The future of digital diplomacy

The state of e-diplomacy today

Today, diplomats use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and country-specific social media networks such as Russia’s VKontakte or China’s Weibo. Eighty-two foreign ministries currently have Twitter accounts, and 47 ministers of foreign affairs are personally on Twitter. The two most popular foreign ministers on Twitter are Abdullah bin Zayed (@ABZayed) of the United Arab Emirates and Turkey’s Ahmet Davutoğlu (@Ahmet_Davutoglu) – each with more than 400,000 followers. In third place is Sweden’s minister Carl Bildt (@CarlBildt) with over 246,700 followers.

Only three years ago, this kind of diplomacy was considered rather extraordinary. Historically, diplomacy was a cautious and circumspect endeavor, with meetings conducted mostly behind closed doors. Now e-diplomacy tools have become a core part of public diplomacy, which has its goal establishing contacts with a target online audience and then directly addressing this audience with specific messages anywhere in the world.

The full text of the article http://russia-direct.org/content/future-digital-diplomacy.