W5: Real-Time Diplomacy Challenges (And Benefits)

Ironically, as I was getting ready to write my response to the second question this week, I came across the following article in the Huffington Post Blog that very clearly summarizes all of the issues and challenges with the rise of digital diplomacy and social media discussed in the readings this week: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andreas-sandre/fast-diplomacy_b_3416330.html.  Mr. Sandre, a Press and Public Affairs Officer at the Embassy of Italy in Washington, states that social media and digital diplomacy are causing a transformation very fast and affecting “the very DNA of how governments interact with each other and their publics.”  He quotes Secretary of State John Kerry, who wrote recently that “everybody sees change now. With social media, when you say something to one person, a thousand people hear it.”  This, I think many would argue, is one of the benefits of the rise of digital diplomacy – the opportunity to have a message reach many more people in much less time (which, for example, would change historic incidents like the long journey of Paul Revere to let his fellow Americans know that ‘the British are coming’ and allow that message to be sent in a much easier, quicker way).  But Mr. Sandre and others have noted that at the same time, “because social media exponentially multiplies a message and its reach, mistakes often occur in sudden and unexpected fashion.”

To focus more on the challenges than the opportunities and benefits at this point, it is important to point out that making quick decisions in foreign policy is absolutely not ideal.  Perhaps governments should be getting involved in issues that “go viral” on the Internet, so to speak, but this also complicates policies by having the media force world leaders to address a particular death or particular release of information.  When that happens, other work and diplomacy goals get set aside in order to deal with the more pressing issue at hand, according to a certain portion of the public on a particular digital forum.  And yet, as I write this, and think back to an Economist quote that Seib discussed, “the Internet is making news more participatory, social, diverse and partisan, reviving the discursive ethos of the era before mass media” (46).  At least in any democracy, shouldn’t you want more citizens involved in the goings-on in the world, offering up opinions so that elected representatives can more effectively govern on behalf of those people?

One major issue though, is the nature of social media as an individual, personal, and fast sort of communication.  This does not necessarily work well with the bureaucracy of governments, who need to have all communications vetted.  Hanson’s article pointed to this as well, citing an example from the US Embassy in Cairo, who posted a statement on Twitter in an “effort to defuse escalating tensions,” but had an administration official disown the initial statement shortly thereafter, explaining that it was “not cleared by Washington and does not reflect the views of the United States government” (13).  If every Embassy representative has to get their live communications cleared by Washington, at a time of crisis in-country that their public diplomacy efforts (through social media outlets) are aiming to control, this creates an extraordinary challenge for public diplomacy in the digital sphere. 

One of my favorite sections comes from Seib’s example of George Kennan, who observed that diplomats-then were “men so measured and prudent in their judgment of others, so careful to reserve that judgment until they felt they had the facts, [and] so well aware of the danger of inadequate evidence and hasty conclusion…”(71).  Nowadays, taking one’s time with the vast majority of issues is no longer as possible with the “pressures to move quickly, acknowledging, if not matching, the pace set by communication technologies that deliver information” (86).  Many of the authors this week discussed the State Department’s (and other organizations’) specific departments with employees intended to scour the Internet and other communication outlets in an effort to be better aware of and manage the saturated information environment.  I agree, however, with Seib in that diplomats and government officials in general “must [sometimes] push back against media-driven public expectations that all problems can be resolved at the same high speed with which information is provided” (86).  One thing is certain.  As diplomats continue to do their work and strategize, the role of the public has been allowed to expand through real-time media outlets, and diplomats therefore must bring the public into their work, making "public diplomacy" more important than ever.