Social media and public diplomacy: a comparative analysis of the digital diplomatic strategies of the EU, US and Japan in China

Abstract

The application of social media to the field of diplomacy has been hailed as a transformative development of international politics (Stein 2011; Seib 2012). Not only is social media able to transcend hierarchical chains of diplomatic communication, but by bringing ordinary people into the spotlight of political life and making their voice heard, it also allows diplomats to directly engage foreign publics in a sustained dialogue. These critical changes and their consequences largely explain why social media has become such a powerful symbol of the ‘ new public diplomacy ’. Diplomats now have the possibility not only to promote a message unidirectionally, but also to carry on enlightening conversations with a broad segment of the population of the country in which they operate. Similar to other contributions in this volume, this chapter seeks to explore the potential for policy innovation of social media and its ability to reshape the conduct of public diplomacy . At the same time, this chapter focuses on a less understood aspect of this relationship, namely, the features that enable social media to play such a transformative role in the hands of diplomats.

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