The Digital Adaptation of International Bureaucracies

Abstract

International organizations’ bureaucracies are important facilitators and authorities of global governance that increasingly use digital means of communication—such as websites, email, social media, or mobile apps—to address their audiences directly. How do they deal with the opportunities and challenges of such ‘digital diplomacy’? What are the consequences of digital diplomacy regarding the content communicated by international bureaucracies and beyond? This chapter attempts to demonstrate the significance of recent research for providing conclusive answers to these questions as well as to demonstrate the need for further exploration. It first illustrates the current practices of international bureaucracies’ digital diplomacy by focusing on social media such as X (formerly known as Twitter) and Facebook in a quantitative perspective, illustrated with recent examples of their use. Second it discusses motivational factors and conducive conditions that help to explain why international bureaucracies have turned to, and increasingly employ, means of digital diplomacy. While the first and second parts of the chapter focus mainly on the opportunities of digital diplomacy, the third part goes full circle by turning to a couple of its challenges—organized hypocrisy, pluralization, acceleration, selectivity, personalization, and polarization—of which little is yet known, but that deserve more attention by scholars, practitioners, and stakeholders of global governance alike.