ABSTRACT
Engaged in critical discourses with their global public, the United Nations (UNs) micro-blogging presence on Twitter can be understood as an opportunity to initiate and maintain deliberation and thereby bestow legitimacy to its actions. In order to reflect mutual commitment to communicative action, tweets from different stakeholders must overall paint a consistent picture of what the UN deals with. Considering both sides, Twitter can be just as much one-way communication as other media if the UN communicates to instead of with its audience. Comparing these results to those tweeting at the UN, some differences emerge. In terms of directing one’s tweets, the results from state and non-state handles echo those of the UN handles. In light of the normative standards following from Habermas’ Communicative Action, granted that those are rather high, the UN Twittersphere seems not to exhaust its full potential to engage.
