, which is known by the name VR systems, which is a company
based in Florida. The attackers used a technique of spear phishing, sending emails at a
personalized level to various employees of the company, trying to trick the employees or
manipulating them into entering into a false login Google form.
There are both pros and cons of this process of digital diplomacy. As the very
name suggests, the process of digital diplomacy is largely based on the usage of social networks
which is increasing and changing day by day. Hence, it often becomes a major problem to keep
in pace with the ever-changing and the ever-growing world of social networks. On the other
hand, one of the last important issues that need to be handled very carefully in case of foreign
policies is the issue of hacking. There are many risks that are associated with relying upon the
social networking platforms as a tool of foreign diplomacy. Another important issue that needs
tom checked is the issue of blackouts and censorship on the media. In other words international
relations are mainly carried on between many two or more foreign countries tries and the
government or political scenario of different country varies. There are many countries where the
media is often subjected to blackouts, which would greatly affect the process of digital
diplomacy. Another risk associated is the information leakage. A good example can be the
Wikileaks episode. On 28 November; turmoil was spread among the foreign ministers across the
world as the website of Wikileaks started publishing 260,000 diplomatic cables, which were sent
between the missions of United States across the world and the Department of State in
Washington. The cables incorporated frank based assessments by the diplomats from US,
governments and the host nations.
Another risk that was very much prevalent right from the time of the invention of internet
is hacking. A good example incorporates the case of a hacking attack on Yuli Edelstein’s

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personal website, a Minister from Israel for the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs. The
minister commented on this and stated that nothing will stop him from practicing public
diplomacy on behalf of Israel State. He intended to continue to defend the state interests on all
fronts of the state including in the internet (Constantinou 2016). Another incident that took place
recently is a hacking group known by the name Fancy Bear made an attempt to spy on the
artillery unites of Ukraine due to its distribution of application of androids apps used for
targeting of weapons. It is still unclear how successful was the effort. However, according to the
firm, the android app has the potential to map out the composition of an unit and hierarchy,
determine their plans and even their location approximately. The app, which is in question,
allowed the military forces of Ukraine to quickly pinpoint their aims and distributed to the units,
which are operating the Soviet era towed Howitzer (Constantinou 2016). The hackers from
Russia distributed their version of the application on the social media platforms, which are
famous among the service members from Ukraine. The troops from Ukraine operating the D-30
suffered above the rates of average casualty and according to Crowdstrike, that this might have
taken place because of being tracked by a malicious natured application (Constantinou 2016).
Another obstacle of this diplomacy is the anonymity’s culture which states that anyone
can work on the adoption of any persona, attack and addresses anyone. Any person can imitate
pretends to be someone else or best described as an imposter, who is active to cause mischief.
Interestingly, as well, even the advocates of digital diplomacy and committed several mistakes in
the different uses (Constantinou 2016). For example, the day before the world economic forum
this took place in Davos, the foreign minister from Sweden, Carl Bildt, posted a politically
incorrect tweet “Leaving Stockholm and heading for Davos. Looking forward to World Food
Program dinner tonight. Global hunger is an urgent issue! #davos”. The Twitter users

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immediately have banned the minister’s post on twitter and LSO banned it from being viewed by
the rest of the public (Constantinou 2016).
Advantages of Digital diplomacy
In today’s world, the use of digital diplomacy is important. The word is framed in such a
way that both non- state and states waged in the field of competition with each other, but online.
This online space now help more than 2.5 billion users, most of the users can only access the
internet through their cellphone. However, if the digital diplomacy is used properly, the
diplomacy is persuasively supplementing the old diplomacy that can provide help to the country
in its foreign policy goals, extend the global reach and influence the people who would never set
their foot in any of the embassies of the world.
According to Fisher (2013), the advantages of using social media provide opportunities in
order to reach out to the citizens of the other nations in the real time. The platforms of social
media provide spaces for the purpose of interaction, enhances engagement and thus accelerating
the objectives of diplomacy. The social media can be accessed with the potential ease because of
the low cost comparing to the other methods, which have made it an attractive tool for many
embassies, government offices, which are witnessing cut in the budgets and the demand to
increase the potentiality of engagement. There are many platforms, which allow the utilization of
dynamic contents such as photos, videos than the accidental procedures of delivering lectures or
giving out pamphlets. Along with this, social media act as important channels while trying to
reach out the young populations, which is now a major aim of the efforts of public diplomacy
(Live 2016).

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Digital technologies can be made useful in the information field, processing, collection,
in the zone of actions of consulate and for the purpose of communications, during disasters and
emergencies. The global practices presented that skillful utilization of this diplomatic tools can
bring forth the bigger dividends to the investors. To top it, always, digital diplomacy does not
require any monetary investments (Melissen and Caesar 2016). On the contrary, the diplomacy
has aimed to reduce its costs. The human factors involve the need for the employees to grow and
develop and also master the skill of using the new technologies and spending a part of their time
while working with the targeted audiences in Internet. Much of the Foreign minister’s work
across the world is continuing to be controlled through the ordinary processes of diplomacy,
instructions given to the foreign embassies, negotiations and meetings (Cooper 2016). Thus,
digital diplomacy would not be substitute the classical diplomacy, only if this diplomacy is
being properly controlled with skills, this particular instrument can strengthen the functioning of
the state in the international relations and foreign policy much faster and make it a cost effective.
Conclusion
Therefore it can be concluded that the present day scenario has been largely influenced
by the Internet and its uses. The social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook look forward
for different missions with straight access to the citizens outside and inside of the nations. The
developments and innovations in ICT resulted in the handling of the information, which gets
generated everywhere, rendering the information disseminate, far and wide, allowing the
common people to work upon and make their own judgments, expressing their feelings,concerns
and even leave an impact on the makers of policy. Consequently, the process followed by the
government for waging interaction, which would reach faster in other parts of the world. The
diplomacy brings challenges and opportunities. On one hand, the social media is updating

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country with the information to bring solutions to the problems and on the other hand, it has been
misused for the self-purpose. It is needless to say that digital diplomacy is a new kind of
diplomacy and it is impacting the foreign policy by directly linking with the public diplomacy.