Diplomacy in the Era of Facebook

This year’s Milton Wolf Seminar was entitled “Public Diplomacy in Moments of Geopolitical Transformation.” A proper subtitle, however, may have been “Diplomacy in the Era of Facebook.” Over the course of three days, participants  continuously invoked Facebook as a locus of transformation–one that has altered the premises, potentials, and pitfalls of public diplomacy. While other social media sites (such as Twitter) were discussed, Facebook was framed as a primary site of concern for changing geopolitical arrangements, types of diplomacy, and interpersonal forms of belonging and interactions.

Facebook & Public Diplomacy

Several of the panelists regarded Facebook as a platform that has triggered or accelerated changes in communication and diplomacy. For instance, one panelist noted that at the height of its control, Hearst Communications commanded 20% of the newspaper market. In comparison, Facebook currently has over 2.2 billion users and combined with Google, garners 73% of all U.S. digital advertising (D’Onfro, 2017). Far from the days of the telegraph or Pony Express, Facebook (and its subsidiary company WhatsApp) oversee the exchange of 60 billion messages a day globally (Goode, 2016). While the introduction of other media such as the telephone (Marvin, 1988) and television changed the communication landscape and brought forth great anxiety and turbulence, panelists stressed that Facebook’s command is truly unprecedented and qualitatively different from previous changes.

Most participants believed Facebook’s global influence represents a fundamental break in international relations and diplomacy due to what one panelist described as the  “transfer of power to platforms [and] from a world of states to a world of digital communities,” offering both opportunities and challenges for countries. Panelists noted that the ability to share information and communicate with citizens (and individuals in a target country of diplomatic engagement) on Facebook grants countries advantages that were not available previously. In this manner, the nation state has become an important actor on social media. Features that enable targeting, tailoring, and cultivation allow countries to amplify their messages and achieve more specialized reach for their “strategic narratives” (Roselle, Miskimmon, & O’Loughlin, 2014, p.70). Facebook offers politicians, public officials, and diplomats a way to instantly communicate with citizens. Although, as one panelist noted, politicians are now beholden to “keyboard warriors.” Other participants, including those who have/are Facebook employees, positively viewed the company’s contribution to public diplomacy and outlined internal reforms that are occurring on the platform. What was missing in the Seminar discussions was an elaboration of how citizens can leverage this communication form to demand more accountability and transparency from their government.

While the majority of panelists viewed Facebook as a major vehicle of geopolitical and diplomatic change, there was less agreement about the corresponding implications. Despite recognizing the positive developments (as outlined in the previous paragraph), there was an expansive scope of concerns about the precarity of the site and its ability to assume state-like functions and practice governmentality (Foucault, 1991). In this light, Facebook may be seen as a quasi-government since the site tracks users (who could be envisioned as citizens), collects their information (which could be linked to a census), and requires to them to abide by terms of service and community guidelines (which could be conceptualized as a body of laws). Responding to Facebook’s growing role (and accumulated power), panelists expressed concerns  about limited intermediary liability, the datafication and commodification of citizens, and the rapid spread of fake news (also referred to by a panelist as “junk news”) that may undermine both civic and diplomatic relations. The alarmist view expressed by some panelists who saw Facebook as a threat to both democracy and diplomacy characterizes much of the prevailing scholarship relating to this platform (Fuchs, 2012; Sunstein, 2018).

Although in the minority, some panelists did not fully subscribe to the idea that the emergence and omnipotence of Facebook challenges traditional models of diplomacy and communication. These scholars and practitioners articulated the belief that Facebook’s development may represent an evolution in models of cultural engagement and international relations rather than a wholesale revolution of practices. In expressing this point, one panelist advocated for a decreased emphasis on how Russia and Facebook may have altered the 2016 presidential election in the United States due to lack of concrete evidence. Another panelist explained that Facebook and other social media sites may not be transformative in the sense that they may not supplant traditional media and modes of communicating with the public (which politicians must continue to use to convey their sentiments to citizens).

Oversights in the Discussion About Facebook

While the discussion of Facebook’s transformative potential was enriching, several important topics were neglected. First, panelists outlined how Facebook may weaken state control or enable states to better reach (and collect information about) their citizens, but the particular regional dynamics of these processes were not examined. This topic is important to consider based on the proliferation of news articles and academic scholarship that make assumptions about regions without properly contextualizing how Facebook’s penetration into the area may play off historical patterns and cultural norms. As an illustration of this tendency, a recent article in The New York Times detailed riots in Sri Lanka that were instigated by rumors spread over Facebook (Taub & Fisher, 2018). In this case, the combination of underlying ethnic and religious tensions and the ease and rapidity of spreading inaccurate or exaggerated statements through this platform proved to be combustible. The authors of this news story linked the riots to broader concerns about Facebook’s presence in “the global south.” They declared:

In the Western countries for which Facebook was designed, [the tendency to promote negative posts] leads to online arguments, angry identity politics and polarization. But in developing countries, Facebook is often perceived as synonymous with the internet and reputable sources are scarce, allowing emotionally charged rumors to run rampant. Shared among trusted friends and family members, they can become conventional wisdom. (Taub & Fisher, 2018).

This comment draws a problematic distinction between how Facebook may alter the given ecology of information and relationships in Western nations (implicitly positioned as synonymous with developed countries in the statement above) and developing countries (presumed to be non-Western nations). However, this quotation (which exemplifies trends in both journalism and scholarship) does not mention issues related to power imbalances (such as “Western exceptionalism”) and historical dynamics (such as colonialism), factors that shape the way countries and their flow of information may be altered by the processes and impacts of Facebook (Harding, 2001, p.48). These topics are important to consider and a fuller discussion of these dynamics would supplement the discussions that occurred in the 2018 Milton Wolf Seminar.

An additional oversight in this year’s seminar relates to the way states interact over issues related to Facebook. In particular, no one explicated how negotiations and power plays over this platform on an international level. However, in the contemporary moment, states and governments are shaping their interactions with one another based on other nations’ opinions about and treatment of the site, making this issue worthy of consideration.

As an example, one could consider China’s strict control of domestic internet markets (including both access and content restrictions), which coexist with its more open and consensual approaches to international policy designed to maintain business connections and global standing (Deibert, 2002). This dynamic has played out in China, a country that has banned sites such as Google and Facebook but continues to request that these platforms take down certain material that the government views as offensive or seditious (Mozur, 2018). These social media companies are often pressured to comply with such requests and have “little recourse” as “going to the American government could set off retaliation from China” (Mozur, 2018). The position of the United States to avoid intervening in such matters reveals a prioritization of international relations over domestic companies and enterprise, an important tendency that should be teased apart by future research. The “asymmetric” conflict (Price, 2014, p.87) between social media companies and national governments is evidence of changes related to “Public Diplomacy in Moments of Geopolitical Transformation.”

Lastly, with respect to the role of social media and the internet more broadly in diplomacy, one may consider battles over social media between countries as constituting a form of proxy war (Innes, 2012). Increased tension over a country’s Internet policies may both reflect and reinforce growing geopolitical schisms. One could look to Russia’s previous campaign to have the United States relinquish control of the Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in favor of letting the United Nations (a body in which Russia has significant clout as a member of the Security Council) command (Sasso, 2014). Further, the Russian government is considering plans to construct an “independent internet infrastructure” (MacDonald, 2017) to be used by BRICS member states (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The aforementioned actions by Russia reveal a growing distrust of the West and a desire to project global ascendancy. Thus, the Internet and social media platforms (most prominently Facebook) may operate as a chess pieces between countries and a site upon which nations struggle for control, power, and command. The interactions between nations regarding these platforms is of vital importance to a study of the changing geopolitical order and methods of public diplomacy and therefore should be discussed in future seminars on this topic.

Conclusion

In the current socio-political moment, discussions of Facebook have saturated the media as concerns have been relayed about fake news, Russian interference, surveillance, the 2016 United States presidential election, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. This climate likely primed the seminar and its participants to devote considerable time and energy to considering these issues. Over the three days, panelists debated the transformative nature of Facebook’s hegemonic control as some participants postulated that public diplomacy and communication styles are rapidly shifting in response to this industry command. In contrast, others expressed caution and believed traditional styles of reaching the public and other nations may not change wholesale. Within these discussions, both the positive (i.e., citizen engagement, share of information, and targeting of populations and tailoring of messages) and negative (i.e., unwieldy platform control, decreased ability of states to propagate strategic narratives, and viral spread of fake news) impacts of Facebook were addressed. However, the seminar did not touch upon underlying national and historical dynamics in countries that may shape how their citizens, diplomats, and officials use or protest this platform. Additionally, the way in which governments interact with the social media and Internet policies and infrastructure of another country (through proxy wars for instance) was not considered in the seminar. Future discussions and seminars may wish to consider these topics to promote a deeper understanding of the geopolitical impact of social media sites and to anticipate changes they may bring to entrenched models of public diplomacy and communication.

References

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Taub, A. & Fisher, M. (2018, April 21). Where countries are tinderboxes and Facebook is a match. The New York Times.