Public Diplomacy in the Age of Online Collective Action: a Case Study of Embassy Responses to Online TTIP Opposition
Open AccessHistorically, U.S. diplomats have countered international public opposition to U.S. policies through one-way communication strategies. However, this dynamic is changing because the Internet has given a powerful communication platform to collective action groups, and has subsequently forced some aspects of public diplomacy, sometimes called “digital diplomacy,” to be carried out online. This thesis explores the current relationship between online protest and U.S. public diplomacy by using the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union as a case study. Twitter data from U.S. embassies and collective action groups in the U.K. and France was collected from 1 July 2016 to 13 December 2016. The recorded data was compared and analyzed to determine the current relationship between collective action groups’ messaging against TTIP on Twitter, and embassies’ online pro-TTIP messaging on Twitter. The collected tweets were first categorized and coded according to various public concerns with TTIP (i.e. transparency and impact on national life). The coded data was then analyzed using both temporal and geographical methods of comparison. The findings suggested that collective action groups have adapted to the online environment through high rates of message responsiveness and long-term strategizing. On the contrary, the results revealed that U.S. embassies continue to follow pre-Internet models of one-way communication and broad-messaging strategies.
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