Terms of engagement: The (de)legitimation of UN peacekeeping on social media

New technologies are not only transforming the nature of political conflict but also the ways in which international actors respond to it. With the introduction of social media as a new form of public communication, the UN has now a tool at its disposal to directly relate to its global public and increase the legitimacy of its peace operations. The success of UN peacekeeping operations depends heavily on the way a mission is perceived and supported by the local population. However, very little is known about the role that social media can play for the transformation and prevention of conflicts and in support of UN peacekeeping missions. With the potential of public communication on social media thus unknown, this paper assesses digital communication patterns of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) as an exploratory case study for the broader potential of peace operations using (or misusing) social media for outreach and digital diplomacy. Data is collected on all Facebook posts published by UNMISS from the establishment of the account in August 2011 until the end of 2020. I use qualitative content analysis to determine how the peacekeeping mission engages with its audience, how it frames and legitimizes its engagement, and what broader topics and discourses are being addressed in the individual posts. The aim is to gain a concise understanding of the ways in which UNMISS uses social media as a communication tool in order to involve the local public in the peace process and to increase the mission’s legitimation by (1) collecting data on social media communication of UNMISS and coding these according to several categories; and (2) analyzing the scope conditions that explain certain communication patterns by UNMISS. The results show that UNMISS uses various communication strategies at different times and point out the factors that determine these differences in social media use.