Twiplomacy

Twiplomacy, or Twitter diplomacy, refers to the use of the social network Twitter by those with diplomatic mandates in the purpose of achieving nation-state or international organisation’s foreign policy goals. The concept has gained traction during the tenure of the US President Donald Trump who extensively used this social network to communicate about foreign leaders and countries. Scholarship, on the other hand, has historically been more concerned with the use of Twitter in public diplomacy, with debates ongoing about the impact that Twitter’s logic and affordances have on the transformations in diplomacy, and in particular, digital diplomacy. Early hypotheses that (public) diplomacy on Twitter might be more open, transparent, collaborative, interactive and networked, have mostly been disputed, as the majority of diplomatic entities are found to be using Twitter mostly as another dissemination channel. The effects of Twiplomacy are yet to be fully understood.

This is the original submitted version of the chapter. The final version is available in Encyclopedia of Technology and Politics edited by A. Ceron, published in 2022, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.