Diplomacy in the Digital Age
- By Brian Hocking and Jan Melissen
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 26, 2015
Next to 'e-government', the notion of 'e-participation' is framed around two-way, top-down and bottom-up dynamics and the expectation of co-creation of solutions between government and people. In OECD terminology, e-government involves a move from 'citizen-centric approaches' where governments anticipate citizens' needs to 'citizen-driven' approaches whereby people identify their own needs and pursue them in partnership with government. Consequently, digital technologies can reduce political exclusion by allowing new routes for access and influence by offering the opportunity to interest groups to place issues on the policy agenda and/or alter policy decisions.
Social media offer significant participative potential, alongside an easy and possibly meaningless route to 'participation'. What has been termed social networking 'slacktivism' can perhaps best be described as virtual-cum non labour-intensive 'activism-lite'. Signing e-petitions may be comforting but ultimately simply create an illusion of participation in shaping public policy.
Conclusion
Our argument suggests the importance of the relationship between technological change and the broader societal context in which it occurs – a view underscored by a historical perspective. In this vein the emergence of the telegraph occurred alongside profound social, political and economic changes. Moreover, the example of the telegraph is illustrative in that foreign ministries adjusted their procedures in the light of the changed international environment that it helped to create as well as specific domestic circumstances. Today there is a notable tendency to overdraw the 'newness' of communications technologies. The propensity towards 'hype' in responding to technological change and the predilection for technological determinism are unhelpful in analysing the essence of diplomacy in the digital age.
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