Is Anything New in Canadian Digital Diplomacy?
By Julian Dierkes
It’s been some time that I’ve written here. That was largely due to a research leave spent away from UBC and Canada that had me focused on other topics.
But, it’s time to cast an eye on Canadian digital diplomacy again.
In November, students in my graduate course on “Communicating Policy” will be asked to collectively put together a snapshot of Global Affairs Canada activities on Facebook and Twitter. This follow on a similar census we did two years ago (summarized for OpenCanada.org).
The last time we conducted this survey, the Trudeau government had just taken office and had come in with a lot of seeming change in attitude, particularly when it comes to communication with the public and transparency. Diplomacy seemed to be a particular target for some changes as it was quickly announced that Canadian diplomats would be “unleashed” to do their job, including speaking to foreign and domestic audiences and stakeholders.
What we found in November 2015 was a Canadian digital diplomacy that was addressing a total of 2.5 million followers with a heavy concentration of followers in a few centrally-managed accounts. Among embassy accounts there were a number of stand-outs with particular strength in Asia, but we also identified some missed opportunities. These opportunities included the fact that communications traffic was almost entirely one-way, i.e. that diplomats did not actually seem to engage stakeholders via digital channels, and that much of this traffic was somewhat fluffy in nature, sometimes quite literally with posts of furry creatures, small and large.
Some Expectations:
Overall Volume Up
There is no doubt that the overall volume of communications from Global Affairs Canada is on the rise. In the 2017 survey I thus expect to see an increase in the number of accounts, in the overall number of communications, and in the communications/account/day or week. However, I also don’t have a sense that there has been a seachange over the past two years that would suggest that the situation now looks vastly different. So, I’m expecting an incremental increase in volume.
No Significant Increase in Two-Way Engagement
Unfortunately, apart from some specialized projects, I am not expecting to see a significant increase in the amount of two-way traffic, i.e. responses to tweets or comments, or solicitation of input on policy-planning. Overall, while there is more communication, my impression of digital diplomacy activities from Global Affairs Canada is that they are pretty firmly stuck in a broadcast mode, rather than building on audiences to solicit input in building a more robust and yes, more engaged, foreign policy.
Campaigns Dominating Communications
With a focus on the broadcast qualities of social media has come the development of “campaigns” that build much more on marketing experiences than on a vision of a more stakeholder-engaged foreign policy which has been the ultimate promise of re-imagining diplomacy as a digital and direct diplomacy. Such campaigns will be apparent in the preponderance of coordinated content across multiple accounts and multiple jurisdictions. Hashtags will be noticeable for being harbingers of policy focus areas and will signal such campaigns across different media.
In the last survey it was already difficult to capture the nature of content, however, so this will largely have to be impressionistic again, rather than relying on a formal data analysis.
Fewer Photo-Op Posts
Early on in the Trudeau government there was an explosion of photo op posts across all accounts. These were often of the kind, “Amb XYZ had a wonderful meeting with Representative MNO” with a photo showing a smiling Canadian official shaking the hand of some counterpart. These posts were especially common for minister but also trickled “down the ranks”. It seemed like many people, including officials themselves, grew tired of those posts quite quickly, in part because they became an obligation for all events, even ones that perhaps didn’t go so well, but also because they actually communicated very little of substance. While such posts still seem relatively common for political purposes, I expect to see much less of them across the board.
Also Hoping for Surprises
As always in the collection of empirical data, I am not looking to be proven right (i.e. for the expectations above to hold), but will be delighted by surprises that inspire further thinking and analysis. Let’s hope there are some such surprises.
Reactions to “Has Digital Diplomacy Been Trumped”
By Julian Dierkes
I recently mused about the impact of Donald Trump’s tweeting on digital diplomacy around the world, but especially in Canada for OpenCanada.
This follows on other posts on digital diplomacy that I had (co-)written for the site:
- (with Zameena Dadani, Emily Mann, Chad Rickaby and Brady Fox) “Digital Diplomacy: How is the Canadian Government Faring on Social Media” Feb 11 2016
- “Five Rules to Guide the Future of Canadian Digital Diplomacy” Dec 2 2015
- (with Grégoire Legault) “Time for a Blueprint for Canadian Digital Diplomacy” Apr 17 2014
I appreciate these opportunities to share thoughts with a wider audience across Canada, but also because postings to OpenCanada typically generate some significant responses.
Reactions and Comments
Because the OpenCanada site doesn’t include a comments section, and as I received numerous comments by tweets, emails or in conversations, here are some of the reactions that I’ve heard.
Digital Diplomacy in Canada
As I specifically highlighted implications of Trumpian foreign policy for Canada, a number of the reactions have focused on the state or, as it turns out, lack of a state of digital diplomacy in Canada.
For some, digital diplomacy is and should be largely subsumed under “public diplomacy”. That perspective is represented by the “Canadian Foreign Policy Review and Recommendations” shepherded by NPSIA’s David Carment.
About digital diplomacy specifically, Dr. Carment commented
@jdierkes in the communication plans as an output- it’s also an indicator that students don’t see it as all that vital – the libs prove that
— David Carment (@cdnfp) March 17, 2017
That’s a great example of how much information can go into 140 characters.
- Rather than seeing digital engagement of stakeholders as a way toward a fundamentally different and (ideally) more robust foreign policy, it is a different channel for “outputs”.
- The authors of the Review chose not to focus on digital diplomacy.
- The lack of attention to digital diplomacy extends to the Liberals.
The lack of attention to digital matters is echoed by colleagues as well as diplomats themselves.
Not much pick-up
“I don’t detect much pick up on DD in Ottawa” wrote one colleague.
A number of responses also focused on the lack of resources devoted to digital communications, both in Ottawa as well as in missions. This is often the first concern voiced by Canadian diplomats before a discussion about a more ambitious digital agenda can even occur. The tenor is that there are numerous diplomats who see the promise in a more comprehensive digital strategy (though others also point out that other diplomats are not instinctively inclined toward openness), but anything digital is always done on the side.
The only way to really develop an ambitious digital strategy would be to integrate it with all other activities so that it has foreign policy substance but also shows up in hiring/promotion criteria, etc. Anything else permanently side-lines digital activities, as they often are now.
Larger missions lead by digitally-inclined HoMs are able to devote some staffing to digital communication, but even there these diplomats struggle with populating social media channels with substance when colleagues think of this as a specialized job. At small missions, these kind of communications are almost by definition an additional activity, one that is not seen as central.
The Trump Factor
I’ve been surprised and a bit disappointed that I have not heard much reaction to my argument that Trump challenges the progress of digital diplomacy in a particular fashion. Perhaps it is still too early to see the implications of the erratic madness that has been Trumpian foreign policy in the first two months.
Blogs at the Core of Direct Diplomacy
By Julian Dierkes
I write this more as a social media practitioner than an academic or researcher. But I do believe that individual diplomats face similar challenges to academics in exploring and maximizing the possibilities of Digital Diplomacy/Scholarship. We are often not used to writing to general audiences whose attention span is limited – especially given the great variety of writing that is available to them – and whose focus may not be precision, but rather an opportunity to learn and understand.
For academics that means a different kind of language and the foregoing of some of the typical trappings of academic publishing like peer review, notions of cumulative knowledge, and citations. Instead, blogging focus on single or few empirical insights that are placed in a network of knowledge.
Likewise, diplomats might have to throw to the wind the tremendous care that they devote to specific phrases in negotiations, for example, and the convoluted rhetoric that is meant to sound like they speak for a unified and decisive government.
If we can overcome some of our inhibitions and embrace opportunities to develop our social media voices, I do think that academics as much as diplomats have an opportunity to maintain their relevance and to contribute to generalized well-being.
For these purposes, the blog strikes me as the optimal vehicle.
In short, a White Paper and other formal writing is too long and too academic, while a micro-blog is too short to even hint at nuance and allow for an extensive discussion. Thus the blog as the core tool of Canadian Digital Diplomacy!
What are some aspects of blog posts that would apply to Digital Diplomacy blogging?
- short (< 1,000 words, no more than two-scrolls even on laptops)
- to a single or only few points
- intelligible to an informed general audience
- open to comments
- part of larger conversation through hyperlinks
- chronologically displayed, but tagged and categorized to allow for thematic reading
- a distinct voice for the blog created by some kind of editorial oversight, but identified individual authors
- formatting to facilitate quick, but informed reading (subheadings, images where appropriate)
- possibility of embedding multimedia files
[Question to self: Does this post match these characteristics?]
Content
Elsewhere I have written about the strategic choices the Liberal government and Global Affairs might make. Over a year into the Trudeau government with its (initial) excitement about more openness, we still don’t see anything like a substantive engagement with stakeholders on line.
If a few or many themes were selected for Digital Diplomacy initiatives, than these would be interlinked across a Global Affairs blog site. For example, a blog focused on a reorientation of foreign policy around climate change might cross-post with another blog that examines Canada’s contributions to and participation in multi-lateral fora. Or a post that discussed implications of TPP ratification for trade with SE Asia could be cross-posted to a blog focused on CETA, and on ASEAN. Such interlinking could foster collaboration across departmental silos within Global Affairs if blog authors were explicitly encouraged to seek such connections.
Process
Once a theme had been selected as an initiative, a team would be built around this theme. I would imagine it to be a larger team than would be the case without a Digital Diplomacy plan, but it would be staffed in a similar way, i.e. with FSOs who would be assigned to this team for a regular 3-year rotation. They might be supported by some social media specialists, but this support would be on-demand, technical in nature, rather than strategic.
As the team works its way into the thematic priority, they would begin writing notes for themselves as blog posts on an internal-readers-only blog. Such an internal-only blog could be useful as “practice” but also to generate organizational schemes using typical blog tools such as tagging and categorizing, but also to build up a back library and experience with the labour required per post, the regulatory of posting, etc.
Existing Blogs
There are actually a good number of MFA blogs once searched, but many of them look like they were started at some point, but then petered out, or they are primarily yet another broadcast channel, i.e. like most of Twiplomacy, stuck on notions of making diplomacy more approachable and interesting, but not on engagement of stokeholds, yet.
Official Blogs
I’ve ordered these alphabetically by country’s English name. I’ve based this on a quick search using typical search tools, but will continue to see if I can find more blogs like this to perhaps start a catalogue of sorts, especially if this seems useful to reader. Let me know!
Minister of Foreign Affairs Blog on Human Rights (Canada) [2016, likely defunct]
Carnet Diplomatiques (France) [Jan 2014 – current]
MFA Blog (Egypt) [Aug 2015 – current]
MFA Ethiopia [Apr 2016 – current]
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia [2008, seems defunct]
Minister’s Blog (Kazakhstan) [April – Oct 2014, seems defunct]
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Somaliland [Aug 2016 – current]
Ambassador’s Blog (Sweden) [Aug 2011 – current]
Foreign Affairs Blog (Tanzania) [Feb 2017 – current]
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine [Sept 2015 – current]
Digital Diplomacy (UK) [Aug 2011 – current]
Other Blogs
The American Foreign Service Association maintains a listing of U.S. foreign policy blogs of various kinds, but official US State Department blogs are absent (except for DipNote, more of a broadcast effort, and the diplomatic family-oriented Foggy Bottom Rambles).
Perceptions of Canada in CETA Discussion
I am currently based in Germany on a research leave. The newspapers were dominated by CETA until the U.S. election came along. Recently, I wrote about lessons one might draw from the CETA failure (however it turns out in the end) for Canadian foreign and trade policy.
However, all the attention to CETA has brought a bit of attention to Canada in German media and discussions.
It is surprising how much of this discussion seems to be cliché-driven and more of a trope than a meaningful discussion.
Canada, the Social-Democratic Middle Power
Of course, the European cliché is in part an image that the Trudeau government would like to project as the multilaterally-inclined, peacekeeping-focused middle power that is close to the U.S., but also makes up its own mind has been a mainstay of Liberal foreign policy for decades.
Well, this projection is clearly working. It is interesting to speculate to what extent these tags would have featured in European discussions with a Conservative government in power that was putting narrowly defined Canadian interests first and was intuitively skeptical about multilateralism, but at the same time eager to cement the Canadian economy’s focus on trade. Would the phrase still have been “If the EU can’t conclude a trade agreement even with Canada…” This phrase is almost always intended to show the weakness of the EU, its constitutional arrangements, and its current not-only-Brexit-induced crisis. But is also says something about Canada.
The cliché of “not even with Canada” does not imply Canadian weakness. It is not that Canada is seen as a push-over in trade negotiations. Instead, Canada is perceived to be so much like the EU that an agreement should have been easily reached, when you are negotiating with a partner who is very similar in inclinations, agreement should come easily.
Similar Inclanations in International Policy-Making
What are these perceived similarities? In part, it is not being the U.S. This used to mean a kinder, gentler market economy, a la conceptualizations of varieties of capitalism that grouped Canada with the UK and the U.S., but somehow saw it as a more social-democratic variant and thus closer to continental European inclinations. After all, Canada has public health insurance!
Similarities are also to be found in staunch internationalism, multilateralism and activisim at the UN. Never mind that this perception ignores 10 years of Conservative governments.
Widespread support for recognition of the impact of climate change and a concert effort at mitigation of the effects is also seen as a commonality with Canada, especially since these positions seem to enjoy widespread popular support.
Middle Power
Over ten years ago, a UBC colleague, Yves Tiberghien, and I were having discussions precisely about the similarities in Canada’s inclinations in foreign policy with Japan and the U.S. (and, at the time, against the GW Bush U.S.). Those discussions turned into workshop and conferences and ultimately a book that Tiberghien edited, “Minerva’s Rule: Leadership in Global Institution Building” (Palgrave, 2013). It seems like the European public and media see Canada today very much in the same way that we discussed over a decade ago.
Perceptions of Canada and Digital, Direct Diplomacy
In the discussion above, I have focused on broad perceptions of Canada that have come to light in CETA coverage. That focus suggests that I am primarily talking about a reflection of nation-branding in diplomacy. To the extent that the Liberals want to be seen in the ways I have described above, this may be a successful exercise in nation-branding and soft power projection then.
I have suggested that future trade agreements for Canada will likely depend more on engaging stakeholders directly to consider the scope of such agreements.
If the election of Donald Trump signals the end of TPP, what comes next in Liberal trade diplomacy and how can the interaction of global perceptions of (Liberal) Canada interact with digital diplomacy to promote Canadian interests.
What rule can perceptions of Canada play in such direct engagement?
Take the Canada-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement as an example. If TPP actually falls apart, this might be the FTA that would be closest to completion. It is neither as comprehensive as CETA nor likely to attract much potential (negative) attention in Canada or Japan. Perhaps that makes it a good opportunity to develop digital diplomacy activities to engage the (interested) population in either country.
Any overtures to engage stakeholders (in Canada and abroad) would clearly benefit from the kind of nation brand building I have described above, at least as long as the clichés associated with Canada are positive in the context of a specific topic of engagement.
But when it comes to further attempts at enshrining less well-understood measures like the controversial investor-state dispute settlement, or when it comes to negotiations trading partners where the public may be more inclined to cast a critical eye on negations, like a trade agreement with China, it is not clear that the nation brand will have much of an impact. And, in any case, engaging domestic stakeholders will not be impacted significantly by international perceptions of Canada, presumably.
CETA – A Failure of Direct Diplomacy?
By Julian Dierkes
CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the EU, is lurching from one near-death experience to the next. In mid-September, more than a quarter million people demonstrated against CETA in Germany. Last Sunday, Francophone Belgians voted against the agreement. That may have been a lethal blow.
But since the agreement had been hailed as a “new generation” trade agreement by the Liberals, it is noticeable that the discussion in Canada has been very muted. That is a risk to future decisions on trade. It is easy to sneer at the EU as a supranational body in shambles, but its failure may have come in a lack of engagement of stakeholders. The same lack could be observed in Canada, but the stakeholders did not revolt to the same extent.
The Canadian government will need to embrace tools to engage stakeholders and Canadians in a discussion and decision about the merits of such free trade agreements if potential failures such as CETA ratification are to be avoided here.
European Criticisms of CETA
Some of the criticisms of free trade in Europe are somewhat simplistic, knee-jerk reactions, even more so as CETA is portrayed as a stepping-stone toward the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a similar agreement with the U.S.
But some of the criticisms should be taken more seriously, as they address precisely the “next-generation” aspects of CETA that the Liberal government seems to be pursuing following the Conservative lead.
What makes this a different free trade agreement is that it goes beyond tariffs by addressing non-tariff hurdles and challenges to access. That is public procurement on the one hand, but, perhaps most controversially, protection for foreign investors, the infamous-in-Europe “investor state dispute settlement”. The Liberal government has made very little effort to explain to Canadians why these are desirable elements, a task that European governments have also failed at, apparently.
Most of the responses to criticisms of dispute settlement have been technical in nature. From the original provisions of ad hoc private arbitration boards, CETA in the end envisioned permanent arbitration courts. But European critics ask two more basic questions:
- both, Canada and the EU, have well-institutionalized predictable legal systems, why do foreign investors need to be “protected” by a different mechanism?
- if foreign investors are able to “protect” their investment by suing host governments following (democratically legitimated) regulatory decisions, to what extent does that hamper future regulation?
Lessons for Canada
Again, these criticisms have been muted in Canada, but they probably do resonate and might become more of an issue in other contexts like the Transpacific Partnership (TPP, likely doomed by the U.S. electoral circus), but even more so in considering a free trade agreement with China, for example. They are much less of a challenge in bilateral deals like the pending agreement with Japan that is less comprehensive, perhaps.
So, while CETA died in Europe, future Canadian efforts might include a focus on active involvement of stakeholders in deliberations prior to trade negotiations and to more engagement during and after negotiations. That is not to say that trade agreements should be put to an online vote at all. Nor that elements of negotiations should be disclosed. But instead, direct and digital diplomacy tools should be mobilized to explain the benefits and all elements in trade agreements to Canadians. This is where a digital diplomacy might focus on domestic stakeholders as much as on negotiation partners abroad.
Currently, free trade agreements are largely concluded on behalf of business interests in Canada, under the assumption that they will benefit Canadian consumers and employees. That assumption is being questioned by European critics. If the Liberals are certain that these kind of agreements will bring benefit to individuals Canadians, as many experts also agree, they should involve the interested public more directly in their deliberations. Trade negotiations are at the core of diplomacy, and diplomacy in this day and age should be direct and digital. Yet, CETA deliberations were primarily limited to consultations that the seemingly inexhaustible Minister of International Trade, Chrystia Freeland, has been conducting around the country.
After having started their tenure under the theme of transparency and openness, the Liberals should seek more ways to engage Canadians directly on free trade. This can be done through social media platforms, for example, by going beyond the endless tweeting of photos of Minister Freeland meeting with colleagues around the world. Instead, technologically enabled direct and digital diplomacy should build platforms that allow Canadians (expert or “merely” interested) to contribute to deliberations about policy, rather than comment on decisions that have been taken.
Such platforms do not really exist yet, but the importance of stakeholder engagement in consideration of free trade agreements makes a strong case to use this engagement as an impetus for the development of channels to involve Canadians directly in deliberations.
Tech Wishlist for Digital Diplomats
By Julian Dierkes
Since Santa lives in Canada, why not a wishlist for Canadian Digital Diplomats? Until the Liberals have a chance to actually get around to developing some longer-term strategic priorities and tell us about them, I certainly feel at liberty to present wishlists as if they are a real possibility.
In this case, this is a Digital Diplomacy wishlist that presupposes that the Liberals see the light and agree with my argument for an embrace of Twiplomacy. If that commitment were to come, here I’m imagining what sort of social media platform, tools and software would aid diplomats in embracing their inner online communicator.
First, remember that my wishlist here does not aim at Public Relations and the somewhat crude cultural diplomacy of leveraging the popularity of Drake and polar bears for some kind of halo-effect on Canadian diplomatic activities. That kind of soft power exertion is focused on eyeballs and lots of them. My kind of direct digital diplomacy abandons the notion of foreign policy-making as an activity that government engages in in private/secret and then announces its decision to an appreciative public. Instead, foreign policy is crowd-sourced through interactions with stakeholders.
Secondly, I remain platform agnostic. Different genres, from microblogs, through social network posts, to blog posts, and fully developed policy papers, offer different opportunities for engagement. Tech that supports digital diplomats should also offer cross-platform application.
Now…
Hardware
Smartphones
If only we could rescue Blackberry by having Canadian diplomats carry around devices that are the envy of the world… Sadly, Canadian diplomats are carrying devices that are making it very difficult for them to be digitally engaged. This is doubly harmful because many diplomats are currently squeezing their digital engagement into the cracks of daily professional activities, waiting for meeting to start, riding taxis, meal times. That is something that should also change, but that’s another topic…
Unless someone really wants to dedicate themselves to giving Blackberry a platform to rescue itself (complete with many of the features below), it will have to be some other hardware. For the perpetually security conscious, a container full of Blackphones? Now that would strike me as some serious hipster leapfrogging, so yes!
For this academic focused on Canada-Mongolia relations, the only other alternative is the XPhone, a Mongolia-designed, Chinese-manufactured Android phone.
√ Blackphone
√ XPhone
Desktops
Canadian diplomats often complain about outdate desktops and software and the cumbersome nature of procurement as well as a lack of ability to customize. I suspect that these complaints would be echoed by employees in almost all large bureaucracies, esp. in the not-for-profit sector.
Features?
Obviously all the elements of a connected smartphone, camera, fast network, camera, etc.
What are other possible hardware features of particular use to diplomats? Nominations? Any clever way of temporarily disabling notifications, rings, etc.
Software
I currently rely on a mix of WordPress, Twitter (app and website), Facebook (app and website) and Hootsuite for my digital activities. That’s fine, i.e. I don’t need those apps unified in some way. But here are some features that are essential.
Scheduling
This is currently the main reason for me to use Hootsuite along with the ability to run multiple accounts. For my tweets @jdierkes, most of my audience resides in Mongolia. As I know from various analytics tools, my followers are most active in the early morning and late afternoon (Vancouver time, making this the late night and morning in Mongolia). In order for my tweets to be heard and have an impact, those are the preferred times to tweet, so scheduling becomes essential, because sometimes I think of something to tweet outside of those times. I find blogging to be less time-sensitive as many readers arrive on their own schedule through searches, and others are lured in by tweets which I schedule. By definition and almost inevitably, diplomats deal in time zones, so scheduling is necessary.
Measuring Engagement
If only we could measure the impact of tweets and other digital communications in a more straightforward fashion…
Here’s my idea for an extension to something like Hootsuite, some kind of annotation for posting, and for interactions with an audience.
The audience for DirectDiplo blog posts and tweets is numerically still relatively small (but you’re just the right people to be reading this!), so most of the engagement I would like to measure is going to be of a qualitative rather than quantitative nature, I would guess. With a larger following (maybe next month?), it would be nice to be able to attach targets of reach and engagement to a tweet. So, for example, for an account with 10,000 followers, you could prepare a post for a particular time of day and targeting some segmented audience. Then formulate a goal, i.e. 1,000 impressions for the Tweet, or 25 likes for the FB post, or something like that. Formulating such goals would allow the manager of the account to be strategic about posts to maximize certain outcomes.
What about more qualitative information then? This is where a closer look at engagement could be useful. Let’s say I tweet about this post and Stéphane Dion re-tweets. That would be pretty meaningful as a measure of impact of a tweet (Please, (Foreign) Minister, RT!) and it is something I would highlight in reporting on impact.
Currently, my option is to record events like that in some kind of narrative for my academic annual report. But, what if I could mark that RT using some kind of extension, connect the RTer (in this case Min. Dion) to an address book and annotate that entry with some kind of characteristic like “high-value Twitter communicator”). Now think of the knowledge-management and big data potential resulting from something like that in an organization like UBC (in my case) or Global Affairs Canada.
Imagine there was a shared address book/contact management across Global Affairs (I find it somewhat shocking that that doesn’t exist). If DigiDipl A tagged a contact as “high-value Twitter communicator”, and this contact then liked a post by DigiDipl B, that tag could be incorporated into reporting in a much more meaningful way then a mere number, even though DigiDipl B might not have recognized the name/handle for this high-value communicator. Obviously, this is what various apps and platforms do with preferences, but it could be a great addition to measuring and – more importantly achieving – engagement goals. Rely on your colleagues to crowdsource more meaningful engagements and gain a knowledge management system in the process? Sounds like a winner, doesn’t it?
If DigiDipl C is assigned the accounts on a mission that has been relatively inactive, she might set a goal of 2 engagements with meaningful contacts for a month. Or DigiDipl D who is managing accounts for a mission in a country with very social media active NGOs, he might aim for 20 such engagements in a month.
A link to an online engagement that leads to an in-person conversation? Terrific, that’s easily accommodated both by an enterprise-level contact management, as well as by the tagging of communications that would be integrated with this.
You could go on spinning this imaginary engagement measurement, social media communications, address book software tale. Clearly, a huge project, but what about a limited implementation focused on some region to begin with?
Engagement Platform
Another area of innovation where a client like Global Affairs might be an attractive partner to private-sector firms is in the construction of an online platform for meaningful engagement about policy.
Such a platform would have to have capabilities to post, moderate, poll, feed into social media, etc. Ideas for such a platform probably also deserve their own post, so I’ll save those for another time.
Tech Tools Mentioned at #Diplometrics
By Julian Dierkes
One of the wonderful aspects of a conference like the #Diplometrics event in Ottawa in April is that many of the participants spend a lot of their own professional time scanning the internet for new tools, platforms and innovations.
SnapChat
I was struck that the social media platform that was mentioned most frequently as a potential new tool in digital diplomacy was SnapChat. Clearly, the ephemeral videos created on SnapChat have digidipls’ attention in terms of keeping an eye on opportunities for the use of the platform. Yet, the overwhelming evaluation is that SnapChat is not (yet) a tool for digital diplomacy, in large part because it remains primarily a narrow-cast rather than broadcast platform, where messages are delivered to a self-selected group of friends/followers, but don’t reach broader audiences though sharing etc., i.e. it is a narrowcast medium. Something that I will have to learn more about from my kids who seem to have turned into avid SnapChat users largely on the strength of the platform’s brilliant face-distortion filters. Summer 2016 changes that make SnapChat creations more enduring may be the first sign of the platform evolving in a direction that it might become more interesting, but that points is not reached yet, it seems.
Some diplomacy snapchat accounts:
Thunderclap
I had not previously heard of Thunderclap but as far as I can tell this is primarily a tool for coordinated advocacy. It came up in discussions because there was a lot of interest among the participating digidipls to combine communications with a “call to action”. While many of the other discussions seemed to take most cues for online activities from the corporate world, the notion of a call to action primarily seems to have come from NGOs and political campaigns. The aim here is to move from a re-tweet, or like of a post, for example, to an actual action. Often that might simply be a forwarding of a message to a particular addressee (just like more old-fashioned calls to “write your MP”), but it is intended to amplify a particular action by being repeated. Obviously, electronic means make such amplification easy and convenient.
Easy and convenient to the extent of prompting criticism of such “clicktivism” as lazy and ineffective.
Yet, for digidipls the use of a call to action represents an opportunity to measure impact that would seem to go beyond the typical metrics offered by social media networks.
To the extent that a number of #Diplometrics participants were interested in the notion of a call to action in digital diplomacy, Thunderclap may well emerge as a tool that is employed for advocacy campaigns as it offers opportunities to coordinate such a campaign, and to record and understand the paths that calls to action have travelled.
Direct Diplomacy in Development Assistance
Global Affairs Canada has called for input on a review of development assistance.
Given this blog’s focus on direct diplomacy, it is more than appropriate to consider the potential contributions that direct diplomacy and the utilization of social media and information technology more broadly could make on Canada’s international development assistance.
Thinking Out Loud in Policy-Making
I’m hoping to make a case for more transparent processes in policy development across foreign policy elsewhere. I strongly believe that more open processes of decision-making should include more public deliberations about policy options where these are appropriate. This seems to me to be very much the case with development policy. For example, if the current international development assistance review results in a decision to maintain some list of countries-of-focus, should the composition of that list not be open to discussion? If some platform can be found for thinking out loud that gives access to different voices, but possibly also moderates contributions to prevent the kind of trolling that makes many online discussions less-than-productive, both, the criteria for a list of countries of focus as well as the actual countries could be discussed more transparently. Surely, many of these criteria (particularly urgent needs or destitute populations, in line with the focus on poverty alleviation for development assistance, but perhaps also some larger foreign policy goals that could determine inclusion such as building on strengths in broader relations, support for democracy, or a regional balance) could be open to a reasonable public discussion.
How Beneficiary Needs Are Assessed Now
Development assistance has been battling a perception that it is partly a neo-colonial exercise in making developing countries aid-dependent, forcing them to adopt socio-political principles that they would not adopt on their own, or serving the commercial interests of OECD producers and exporters. One of the counter-measures to this perception is that Canadian aid is meant to be targeting areas of need that have been identified by developing country governments.
Apart from bigger questions surrounding the independence of that decision of targeting specific areas, and of aid dependency, etc. how is this identification by beneficiary governments documented? Typically, by letters from this beneficiary government that confirm that, yes, indeed, a project on sector X in our country Y will be very welcome.
The limitations to this approach should be obvious:
- It presupposes democratic governance that allows the people a voice in the determination and expression of their needs.
- The production of these letters can devolve into a negotiation with beneficiary governments giving rise to corruption and nepotism in the implementation of projects.
- Did the beneficiary government have an alternative? I.e. if the Canadian government announces a further strengthening of its focus on maternal health, but a beneficiary government actually thinks that health care for the elderly is a more pressing problem, will it turn down a project on maternal health with the funding, job opportunities, and attention attached to that? So how genuine is this confirmation of a need?
- Finally, the supply of ministerial letters is an area where development professionals acquire specialized skills and a Rolodex of contacts that allows them to produce such letters, whether they demonstrate a meaningful engagement with the initiative at hand, or not.
What’s the Alternative?
Even if ministerial letters as demonstration of beneficiary demands for a specific project have some clear limitations, the demonstration of such demands cannot be abandoned unless development assistance would consider some kind of parallel structure to the individual guaranteed minimum income.
It seems to me that the amalgamation of CIDA into DFATD offers opportunities to leverage the overall larger structure to solicit input from targeted populations directly, relying on social media and other information technology. Such direct engagement of beneficiary populations should be integrated into decision-making on international development assistance.
Some Prerequisites for Direct Engagement
I don’t think that even a wholesale embrace of direct engagement as a complement to governmental expressions of need could be implemented overnight, obviously, or even over the short term. Some of the pieces that would be required for this are missing and can not be created very quickly. But, that does not mean that this is not a direction that the government of Canada should embrace and aim for in changing its procedures over the next, say, five years.
We currently don’t yet have platforms that would allow beneficiary populations to express their views on the urgency of specific needs to be addressed by development assistance. But, a) we assume that beneficiary populations would have views on specific needs, and b) the technological infrastructure required to allow for such expressions is being built in the form of the spread of smartphones, for example.
At the same time, the increasing presence of Global Affairs in social media is building the basis/channels for the utilization of platforms for direct engagement once such platforms are developed.
If Global Affairs continue to push toward a more substantive engagement with stakeholders through social media across diplomacy, trade promotion AND development assistance, direct engagement with targeted populations will be possible in the future.
What Might Direct Engagement Look Like
Imagine a Global Affairs mission in a country that has been identified as a target for development assistance. Or, imagine a sector or topic that has been identified as a focus for activities.
Then imagine a platform that allows for the sharing of some initial thoughts about new projects, hosted either by that mission or by Global Affairs in Ottawa, but with strong local mission involvement. Specify potential budget envelopes, give examples of previous projects in this country or in this sector, ideally some thought pieces by experts (local and international) assessing areas of need, some links to currently active development assistance projects implemented with funding from other donors (hopefully available via the Intl Aid Transparency Initiative). Obviously, all these materials would have to be available in local language(s).
With such information in place, all kinds of interactions, in-person, on social media, could be possible. They could involve various voting schemes, comments, discussions, etc. There could be public workshops that would collaborate to build an overall logic model (or, ideally some version thereof that doesn’t require a PhD in Development Studies). Public events could be planned and organized to engage specific communities directly.
Such engagement would potentially produce an overwhelming amount of responses, so that the processing and digesting of these responses could be laborious. But if the amount of responses is great, that would also suggest that conclusions from this process could be quite robust. Also, organizations who involve themselves in the process would be potential collaborators, people who get involved could also be involved in implementation… Yes, ambitious, but even a trial implementation in a specific country or region could yield a lot of information about potential projects and make such projects more specific to populations’ needs.
Recommendation
In the long term, Canadian international assistance should seek to develop new ways to integrate beneficiary populations’ views on their needs into policy-making. Social media platforms would have to be developed to make best use of the potential for communication technologies to enable this engagement.
Time Zones and the Direct Diplomat
For avid tweeters (yes, guilty), one of the startling aspects of travel across time zones is that our feed looks entirely different. Perhaps like most people, I get used to seeing certain people I follow and certain types of content at particular times of the day. When I travelled to Germany (9 hrs ahead of Vancouver time) in April, I was excited to see that very different people and types of tweets were populating my timeline.
Thinking about my own tweeting/reading of tweets leads me to consider how time zones matter for Twiplomacy, at least until Twitter makes good on their threat to switch to some kind of algorithmic timeline rather than strict chronology.
Parsing Audiences by Time Zones
In my case, for my personal professional account, the majority of my followers happens to reside in Mongolia, 16hrs ahead of me in Vancouver. That has meant that some attention to Twitter analytics has pushed me to schedule my Mongolia-related tweets to late in the afternoon/early in the evening Vancouver time to catch Mongolian followers in the morning. Of course, that also means that I am late in reacting to responses to any of those tweets as I’m less likely to catch them in the evening.
As I have built up my interest in digital diplomacy topics, my tweets and posts on that topic are aimed much more at an (Eastern) Canadian audience so that the morning Vancouver time is the right time to reach those followers. That is also true of the @DirectDiplo account, although the blog seems to get the most readers in the Vancouver afternoon.
Thus my day has become divided along the lines of my Twitter audiences (at least on days that I am free enough from teaching/meetings/events that I can target activities, or otherwise schedule tweets via Hootsuite). With different interests occupying my thoughts and writing time, Twitter and Twitter audiences are organizing my day around these interests by the time zone location of my interest.
Time Zones for Digital Diplomats: Example Tokyo
For (digital) diplomats posted in missions that are at some significant time-zone difference from Canada, I can only imagine that their workday has always been organized similarly, whether that was to time phone calls/fax exchanges, or now emails.
But as social media strategists and diplomats consider the segmentation of audiences (something that various Twitter analytics actually provide very good information on, i.e. impressions by time of day, or geographic locations of followers), the distribution of followers across time zones actually seems to offer significant opportunities.
Let’s take a Tokyo-based account like @CanEmbJapan as an example. Twitter traffic on this account is fairly typical of a large mission, I would say, with a share of RTs of other Government of Canada tweets as well as tweets that are generated at the Embassy and specific to the Canada-Japan relationship.
Tokyo is 13 hrs ahead of Ottawa, 16hrs ahead of Vancouver. To the extent that communications through this account are targeting audiences in Canada (public interest in the Canada-Japan bilateral, Japan curiosity, foreign policy interest), posting these between noon and 16h in Ottawa (working hours that overlap with working hours across the country) means that they are unlikely to be seen by audiences in Japan (where this would be the middle of the night and into the morning.
Posts during Japanese working hours will most likely not be seen by many followers in Canada (where this would be from the late evening into the morning).
Implications of Segmenting Audiences by Time Zones
In a survey of Global Affairs social media accounts, students in my “Communicating Policy” course (part of UBC’s Master of Public Policy and Global Affairs) noticed that most Canadian account don’t address domestic audiences. That may be because missions primarily have their in-country audiences in mind, but time zone segmentation could suggest that the same account might be addressing very different audiences at different times of the day. There are many different options to schedule tweets that could take this into account. Once managers of Global Affairs accounts embrace comments and responses to communications more, the task to respond could be shared between the mission and Ottawa-based desk officers to allow for a timely response.
By addressing two very different audiences with the same account, follower numbers would not be subdivided through this segmentation and more flexibility in terms of language, etc. could be introduced. While some managers might hesitate to post in Japanese to CanEmbJapan for fear of alienating domestic audiences, posting in Japanese at times of day when followers in Canada are unlikely to see the posts offers the distinct possibility to appeal to audiences in Japan!
Canadian Diaspora Diplomacy
By Julian Dierkes
In May, Corneliu Bjola with his graduate students Ilan Manor & Jennifer Cassidy organized a one-day workshop on Diaspora Diplomacy as part of the Oxford Digital Diplomacy Research Group’s series. They report on some of the policy recommendations derived from these discussions in a blog post for USC’s Center for Public Diplomacy.
When I started to read the post, I was immediately reminded of a project that was conducted at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada some years ago that tried to map Canadian diasporas around the world. While the numbers are out of date (2006 census), the rough proportions probably still hold today with the greatest number of Canadians in the US, followed by Hong Kong, the UK, and Australia. If I had to guess, I would venture that the numbers are probably roughly steady in the US, the UK, and Australia, but might be increasing in mainland China in particular.
The APFC report highlighted that the Canadian diaspora in Hong Kong in particular was of a special nature in that the majority of these Canadians have been born in Hong Kong.
Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada
Diaspora Diplomacy Recommendations
The London workshop included two specific foci on “crisis” and “online backlash” that are interesting to read about, but I am thinking more about the general topic of diaspora diplomacy from a Canadian perspective.
Some of the recommendations seem to be rooted in the notion that embassies are competing to some extent with new, online fora for diasporas to organize. If Canadians in London can come together in a Facebook group, why bother with the High Commission? But what is the High Commission and Global Affairs more generally competing for among the Canadian diaspora? Loyalty? Influence? Lobbying power vis-a-vis foreign governments?
Shifting Power
Bjola et al. offer four recommendations. The first three are relatively straight-forward and could be summarized as “missions, be more digital!”. But the fourth is a bit more challenging to understand and suggests wider implications:
MFAs need to realize that the growth in Diasporas will accelerate the migration of power from the ministry to the embassy. As Diasporic communities grow, so does their potential impact on their host countries and the strain on embassies who service them. Utilizing Diasporic communities to achieve diplomatic goals therefore requires an investment in an embassy’s digital skills and the digitalization of embassy services.
Over the past several years, it’s difficult to identify any signs that power was shifting away from the MFA to missions for Canada. If anything, the Conservative government under Stephen Harper never seemed to be entirely convinced that there was much of a point to maintaining missions. One place where this was painfully obvious was when the Osaka consulate was closed. So, for the Canadian context until late last year, there was no migration of power from Ottawa to the missions. It’s still unclear what this will look like under Justin Trudeau and FM Stephane Dion. Symbolically, they have certainly endorsed the practice of diplomacy by Canadian FSOs and at the missions, but no obvious shift of resources has taken place that would suggest that any power is shifting from Ottawa to the missions.
But never mind this shift in power, what about the notion of “impact on host countries” and “strain on embassies”?
The Canadian Diaspora in Hong Kong
Among the Canadian diasporas, Canadians in Hong Kong represent perhaps the most interesting groups in this regard. A fairly significant proportion of these Canadians became Canadian at the time of the handover of Hong Kong to China. Their diverse views were reflected in that 2011 APFC report. For example, of Canadians in Hong Kong 70% reported extended family residing/studying in Canada, but only 29% reported sending kids to school in Canada (p. 5/p. 20) and less than half of this population considers Canada home (p. 24).
Given the nature of this population, what should diaspora diplomacy look like? Should missions in the PRC explicitly cultivate resident Canadians as potential influencers? Should they primarily prepare for crises or moments when a large number of these Canadians would want to (re)turn to Canada? It would seem that those are very different purposes to pursue and would require very different approaches, though they may all be digital approaches.
directdiplomacy.wordpress.com 
Recent Comments