SOCIAL MEDIA AND DIPLOMACY
SOCIAL MEDIA AND DIPLOMACY One hundred and forty characters have changed the way we see the world. They have changed how foreign policy shapes itself and how it responds to new international challenges. In ancient Rome, this phenomenon was called Vox Populi; today it goes under many different names: e-diplomacy, Digital Diplomacy, Twiplomacy, and others. Although not perfect synonyms, they all refer to the use of the Web, information and communications technology (ICT), and social media tools to engage in diplomatic activities and carry out foreign policy objectives. While Twitter is today seen as the most common e-diplomacy tool, it is only one of the many ways foreign ministries around the world are engaging in the most viral and exciting new development in modern diplomacy.
@jack’s ‘twttr’ tweet was the first of several billion and counting. It took Twitter three years, two months, and one day to reach the first billion tweets, and it took about 18 months for the first 500 000 users to sign up. Today, an estimated 500 million people use Twitter’s real-time information and social networking service: many of those are governments, embassies, and – of course – diplomats. With the spread of Twitter, the ways in which people and governments interact with each other have changed, as well as how a nation sets up its diplomatic strategies and actuates its foreign policy agenda and objectives. The flow of information and the way diplomats share information have also changed. As has the meaning of real time: today’s ‘real-er’ time 9
TWITTER FOR DIPLOMATS
Since March 2006, when Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey – aka @jack – published the very first tweet in history, a lot has changed. It was 3:50pm, March 21, 2006, and since then it has been re-tweeted almost 7000 times.