The Italian Embassy in Washington’s work on analysing and developing digital diplomacy continues with a seminar, the 4th on this issue, entitled “Foreign Policy in Stereo: power and leadership in a world of states and people”. The guest speaker was Anne-Marie Slaughter, lecturer in international relations at the University of Princeton and former head of policy planning at the Department of State under Hillary Clinton.
The debate was introduced by the Italian Ambassador to the USA, Claudio Bisogniero, with a presentation illustrating the www.twiplomacy.it website, which brings together all the events organised by the Embassy on foreign policy and social media. In Ambassador Bisogniero’s view, “Diplomacy 3.0” must be more open and interactive and create an environment that fosters exchanges of ideas, best practice and experience.
Diplomatic action and social media
Anne-Marie Slaughter stressed the importance, in the Twitter age, of redefining the content of diplomatic activity by combining traditional instruments and concepts with the new ones made available by social media. As she described it, we are living in an age of interconnection, of the internet as a “network of networks”. And we must take that into account in the field of international relations.
New actors and new “constituencies” have taken shape in the foreign policy sphere: young people, women, religious groups and so on. And with them, and with civil society in general, we need to find a new and different way to communicate and interact: a strategy that goes beyond simple dialogue. Digital Diplomacy means more than just listening or disseminating information. It means interacting, first and foremost, and creating new spaces for discussion on international current affairs.
