Ross v Morozov: Pro/con Arguments on the Practical Implications of Digital Diplomacy

The advent and popularity of new technologies such as the web 2.0 revolution, has made it increasingly more difficult to ignore both the positive and negative effects that they have on the world surrounding us, in domestic politics or inter-state relations, as well as the distinctions between the discourse around the implementation of e-diplomacy and its actual applicability and functionality. In my paper I will look at some of the dangers and disadvantages as well as point to the benefits and advantages of the use of social media and its public use by diplomats, as illustrated in the United States and the United Kingdom and at the international level by the UN and NATO. This analysis will be rendered through a soft-power theoretical lens as initially proposed and developed by Joseph Nye. Given the novelty of the topic, social media having swept internal and external politics within the past decade, the majority of sources available and used will be public policy-related and not academic sources. That being said, methodologically I will stick with synthesizing and combining previous arguments made separately by researchers from secondary literature, into a comparative analysis of the positive and negative aspects of implementing and using social media, for diplomatic purposes. The reason for my dual choice of focus lies in the fact that the majority of researchers or analysts on this topic have championed the favorable view of the web 2.0 revolution, while its potential dangers have been too easily refuted or dismissed, almost blindly or naively.