eDiplomacy: The Twitter Q&A

Under Secretary Sonenshine
responding to Twitter questions

In June, I particapted in a live global Twitter Q&A with Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy Tara Sonenshine hosted by the Department of State's official Twitter account (@StateDept). Reaching a global audience of about 16 million people, Twitter users had the unique opportunity to engage with a high-ranking U.S. government official directly, without any of the “bureaucratic red tape.” Yet, in reality, only a select few had their questions chosen by the moderators and answered by the Under Secretary. (Unfortunately, I was one of the many people whose questions were not chosen.)

Using this example, how does a Twitter Q&A rate as a model and tool for spreading democracy? Well, it’s more of an incomplete democracy. Twitter Q&A’s follow the populist tradition in that users have the ability to discuss issues and express opinions all in the hopes of getting the attention of those in the government. Ideally, this type of Internet participation would allow people to speak freely and equally, wrestling control from government institutions and handing it to anyone with a keyboard. However, the undemocratic social and political hierarchies present in the real world also materialize in the online world. Although Twitter Q&A’s do provide a direct line of communication to the State Department and can potentially reach higher branches of government, most tweets fall by the wayside simply because they are not retweeted or replied to by those with more digital clout.

It has become clear to me that technological innovation, in and of itself, cannot achieve foreign policy objectives; human agency does that. In the real world, a lofty goal such as democratizing a political system requires breaking down the barriers of gender, age, ethnicity, income level, or even political ideology that segregate people and ideas. These barriers still exist on the Internet, and as more and more people fight for cyberspace and readership, the idea “trickle-up discourse” becomes lost somehow.

While deliberative technologies may not “democratize” nations by themselves, they enable people to break down these categorical barriers by facilitating cross-society communication. When people participate in these online forums, they are not only conversing with the U.S. government but they are also learning the viewpoints of their compatriots in the process. (For Twitter Q&A’s, you can click on the profiles of users whose questions were selected for the Q&A and you can search the designated hashtag for other comments or questions that weren’t selected.) In other words, Twitter Q&A’s are just a starting point for individuals from diverse groups to jump into a larger conversation and consider the views of others they may not encounter in daily life. Although this may not be an explicit foreign policy objective, I believe that this type of digital engagement achieve implicit objectives under the umbrella of public diplomacy.