Tweeting the pivot? The United States and PD 2.0 in Northeast Asia

Abstract

This study considers US public diplomacy efforts in Northeast Asia in the context of the country's foreign policy 'pivot' toward the region. Focused specifically on American efforts to communicate online with publics in China, Japan and South Korea, this research examines embassy social media feeds in order to characterize the most visible aspects of American PD 2.0 in the region. Findings indicate that despite the interactive potential of these online tools, the US approach to public diplomacy in the online context remains overwhelmingly unilateral, with one-way messaging the norm and instances of engagement with the target publics exceedingly rare. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Vietnam Twiplomacy:

“…Secondly, the style of diplomatic communication was overlooked, while other issues of agenda-setting, reach, and engagement, have been investigated. Scholars were also attracted to the effectiveness of public diplomatic 2.0 employing Twitter and other SNSs (Bjola & Jiang, 2015;Metzgar & Lu, 2015;Sevin, 2017;Uysal et al, 2012), yet the content and potential target audience have not been studied. The current study will emphasize these elements of Twiplomacy with the case study of Vietnam's public diplomacy, as well as its conversations with other parties, i.e., government-to-government diplomacy (G2G).…”