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.
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).
Combatting Algorithmic Bubbles
By Julian Dierkes
The bubbles created by Facebook’s timeline algorithms have become a hot topic for conversations about social networks with the U.S. election and its conflicted aftermath.
Ilan Manor has been writing about bubbles and echo chambers in digital diplomacy for some time, see e.g. “Digital Diplomacy in the Age of Political Extremity“. He concluded,
The first is that MFAs must realize the dangers political extremity poses to the conduct of diplomacy. The second is that MFAs and diplomats must commit resources towards educational programs that re-invigorate and re-democratize the digital public sphere. Third, MFAs need to employ new communication techniques that integrate facts and figures into narratives that are tailored to the history, values and beliefs of foreign populations. Finally, MFAs will need to train their diplomats in engaging with hostile online publics.
In a recent post for the Diplo Foundation Barbara Rosen Jacobson wrote about “Conducting Public Diplomacy in Filter Bubbles“. She points out the risks that filter bubbles pose to direct diplomacy, but she does not offer much of a way to mitigate against those risks.
There are various ways to mitigate this challenge, although none are easy. For example, a smart use of hashtags on Twitter might disseminate a message to a larger audience. Collaborating with important ‘nodes’ in the network, such as massively followed, non-political individuals, might let you enter communities that were previously out of reach.
On a more technical level, diplomatic institutions might benefit from knowledge of the algorithms and codes that are behind the construction of the bubbles. This not only helps diplomats to understand the forces that construct the bubble, but it might make them also more apt to engage in public debate on the utility and challenges of such algorithms, and to demand for increased transparency about them.
Let me thinking about these “various ways to mitigate this challenge”.
Bursting Bubbles
Substance is King
Fundamentally, I would argue that substance is king. Even when fake news is being spread, providing substantive information and analysis has to be the most effective way to combat extremism, but also to reach beyond communities of acolytes or coalitions of the like-minded.
Diplomacy – like politics – is an art of compromises, even if some of the leadership may not recognize that and opt to equate polarization with leadership.
Unless diplomacy provides reasons for actions taken, it is only a power exercise. Of course, the reasonable and transparent offer of reasons for action taken seems to provoke trolls to try to turn an exchange into a yelling match instead. Yet whatever technical or social fixes may emerge for that tendency, content and substance has to remain at the core of direct diplomacy to counter extremism, but also to have a chance at bursting bubbles.
Consciously Building Bridges
With personal accounts, we’re probably well-advised to be aware of bubbles that are forming and to then adopt some strategies to build bridges to other bubbles or to burst bubbles entirely. The obvious way to do this is to actively seek out content, rather than let the algorithms do all the work. We might also privilege platforms where we have greater control over our feed than others. Does anyone understand the Facebook algorithm, for example? At least with search engines, the historical layering of different search techniques allows us some guesses at how these algorithms are operating, but why does Aunt Frida show up on my feed all the time, while cousin Joe never does? Who knows. As long as other sites like Twitter remain time-stamp driven, they algorithm-recommendations (“Who to follow”, “What’s trending”) are much easier to ignore.
Institutional accounts obviously offer a different challenge. Ultimately, I continue to believe and argue that the online presence of MFAs, missions, etc. should aim at engagement. That requires some listening as well as talking, and listening presupposes “following” as a principle in social networks. While institutional accounts should thus cast their net very widely in whom they are following, especially because a wide net will yield better information, doesn’t following also constitute some kind of implicit endorsement? If you’re following a self-avowed human rights violator, are you endorsing those violations?
Does Geography Bridge Divides?
Unlike other political and policy communication, digital diplomacy probably has the advantage that it has one underlying structure that is largely non-political, i.e. geography. Yes, of course, borders, boundaries and regions are contested and do shift, but they are reified by the UN and other conventions, so that there is some stability to them. Except for many cases where the geography itself is the source of political divides, centring communications around a particular place probably does not lead to the same kind of bubbles of political epistemology as focusing on specific policies. If you’re interested in the Canada-Japan relationship, you’re probably following the Canadian embassy in Tokyo or the Japanese embassy in Ottawa, irrespective of your political opinions about the Trudeau or Abe governments.
Since geography may thus bring some discussions together that would otherwise separate into different bubbles, it is fortunate that most digital communications from MFAs are organized around geography. While I sometimes lament the fact that there are too few attempts to engage stakeholders thematically (say, blogs built around identified foreign policy priorities, or the hosting of international summits, etc.), geography does perhaps provide an important antidote to bubbling.
Reducing Slogans
For some, especially those coming out of a nation-branding direction to direct diplomacy, there are aspects to digital diplomacy that are akin to advertising and a competitive activity. To them, brands may revolve around certain slogans or themes that countries should “own”, whether that is in development assistance, trade or political diplomacy. But such ownership and thinking about slogans, or hashtags, as a brand, does build on a notion of some kind of exclusivity. If it’s my hashtag, people should be listening to me!
I am generally not so fond of this variety of digital diplomacy, in part because it treats ICT opportunities as a broadcast medium rather than transforming diplomacy into a more engaged and robust activity. But, the notion of ownership of a particular brand also seems pernicious in terms of algorithmic bubbles as it fundamentally segments rather than brining different strains of conversations together.
Care with Advocacy
Advocacy may carry similar risks to strategies derived from advertising. However, at times, diplomats have to advocate on behalf of their fellow citizens, or a country’s interest. In those moments, when advocacy grows out of some kind of personal or institutional dispute, surely direct diplomacy resources should be brought to bear on a topic, and that may include some preaching to the algorithmic choir to mobilize stakeholders.
But, when this advocacy is not adversarial, perhaps it is important to keep bubble-formation in mind when campaigns are planned. Can advocacy include (in form and substance) audiences who might be opposed to the idea that is proposed? If such campaigns are preceded by efforts at engagement (see my ideas for an engagement platform), that engagement should be explicitly aimed at bridging ideological and other divides. In that engagement process, inclusivity has to be an important aim to fulfill the promises of a more robust diplomacy that leverages engagement of stakeholders.
Adopting Bridging Formats
Some tools on social media facilitate bridge-building. Hashtags, for example, can be intended as “lumpers” or “splitters” to speak in the terms of network algorithms, they can be aimed at brining networks nodes together into groupings, or they can hope to segment a network. As diplomats communicate in social media, they should be well aware of these splitting or lumping aspects of media structures.
Go forth and burst some digital bubbles, ye direct diplomats!
Dreams of a Platform for Foreign Policy Stakeholder Engagement
By Julian Dierkes
I have been advocating for stakeholder engagement as the true promise of a digital direct diplomacy. Not merely the broadcasting of foreign policy decisions, but the actual involvement of stakeholders in foreign policy-making to lead to a more robust diplomacy.
Sounds great? Yes, but how?
As far as I can see, there is no obvious platform out there that could be used immediately. So, let me try to formulate my expectations of such a platform.
Aims
- allows policy-makers to pose a specific question to stakeholders for a limited time
- allows stakeholders to comment on proposals and offer their own proposals on a specific policy question
- allows policy-makers to analyze and digest comments to take these into accounts in actual decision
- documents engagement and deliberation about inputs
Must-Have Features
Enabling conversations
- presentation of thought pieces to start conversation, but also at mid-points to react to proposals, etc.
- presentation of decision-options
- platform agnostic with docking points for various social media
- some translation capacity, certainly French-English, but in international affairs, also local language
- access to relevant data
- password and real username, with some exceptions for need for anonymity
- possibility of break-out sessions, focused smaller groups that could aggregate to a larger forum
- recognize “flow” of natural conversation, i.e. the longer it goes, the less likely truly novel perspectives may become
Moderating conversations
- enforce civility
- distinguish offers of evidence vs. offers of opinion
- give room for venting, but also for continued participation
- offer summaries of previous contributions at regular intervals, conversations are thus open, but they also aim for some closure
- recognize new perspective offered by contribution
- include criteria for trustworthiness of contributors
- expertise
- proximity to policy under question
- directly impacted
- network/rating of endorsement
Questions
Some issues I have considered, but do not really have proposals/solutions for
- should engage be text-based? Are there alternatives?
- can algorithms moderate? can algorithmic bubbles be avoided in conversations?
Surely, the above listings themselves would ideally become the subject of an engagement exercise and a conversation. I am certainly open to additions/comments, etc.
Also, this kind of platform would best be developed by the private sector to be an opportunity for other kinds of engagement as well. So, if anyone is involved with the development of tools for engagement, I am very open to discussions and have some ideas on commercial viability as well.
Instagram in Digital Diplomacy
By Julian Dierkes
As more and more diplomats and foreign ministries have taken to Instagram, I’ve noticed that their use of the platforms seems to differ quite a bit from text-based microblogging platforms like Twitter.
Given the discussion of the presumed “death” of Twitter (the main reason apparently being a levelling off of Tweeps, an odd reason as levelling off what not spell death in many areas), what implications does this different use (if my sense is right) have for direct diplomacy?
Social Media as Funnels to More and Deeper Content
Digital diplomacy efforts should/are several layers deep in content. Each layer can work as a platform for information sharing but also for engagement.
Given the possibility for engagement at each level, the image of a funnel doesn’t work very well for me. But, ultimately, at the bottom of communications about foreign policy is some kind of broad conceptual statement. More specific (geographically or by issue) version of that might then be white papers or lengthier texts of some kind. These in turn can form the basis for blog-post-length writing. And social media can serve as a means to announce and discuss foreign policy. But given the limitations of 140 characters, for example, few would claim that the complexity of foreign policy is captured best through micro-blogging. So, some of the intention of the use of social media channels can include the linking of more complex and longer texts or presentations. This is certainly very common on Twitter.
Read full address given by @MinCanadaFA at #ThinkTankSummit2016 last night: https://t.co/M1L8ptWxiH @CIGIonline pic.twitter.com/Z6YjtyA6Ub
— Foreign Policy CAN (@CanadaFP) September 29, 2016
Digital Diplomats on Instagram
One example of an active foreign ministry on Instagram is the German Auswärtiges Amt. Its presence on Instagram mirrors its presence on Twitter in that it is almost entirely focused on the minister and on announcements, though some creative elements are thrown into the feed occasionally. This is an approach that’s quite different from Global Affairs Canada, at least on Twitter, where many of the missions are also represented on their own, rather than simply a headquarters account.
Another foreign ministry that is active on Instagram is the Israeli ministry. Their feed is more text heavy in that they frequently include images of texts, such as quotes from speeches, etc.
The US Department of State is also somewhat more focused on Sec Kerry.
Instagram Does Not Seem to be a Funnel
By contrast to Facebook, Twitter and even YouTube to some extent, Instagram is not a platform that has embraced links to non-Instagram resources, nor have users adopted linking as a common element in posts. Thus, hashtags are possible and are used extensively (more so than on Facebook, for example), and other users can be mentioned and their userids become clickable.
The only link that is possible as a clickable link appears on a profile page, but it is thus not linked to a specific post.
Of course, there could be workarounds, for example the use of a URL-shortener to generate links that are memorable enough for users to note them to type into a browser. For Global Affairs, for example, that could be a custom shortener, like global.ca that could be used, for others (this kind of blog, for example) some URL shorteners also offer customized URLs that are short and memorable. But, to be clear, that is a workaround not a solution.
Given this lack of interlinking, the apparent ethos of diplomatic instagramming does not emphasize the role of Instagram as a funnel to lead users to deeper resources, or to invite them to comment substantially.
But then, what is the point of an Instagram that doesn’t include any links?
Here, as elsewhere on Instagram, digital diplomacy in practice appears to be entirely limited to an announcement, i.e. Instagram is essentially utilized as a photo-centric broadcast channel. While this may be effective to catch the eye of different kind of audiences, will their interest be sustained by this kind of announcement? I doubt it, as long as this initial interest does not lead to a deeper engagement of some kind.
A similar argument could probably be made about Snapchat. While some diplomatic institutions are setting up shop on Snapchat, this presence also seems to treat social media as a broadcast channel, rather than an engagement tool.
Podcasting for Digital Diplomacy?
By Julian Dierkes
A New York Times article earlier this year discussed the stealthy rise of podcasting to a major medium.
As I was considering this article, I was reflecting on my own interest in podcasting and some of the discussions about new tech tools that may be available for direct diplomacy purposes.
What is Podcasting?
In its simplest form, podcasting is on-demand radio for the internet age. But, it seems like that shouldn’t exist! Radio? A technology that has been around for 100 years and has its origins in wiry antennas, vacuum tubes, etc. now an online success? And, the success is not rooted in interactivity, but in a relatively straight-forward broadcast model, so straight-forward that it even makes social media sharing difficult as many of the industry-players noted in that NYT article.
Podcasting has been enabled by technology, of course. There seem to be three elements in this development that seem of particular relevance to a consideration of podcasting as a direct diplomacy tool:
- recording and audio editing software and hardware
- distribution channels
- searching and catalogues to allow specific interests to reach a viable broad audience.
While word processing and desktop publishing have been some of the breakthrough applications for personal computers (ah, what a quaint ring this sentence carries so far), the model of individuals and individual amateurs producing media has been applied across a whole spectrum of different media.
Programs and apps such as Garageband, iTunes, the omnipresence of microphones and webcams, the development of RSS to offer followers an update on additional material, as well as the addition of recording as a feature to smart phones have placed the tools of a very simple recording studio into very many people’s hands.
Professional or “Serious” Origins
Podcasts seem to be primarily “serious” in origins. The podcast is almost by definition a long-form medium, in part because it is a broadcast medium that would not seem to make that much sense as snippets. On the other hand, the same argument might have applied to video in pre-YouTube days, so perhaps it is not the medium itself, but rather the niches in which it has established itself. Those niches seem to be fairly specialized and thus somewhat serious in their ambitions.
Further contributing to this seriousness or staidness is the fact that podcasts don’t seem too likely to be real money-makers. Some are an additional distribution channel for existing broadcasts (say, CBC Radio shows that are downloadable as podcasts to listen to independent of a broadcast schedule). In that case, the additional cost is almost zero. Others are stand-alone media on their own, but since ads can easily be skipped and don’t seem to be a prominent part of the podcast ecosystem (though they do exist), they do not seem prevalent.
The development of soft- and hardware that is dedicated to the reproduction of music (obviously, a big business) has meant that entertainment has largely been divorced from podcasts.
My History of Listening to Podcasts
Curiously, I have become interested in podcasts through the discussion of the Vancouver Whitecaps (MLS soccer club) that are offered in this medium, but not in traditional media. When there’s very little coverage of a topic, but a desire to be more informed, podcasts are a great place to look, especially because they lend themselves to listen in situations where reading might not work well, for example on airplanes, buses, etc.
The second origin of my interest has been my delight in particular CBC shows, but the fact that they usually air at times that I’m not listening to a radio.
These personal interests then prompted me to look for coverage of direct diplomacy in podcasts or for the potential of podcasts as a direct diplomacy opportunity.
Podcasting as a Direct Diplomacy Opportunity?
To my surprise, I have found relatively little in this regard, only a handful of podcasts produced by foreign ministries or by analysts of diplomacy.
Here are examples I have found:
Public Diplomat: http://thepublicdiplomat.com/category/listen/
Our mission is to explain public diplomacy by providing a multi-media platform to ideas, research and events that catalyze the engaging of different cultures.
CanadExport: http://tradecommissioner.gc.ca/canadexport/podcast.aspx?lang=eng
CanadExport podcasts connect Canadian companies to industry experts and leaders in business, not to mention the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service—Canada’s most comprehensive network of international business professionals. These podcasts explore hot topics as well as pan-sectoral exporting and investment opportunities, not to mention science and technology partnerships.
US State Department’s “Meet the Ambassador” series
Women in Diplomacy Podcast: http://theforeignpolicyproject.org/women-in-diplomacy-podcast/
“Women in Diplomacy,” seeks to inspires more diverse voices in foreign policy through career mentorship.
Podcasting and Videocasting: Blab and Other Opportunities
Videocasting may emerge as another medium to complement podcasts. As podcasts very often involve a conversation between two or more speakers, newer video platforms that are integrated with social media may offer opportunities for broadcast and recorded discussions of a professional nature. Periscope, Blab and others allow this sort of functionality.
I have experimented with Blab in this regard as a medium to talk about direct diplomacy topics with interlocutors who are located entirely elsewhere.
Examples:
What seems attractive to me about these formats is that they allow for a simultaneous public discussion with an audience (potentially), as well as recording for later viewing, though those advantages are not particular to discussions of digital or direct diplomacy. As diplomats seems to have an easier time exploring different kind of broadcast media (as opposed to the more interactive engagement that make social media promising in fundamentally changing diplomacy), podcasts may be a somewhat natural form of expression.
Potential vs Costs
Clearly, there is a risk to adopting new formats, platforms and technologies for any purpose when resources are limited. So what might advantages/disadvantages of embarking on a podcast focused on digital diplomacy, or developing podcasts for direct diplomacy purposes be?
Even a relatively high-quality (audio) podcast is not expensive to produce. The main cost is thus the time invested to learn about production as well as production itself. That can be high, of course, especially since a podcast is not likely to gain an audience unless it is somewhat sustained in production. I would imagine that a less-than-monthly podcast would struggle to find an audience, for example.
Audiences are also uncertain. While there does seem to be a general sense of the peculiarities of audience composition for many platforms, I’m not sure that this is the case for podcasts.
The advantage of a podcast could be that it would allow for a fairly detailed, lengthy and complex discussion, particularly compared to any kind of short-form platform. One of the (welcome) peculiarities of the podcast medium seems to be a general lack of concern about length. While tweets and other forms of microblogging, but even blogs and videos seem to me moving to ever more digestible (meaning short) formats, some podcasts I listen to regularly seem downright wordy. Perhaps this is due to the audio format that allows for other activities in parallel (driving, commuting, cooking, etc.).
Through a voice (or an image in the case of a videocast), there may be strong identification with a “host” or main discussant on a podcast which can have advantages and disadvantages.
I will continue to listen to soccer podcasts, but hope to find more direct diplomacy podcasts in the future as well.
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.
Digital Chatham House Rule
By Julian Dierkes
Whether it is academic or diplomatic meetings, the phrase “We’re operating under Chatham House Rules” can be heard very often.
Chatham House is an foreign affairs think tank in London, of course, more formally the “Royal Institute of International Affairs“. It was set up in the 1920s. Chatham House conducts research, hosts events, and provides policy advice as one might expect of a think tank. My friend, John Nilsson-Wright, heads the Asia Programme.
But, Chatham House is also famous for being the “inventor” of the Chatham House Rule.
When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.
Note, first off, that there is only one rule, not rules. Secondly, while the rule was created especially for communication about diplomacy, it is increasingly applied to a wide range of topics and policy arenas.
Purpose
The ultimate purpose for asking participants in an event to observe the Chatham House Rule is to allow participants to speak more freely as they will not be identified as the origin of a particular statement and face potential repercussions. Why is that desirable? Well, it means that diplomats, for example, might be able to speak about policy options that are still under consideration without the fear of the media reporting on these before they’re finalized. It also means that participants are able to use and mention information/analysis that is shared in this fashion, just not to identify the person from who it was obtained.
In my experience, some organizers interpret the rule to also imply that no journalists-as-journalists are allowed in the room, but that is not included in the original formulation.
But What Happens with Live-Streaming/Live-Tweeting?
Live-streaming (i.e. the broadcast of a video or audio stream either live, or recorded) is clearly out as it definitely identifies a speak and often also provides a record of an event. So, live-streaming seems entirely incompatible with any kind of Chatham House Rule.
But does the Rule need a digital update when it comes to live-tweeting?
Here’s what Chatham House says:
The Rule can be used effectively on social media sites such as Twitter as long as the person tweeting or messaging reports only what was said at an event and does not identify – directly or indirectly – the speaker or another participant. This consideration should always guide the way in which event information is disseminated – online as well as offline.
This answer simply reinforces the principle of non-attribution. But it’s not clear to me that that actually works, because of the additional information that is attached to a tweet.
Let’s think about an example: at an event operating under the Chatham House rule, Ambassador A mentions that her country is considering adoption of Convention 123. I attend the event and tweet: “Country X is considering adopting #Convention123”. Perhaps #Convention123 was a hashtag that was promoted by the organizers. Of course, my tweet comes with a time stamp. The organizers of the event have circulated the schedule for the event, it’s available on-line. It would not be much of a stretch for a colleague of Amb A who follows me to recognize from comparing my time stamp and the schedule for the event that I most likely tweeted during the presentation by Amb A. If Amb A had previously agreed in a discussion at her MFA that it would be better not to address the question of Convention123 at all, she might face some frustration back at her MFA due to my tweet which will make her much less likely to share some of her thoughts in a fashion that goes beyond usual diplo-speak at a future event, precisely the kind of worry that the Chatham House rule is meant to prevent.
Conversely, however, organizers could make all kinds of good cases for why they have proposed a hashtag, would like participants to use that hashtag, and why participants would want to use a site like Twitter along with a hashtag to have a chance to engage in a conversation about the presentation.
A tweet with a non-event-specific hashtag would avoid some of the attributability, particularly if Convention123 wasn’t the obvious focus of the event itself, but just one of the topics raised. That is clearly a somewhat grey area of unattributability.
What Could be a Solution via a Digital Chatham House Rule?
Geofencing or localization of a social medium
If my tweet in the above example was only available in the room where this meeting was occurring, great. Everyone in the room would have heard Amb A’s statement and my tweet would thus offer no further identification. There currently is no such capability in Twitter, I think. Yik Yak offers such geofencing, though its radius is 2.5km and thus beyond a meeting room. Surely, this radius could be adapted in some fashion.
An alternative would be something like FireChat, a platform that rose to prominence during the 2014 Hong Kong protests. FireChat came to be used because it can construct a very local network out of Bluetooth connections, bypassing wifi or cell networks. Protestors used this because they feared that the police might be able to disable other systems, but that a local network was only dependent on participants’ battery life. We actually experimented with an in-room conversation at an event about the Hong Kong protests at UBC. Something like that would certainly power an in-room discussion about a presentation and would avoid some of the problems regarding attributable statements with tweeting, but it is similarly hampered by the lack of opportunity to transmit discussions to wider audiences. Also, participants would have to be operating on two different systems, likely leading to mistakes and confusion, especially at event where critical mass for online in-room conversations is hard to reach.
Elimination of Time Stamp
Much of the challenge in terms of attributability stems from the combination of an event hashtag and the tweet’s time stamp. The hashtag is desirable to organize conversations. So, what if the time stamp disappeared? Since Twitter is chronology-driven (for now) that would be challenging, though surely not impossible. A very simple technical solution would be to use a Twitter interface that would randomize the posting time. If you use services like Hootsuite, for example, you can already schedule a tweet, so why not schedule for a time that’s very different from when you’re writing a comment? Well, again, that defeats the purpose of the in-room discussion, as reactions to the comment/tweet would come at an unpredictable time.
Conclusion
Whereas the current Chatham House Rule is clear and not really open to interpretation, it seems to me that participants who are live-tweeting would need to be reminded explicitly that the combination of a hashtag + time stamp makes some comments easily attributable. But, that also implies that decisions (not) to tweet and how to phrase a tweet are open to more interpretation by the communicator than would be the case with in-person exchanges.
The alternative (at least until some technical fix arises) is to give up on either of the two purposes of tweeting from an event, transmission to remote audiences, OR in-room discussion.
So for now, perhaps a second sentence to be added?
When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. Participants should be aware and act in the understanding that some features of social media communication make attribution possible even without directly naming the speaker, by hashtagging, location tagging, and time stamps.
My thinking here benefitted greatly from a conversation with the FCO’s Ruth Shaw at the #Diplometrics conference in Ottawa in April 2016.
How Digital Diplomats and Researchers Conference
In April, I participated in Global Affairs Canada’s #Diplometrics conference asking how the activities that fall under Digital Diplomacy might best be measured.
In addition to fascinating content and lots of learning, I enjoyed looks around the room to see what innovations there are in how we run conferences about things digital, presumably with some difference to “more traditional” events.
Since this conference followed on a conference the week before in an entirely different area (geographically and substantively) where there was no online discussion, no hashtag, and I couldn’t find the other speakers online (!), I was happy to see that the #Diplometrics event involved colleagues who are active online.
Parallel Discussions
I’ve experimented with some tools for hosting discussions at academic events that would allow the audiences to digest and comment on presentations online as a complement to Q&A sessions at the end. So far, these attempts have been mixed, I would say. The #Diplometrics event at least overcame the challenge of other events where there isn’t a critical mass of people engaging online so that twitterwall stall, for example, as too few people are contributing.
The #Diplometrics twitterwall was active enough that new tweets would appear with regularity and that there was a fair number of comments on presentations that went beyond agreement and applause. Those comments in general seem to come in two forms: 1. Actual comments on the substance of presentations, and 2. Links and pointers to other projects, tools and resources. I think both are very useful to include.
I felt significantly less self-conscious staring at my device for a good portion of the time as others did as well, though there was also a number of people (including myself) taking notes with pen-and-paper while using one of multiple devices. Mixed methods! The electronic tool of choice seems to be the keyboard-connected tablet.
.@jdierkes Here you go: Professional digital natives & tools that they are using at #Diplometrics : A pen and paper! pic.twitter.com/7A90BoRjtu
— Philip Mai (@PhMai) April 20, 2016
I am increasingly less concerned about the frequently expressed worry that parallel discussions divide attention. While it does require some concentration and effort to stay focused on a presentation while also commenting on it, in the end, I see this as somewhat akin to (my kids’) bi/trilingual education. Yes, maybe their written expression will not be as perfect as a unilingual student, let’s say 90%, but if they add even only 50% percent fluency in one or more languages that’s still a lot more than 100%. And as a presenters, I am always happy to think that some of the people starting and tapping at devices are engaging more intensely with what I am presenting than someone who is listening passively but with full attention.
Twitterwall and Audiences of Hashtag Users
One challenge I see is between live-tweeting for remote audiences and the parallel in-room discussions I mentioned above.
Looking at my tweets appear on the Twitterwall made me a bit self-conscious that most of what I was tweeting was intelligible only to people in the room and relatively meaningless to others following on-line. This is a general challenge in 140-character-messages, I find, i.e. not to give in too much to the temptation to turn abbreviations and references into a code that becomes unintelligible to the vast majority of accidental or casual listeners.
One solution could be to have two different hashstags for these different purposes, i.e. one that is used, perhaps by a designated team, to live-tweet to remote audiences, and another hashtag that would be used primarily for the in-room discussion. That adds another layer of complexity, however, that we may not be quite ready for (yet).
Other Tools
Video is entering conference activities that I’m involved in. Examples for #Diplometrics were my preview discussion with Mark McLaughlin and Jay Wang on blab, but also the streaming and side-interviews that the #Diplometrics organizers conducted, mostly using Facebook Live. In my mind, such streaming and brief reflective interviews offer terrific opportunities for (at least passive) remote participation in a conference, a single session, or even just one presentation. Nice amplification!
Several presenters relied on prezi rather than PPT, something that I don’t see much at other conferences. I still haven’t seen anyone present directly from a mobile device using the prezi app.
One participant had a gorilla stand for his mobile which looked like it was a good alternative to the keyboard-connected tablet, though not easy to type on.
Of course, some tools one could see at the conference were also decidedly old school-cool:
Tools of digital diplomats… @mjmclean‘s power source appears to be a diesel generator.#Diplometrics pic.twitter.com/sfWuOWV6jJ
— Julian Dierkes (@jdierkes) April 21, 2016
directdiplomacy.wordpress.com 
Recent Comments