On January 20th, as President Joe Biden took the Oath of Office, he also gained control of the @POTUS Twitter account (President of the United States), one of the most followed accounts on Twitter. Both his predecessors had amassed a vast following online with Donald Trump reaching some 90 million followers and Barack Obama 137... Continue Reading →
2020: The Year of Digital Resurgence
Many people will wish to forget 2020. A year of fear and angst; lockdowns and isolations and one virus that brought the world to a halt. Indeed, the Covid19 virus transported the world to a previous era, one in which reaching another city, let alone another country was impossible. Airports, the signature of the networked... Continue Reading →
The Evolution of WhatsApp as a Diplomatic Tool
In December of 2014, I conducted a series of interviews with Geneva based Ambassadors hoping to understand how smartphones had influenced the conduct of diplomacy. Through these interviews I learned that Ambassadors were increasingly using the messaging application WhatsApp to communicate with their peers. Such communication influenced diplomacy in three ways. First, the Ambassadors stated... Continue Reading →
Towards a Network Model of Diplomacy? The Case of the UN in Geneva
In recent years, several international relations scholars have called on nations to adopt a network model of diplomacy. The term Network Diplomacy often refers to nations' need to create temporary coalitions in order to achieve their foreign policy goals. Such coalitions may be viewed as networks with each member of the coalition serving as a... Continue Reading →