ABSTRACT
Digital media have come to mediate global power in interesting ways. International news agencies now rely upon content generated by citizen journalists or captured by mobile phone users as events unfold in distant streets. 1 Social media, while providing new ways for diplomats and their staff to reach new audiences on a global scale, also challenges the ways that diplomatic work is conducted. As these new media have expanded vertical channels of communication, they have similarly broadened horizontal channels of communication between networked individuals. The decentralized nature of these new participatory and communicative networks means that public diplomacy now requires productive engagement with individuals within these networks. Yet, how to do so successfully remains an unresolved puzzle. The U.S. Department of State has pointed to the role of social media in increasing openness in government. Alec Ross, the Senior Adviser for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, contends that “[a] lot of the 21st-century dynamics are less about . . . traditional liberal-conservative ideological lines. Today it is—at least in the spaces we engage in—Is it open or is it closed?” 2 In addition to navigating the intricacies of traditional statecraft, governments are finding it necessary to develop new information management strategies in light of these new media—the impact of which is highly contingent and often spontaneous. The costs of monitoring events in near real time have dropped significantly in an age of ubiquitous and instantaneous information sharing. At the same time, the call for open government and increased information sharing may be more outward facing than inward, as we saw when the more traditional behind-the-scenes work of diplomats was laid bare when Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks organization released thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables on its website in 2010.
