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Digital Diplomacy: Between Promises and Reality

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Digital Diplomacy: Between Promises and Reality Universiteit Utrecht SCHOOL OF GOVERNANCE Dr. Sebastiaan B.M. Princen & Universität Konstanz DEPARTMENT OF POLITICS AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION Prof. Dr. Ines Mergel MASTER THESIS Digital Diplomacy: between promises and reality A case study of the Swedish Foreign Service By ALINA ENGSTRÖM 5 August 2019 Student ID: 6629210 (Utrecht) Student ID: 821779 (Konstanz) Research Internship and Thesis Course code: USG6250 Abstract Foreign ministries around the world encourage their diplomats to use social media within their traditional communication practices. However, despite the many advantages of social media usage, it seems like there is a gap between the possibilities and actual use of social media by embassies. This thesis aims to trace the factors that determines the social media use of embassies, and thereby come up with practical recommendations for improvement. This thesis takes a neo-institutionalist approach and argues that individuals act according to a certain set of institutional and organizational factors when they are incorporated in a political institution. It employs a qualitative methodology to examine whether theoretically specified micro-level foundations can serve as an explanation for a macro-level phenomenon. The findings contribute both to theory and practice as it found that institutional arrangements and organizational factors shape the way embassy staff uses social media. It therefore suggests that Foreign Ministries including its Foreign Representation need to develop better strategies for dealing with institutional constrains by adjusting the organizational practices. Keywords: Digital diplomacy, social media, embassies, organizational processes and practices, management styles, strategic communication Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to my colleges at the communications department at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs for offering me a place to write this study and granting me access to the right people and information. I would also like to thank my supervisor Sebastiaan B.M. Princen for his flexibility and valuable feedback throughout this project. Finally, I am grateful to my family and friends who have supported be throughout the rollercoaster of the past five months. 1 Table of content 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 3 1.1 Theoretical framework ......................................................................................................... 5 1.2 Relevance and former literature ........................................................................................... 5 1.3 Research design and methods .............................................................................................. 6 1.4 Generalizability .................................................................................................................... 8 1.5 Disposition ........................................................................................................................... 8 2. Theoretical framework ........................................................................................................ 9 2.1 Outcome variable ................................................................................................................. 9 2.2 The macro-micro-macro explanation ................................................................................. 12 2.3 Macro-level supra individual factors .................................................................................. 13 2.3.1 Institutional arrangements .......................................................................................... 14 2.3.2 Organizational factors................................................................................................. 16 2.4 Micro-level individual factors ............................................................................................ 17 2.5 Institutions, organizations and individuals ......................................................................... 18 3. Methodology ....................................................................................................................... 19 3.1 Analytical approach ............................................................................................................ 19 3.2 Case selection ..................................................................................................................... 21 3.3 Conceptualization and operationalization .......................................................................... 24 3.3.1 Institutional arrangements .......................................................................................... 25 3.3.2 Organizational factors................................................................................................. 26 3.3.3 Individual micro-level factors .................................................................................... 27 3.4 Data collection process ....................................................................................................... 28 3.5 Reliability and validity ....................................................................................................... 29 4. Analysis ............................................................................................................................... 30 4.1 Social media use ................................................................................................................. 31 4.1.1 Strategic thinking and communication style .............................................................. 32 4.2 Explanatory factors ............................................................................................................ 35 4.2.1 Institutional arrangements .......................................................................................... 36 4.2.2 Organizational factors and management styles .......................................................... 43 4.2.3 Individual micro-level factors .................................................................................... 47 4.3 Discussion of findings ........................................................................................................ 49 5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 51 5.1 Aim and research gap ......................................................................................................... 51 5.2 Summary of main findings ................................................................................................. 52 5.3 Practical implications and recommendations ..................................................................... 54 5.4 Theoretical implications ..................................................................................................... 55 5.5 Limitations and future research .......................................................................................... 56 References ............................................................................................................................... 57 Appendix ................................................................................................................................. 62 Questionnaire for the embassies ............................................................................................... 62 Questionnaire for the communications department ................................................................. 64 2 1. Introduction Over the past decade, there has been a rapid increase in social media on the Internet. This development has changed and revolutionized the ways of communicating. It offers opportunities for public diplomacy practitioners as it enables them to engage with its target audience in a new way (Glassman 2008). Due to its many advantages, foreign ministries encourage their diplomats to implement and use social media within their traditional communication practices (Craido et al. 2013). However, despite its many advantages, it also seems like there is a gap between the possibilities and actual implementation of social media use for governmental institutions (Meijer and Thaens 2010; Craido et al. 2013). As social media is an interactive media platform, one large change for diplomats has been to communicate more interactively and two-way, as opposed to one-way, with the public. It requires them to use new interactive communication modes to manage networks and become more ‘responsive’, as oppose to the old-styled top-down, or one-way information distribution models (Hocking and Melissen 2015). This interactive character also requires diplomats to interact directly with digital publics, giving up the control over messages and give up some of the secrecy and discretion of diplomatic processes (Manor 2019, p.73). Research into this field has shown that government actors’ communication through social media still mainly focuses on self-promotion and political marketing, instead of focusing on participation and increased transparency (Strauß et al. 2015; Bellström et al. 2016; Bonsón et al. 2015; Reddick et al. 2017). In regard to the language, the tone in the posts created by governments on social media are still merely neutral (Zavattaro et al. 2015) and formal (Meijer and Torenvlied 2016). Moreover, it has been shown that citizens are not engaging and responding to government posts (Reddick et al. 2017;
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