RISKS AND CHALLENGES
It’s true most world leaders and foreign ministers don’t tweet themselves – but many do as I’ve tried to show here in previous chapters. The personability of Twitter and Facebook is what attracted many governments to social media and that’s what needs to remain intact. New rules and guidelines are in the working in most countries and a better understanding of risks and risk management will help make twiplomacy a better tool. This is an area where innovation and ideas – rather than technology, per se – play the central role. Once we step into digital diplomacy, we have to look beyond Twitter and Facebook. We need to realize how the power of ideas can create better results and transition traditional diplomacy to a new phase, where people are new players, and politicians and diplomats are not elites any longer. Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former director of policy planning at the US Department of State, calls it ‘pivot to the people’.
TWITTER FOR DIPLOMATS
Let’s use e-diplomacy and fully explore its potential to make a true pivot, thus making diplomacy the most extraordinary tool our governments can have in fulfilling our foreign policy agendas and engaging with the world.
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