Event Report: Digital Diplomacy and Non-State Actors

I attended an event hosted by The Embassy of Italy as part of their Digital Diplomacy Series called Digital Diplomacy and Non-State Actors on Wednesday, March 25. 

The panel discussion was actually about how state actors, that is government officials, have had to adapt the way they communicate with non-state actors through the introduction of social media. The panelists spanned various fields, but are or were at some point state actors themselves. Ari Ratner, a fellow at New America, an innovative nonprofit that “is dedicated to the renewal of American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age,” according to their website. Ratner also previously worked at the State the Department as well as both the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns in 2008. Rufus Gifford is the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, Robert Kelley is an assistant professor at American University for SIS who just release his book Agency Change: Diplomatic Action Beyond the State, and Tom Cochran is Deputy Coordinator at the State Department. The panel was moderated by Andrea Peterson, who covers tech policy for the Washington Post. 

The panel began similarly to the event previously reported on, The Media as a Non-State Actor, by speaking generally about non-state actors and defining the phrase. Ratner had a very liberal interpretation in which he basically believes anyone who is not an official government person speaking as the government is a non-state actor. He even implied that personal social media of state-actors, such as Barack Obama is a non-state actor. Professor Kelley spoke about the important of also discussing malicious non-state actors, giving the example of ISIS’s use of Twitter, as well as the use by there many sympathizers around the world. Neither of the two actual state-actors on the panel, Ambassador Gifford and Deputy Coordinator Cochran, responded to questions related to ISIS/other terrorist organizations and the United States’ digital response to their tactics. Ratner says he believes that whether consciously or not, the State Department and other state-actors seem to be borrowing from how political campaigns respond to false rumors, which is one of ISIS’s tactics, and that is simply through rapid response simply stating the truths. Social media has allowed such untruths to be rapidly spread by non-state, but also gives state-actors the ability to rapidly respond back. 

Cochran shared the digital practices being employed by the State Department, and one of the more interesting ones is ShareAmerica, a website he described as “like UpWorthy for public diplomacy content.” He spoke about government borrowing from the private sector, because there’s “no need to reinvent the wheel,” when the media are already doing such a great job. Both Gifford and Cochran noted that people are more likely to believe and share content posted by friends and family than by any other organization, including the government. Thus, Gifford says he actually gains more credibility in attempting to be perceived as a non-state actor when posting as ambassador. 

When discussing how social media ‘gives everyone a voice,’ something often discussed in our class, Cochran said that social media has “flattened the communication paradigm” and you can now tweet to people like President Obama or Ashton Kutcher (his examples, not mine). Ratner chimed in saying “doesn’t mean they’ll tweet back.” And this is ultimately the conclusion we have made in our own discussions, that having the ability to speak on the same platform as celebrities and politicians, still does not put you on the same level as them. Ambassador Gifford, however, recognized that “if [ambassadors] don’t reply, then [they’re] not effective.” He said that is how he gets invited to events such as this and gets interviews, but that most ambassadors do not control their own social media like he does. Professor Kelley said that the state, due to its slow government pace, will always be trying to keep pace with the rate of technology innovation and should instead focus and strive for legitimacy and authority on social media and standing by what they say. 

When discussing what all the different social media platforms are useful for, Gifford said Twitter is for politicians and journalists, Facebook is for everyone, and Instagram is for the youth. However he also said that the 140 character limit on Twitter is exhausting for him because “diplomats like to talk a long time.” He opined that Twitter is best for getting information out as soon as possible, such as the recent Valentine’s Day terrorist attack in Denmark. Professor Kelley, however, also warned of the danger in getting out in front of a story, giving Benghazi as an example. Ratner agreed saying that there is a trade off between being authoritative and being speedy in getting information out, because you want to respond to rumors with the truth. 

I think this was a very informative event because I learned a lot about how social media is still in its very early stages in the government and they’re sort of given free range to mold it into whatever they want, because they’re not handed very strict rules for usage. We have learned in our class about the importance of organizations having an open dialogue with their publics, and I think for state actors, their publics are non-state actors, from regular citizens to journalists. The better that two-way communication becomes, the more successful the government will be in legitimizing their position and gaining credibility from their citizens. 

Here is a picture I took with my awful phone camera: