Follow to be Followed: How Digital Becomes Diplomacy with Ilan Manor

The European Digital Diplomacy Exchange (EDDE) invites you to join us on Thursday, January 18, 2024 from 15:00 – 16:00 CET for a virtual lecture Follow to be Followed: How Digital Becomes Diplomacy with Ilan Manor.

Ilan Manor’s work of the past couple of years explores the growing significance of social media in the world of diplomacy. In the first years of the 21st century, societies worldwide underwent an accelerated process of digitalisation. In order to remain relevant and influential, counter the proliferation of malign actors online, match the rising importance of journalists and bloggers and connect with foreign populations, states had to transcribe their foreign policies into the digital arena. The session will delve into major features of the digital society and explore the latter’s manifestation in the field of diplomacy. Manor will explain, how the principle of digital reciprocity is among others (regionality, technological savviness and national media environment) the most important factor of MFA’s centrality. How MFAs following their peers is advantageous and increases the likelihood of being followed in return and gain popularity and centrality. How does the algorithm work based on information flow and what is the correlation between digital diplomacy and the normative behaviour of digital society? The session will be based on real-time research conducted by Ilan Manor in 2022.

Bio: Ilan Manor is a digital diplomacy scholar, a lecturer at the Department of Communications at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, a member of Oxford University’s Digital Diplomacy Research Group and an author. His most recent book titled The Digitalization of Public Diplomacy was published in 2019. Before that he wrote a monograph on digital diplomacy “Are we there yet? Have MFAs Realized the Potential of Digital Diplomacy?”. Manor regularly contributes to different academic journals like the Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Global Affairs and the Cambridge Review of International Affairs and some local mainstream newspapers. He has a PhD from the University of Oxford and his main area of research is the digitalization of public diplomacy.