Digital Diplomacy in Everyday Life.

Abstract

The motivation for this thesis´ research questions is that a lot of the current literature has identified digital diplomacy is existing, but has not managed to identify one coherent definition for digital diplomacy and how it is practiced on a daily basis. This can cause many reason but one of them one reason could be the lack of proven and documented digital diplomacy. This study document and identify the German embassy in Denmark activities on Facebook. I observed two periods on Facebook, to show the characteristic of the embassies communication. To broaden the topic up, Lasse Peter Rodewald from the German embassy in Copenhagen has been interviewed to understand and narrow the focus of this thesis. Rodewald also give an insight in the daily praxis of the embassies strategic communication, and as well talks about the guidelines given from the Foreign Ministry to practice digital diplomacy. To tighten the observed data with the interview with Rodewald an Discourse analysis is into play, to highlight how digital diplomacy is practiced in the daily life given from the Foreign Ministry in Germany. The thesis show how the discourse cooperate with the digital content on the German embassy in Copenhagen’s Facebook profile and its pitfalls. The content of the discourse analysis is external material from the German Foreign Ministry about good online behavior. The analysis also investigate the former German ambassador in Pakistan Martin Kobler. The empirical research for Koblers content, consists of Tweets. Kobler serve as an example for personal diplomacy whereas the above Facebook page is an organizational profile. The thesis has an transdisciplinary approach. It elaborates on the current research literature but also add a new linguistic approach in the analysis. The analysis consists also a linguistic pragmatic approach which take the linguistics actions into account. This is a new take in order to try to highlight not only the diplomatic topics but also to identify if the social media content is encoring any actions from the followers. The thesis is not here to judge whether the embassy is doing digital diplomacy good or bad. But is to document the daily practice.