Cultural Diplomacy in Social Media: A Case Study

The online tools of communication have an impact on cultural diplomacy, which enables the governments to include potential partners into the participation in culture and at the same time to win them for their foreign policy goals. The objective of this article is to check the hypothesis saying that social media has become relevant in the foreign ministries’ external communication. The authors conduct a case study, based on cultural diplomacy events, called “years and seasons of culture”, aimed by the selected European countries at Russia in 2013–2016. The authors assume that the inclusion of social media into the toolkit of cultural diplomacy means a relevant change in the media use in foreign policy. While studying the cases of Austrian, Dutch, German, Polish and British cultural diplomacy the authors check, if they can be analyzed as media events. The authors implemented institutional approach, quantitative network and qualitative content analysis. The research didn’t confirm that cultural diplomacy events might be seen as media events. Although the Russian-Ukrainian conflict defined the relevant context for the studied cases, it was hardly reflected in their visibility. Social media didn’t play any significant role in the promotion of the events in the chosen researched period either.

JEL: Y9

* Przedstawiony tekst powstał jako wynik badań w projekcie NCN „Dyplomacja kulturalna: konceptualizacja lat i sezonów kultury jako wydarzeń kulturalnych w czasie konfliktu międzynarodowego” nr 2016/23/B/HS5/00486.

The online tools of communication have an impact on cultural diplomacy, which enables the governments to include potential partners into the participation in culture and at the same time to win them for their foreign policy goals. The objective of this article is to check the hypothesis saying that social media has become relevant in the foreign ministries’ external communication. The authors conduct a case study, based on cultural diplomacy events, called “years and seasons of culture”, aimed by the selected European countries at Russia in 2013–2016. The authors assume that the inclusion of social media into the toolkit of cultural diplomacy means a relevant change in the media use in foreign policy. While studying the cases of Austrian, Dutch, German, Polish and British cultural diplomacy the authors check, if they can be analyzed as media events. The authors implemented institutional approach, quantitative network and qualitative content analysis. The research didn’t confirm that cultural diplomacy events might be seen as media events. Although the Russian-Ukrainian conflict defined the relevant context for the studied cases, it was hardly reflected in their visibility. Social media didn’t play any significant role in the promotion of the events in the chosen researched period either.

JEL: Y9

* Przedstawiony tekst powstał jako wynik badań w projekcie NCN „Dyplomacja kulturalna: konceptualizacja lat i sezonów kultury jako wydarzeń kulturalnych w czasie konfliktu międzynarodowego” nr 2016/23/B/HS5/00486.