Open in app

Sign in

Write

Sign in

Fitur

Urban Digital Diplomacy: A Social Glitch or Revolution?

Questioning how and to what extent the era of digitalization has transformed our means of defining ourselves, our expressions, and diplomacy in an urban context.

Seruni Fauzia Lestari
Kolektif Agora

--

Foto oleh Sangkara Nararya, 2018.

Interestingly enough, Spongebob #943 got me thinking about how people today use the internet as a way to disseminate ideas and promote their thoughts, similar to Spongebob’s latest innovation at the Krusty Krab: the community bulletin board. The peculiar episode illustrates how a community board could be a platform for expression, at least to a certain degree until ‘Mr. Krabs’ notices that it’s harming his interests and decides to disregard content that he deems “inappropriate”. Everyone knows how that’ll end up, right?

What I believe is interesting lies in the way the producers also depict the types of internet people who are involved in online disputes, indicating the fact that certain types of users actually exist and play a significant role in perpetuating (and giving rise to conflict) online discourses. For example, we all know of that one user that enjoys throwing content for the online community to bash. There’s always going to be that dominant Social Justice Warrior type of user, followed by those who intentionally seek comments on SJW content on comment sections (yours truly included). Not to mention the types who fuel online conversations by irresponsibly posting/harvesting memes or adorable cat gifs.

Back to Earth, the difference is that nowadays “community bulletin boards” don’t need to be pinned against the wall placed in a crowded place. There’s no longer the need to use sticky notes for you to mark your X. Yet the internet serves it all bare and there: it’s invisible but your voice forever recorded, interconnected to anything, anyone and everyone, everywhere at anytime.

Since when did we use this “community bulletin board” as a means for expression, to share and promote our ideas? Why? How significant are these posts in stimulating change? Can it manifest the kind of change that we desire?

Premo Ergo Sum

The thing is, the existence of this platform as a means of human expression has always been around before the boom of the 4th industrial revolution, surely in more conventional and smaller scales. The bulletin board, for instance. Back then, community bulletin boards became the go-to for the latest job-listings, product offers, advertisement for the local community charity event, flyers for lost pets, the list goes on.

But of course we weren’t satisfied. It provided limited space and attention, so its significance was relatively small. We needed some place bigger, one that could contain more views, provide the ability to promote more ideas, allow us to reach more people, and give us the superpower to impact more people.

“I post, therefore I am; I delete, therefore I am not. I re-post, therefore I am again” — Portolan, 2016.

Deriving from the infamous Latin words cogito ergo sum, the rise of social media has added a new dimension towards the principles of existentialism, further emphasizing our individual existence, freedom and choice. As Portolan (2016) puts it, today’s online society portrays the likes of premo ergo sum, meaning “I click, therefore I am”. This is demonstrated in our freedom to be whoever we want to be online, share all the memes we want, promote all sorts of ideas from a-to-z. To an extent, of course, but that’s a different story.

Regardless, what this means is that it also redefines the who we present ourselves to be and the strength of our ideas through the boundless discourses that we create online. By redefine, I mean bringing a new perspective to what it means to post online. Without trying to demote or promote this phenomena, needless to say this has shifted our behaviour from just thinking to the necessity to post online in order to believe in something (see Portolan, 2016). Thus, whether we like it or not, online social media platforms has opened up not only new means for sharing/obtaining information, but also open up new ways for ourselves and people all over to believe in us and our ideas in a boundless arena of time and space.

Flagship Vessel for 21st Century Diplomacy

In the 21st century, individuals not only share their failures online, they also share their opinions, feelings, political affiliations and understanding of local and global events (Manor, 2018).

The means for sharing and promoting ideas has always been the backbone for diplomacy. Usually you’d often associate the term diplomacy with international relations. However, seeing as I do not have background in the field and do not wish do dive in such deep waters, let’s keep this simple. An interesting answer I read on Quora states that, in broad terms, diplomacy refers to the art of skillfully and successfully achieving one’s political interests and strategic goals through negotiation, persuasion, and dialogue, while avoiding the use of force, violence, or warfare.

Whilst there is no fixed definition on what really constitutes as diplomacy, what I like about the aforementioned definition is that it simply lays out two main aspects; 1) achieving a certain political interest/strategic goal, and 2) it involves the means of negotiation, persuasion, and dialogues as a peaceful way for spreading ideas. More specifically, according to Rigalt (2017) diplomacy stresses 5 main time-worn aspects (or pillars): represent, negotiate, inform, protect and promote the interests of the State before third parties.

According to Ross (2011), traditionally, diplomatic engagement consisted largely of government-to-government interactions. In some instances, it was from government to people, such as with international broadcasting in the twentieth century. However, by harnessing the imminent rise of social media, diplomacy leveled up to a whole new realm and the term digital diplomacy was created. Broadly speaking, digital diplomacy refers to the use of social media to conduct diplomacy, an act to achieve state interests/goals and manage state’s image.

The concept itself has evolved to adjust to user’s behaviour. For instance, our participation online through viewing, posting, and even responding to online content has extended the realm for global information. We created an online frenzy of citizen journalism. We have become so active online that we are transforming not only ourselves and how we interact with the ones closest to us, but also in government-citizen relations. Thus, this paves a way for “Diplomacy 3.0”: forging alliances and participation with governments and civil society through the Internet.

Ross (2011) adds on by stating that this rapid digital revolution transformed the means for diplomacy in such a way that it creates direct links from people to government and from people to people. Ultimately, this allows citizens to influence their governments in ways that were not possible ten years ago. (see Adesina, 2017)

One Small Post for Man, a Giant Post for… Urban Development?

Without diving into heavy IR stuff, let’s talk about digital diplomacy in the context of urban development.

Incorporation of active and equal citizen participation in planning and development now constitutes as the epitome of urban development. The rapid use of technology and the internet has only accelerated the means for collecting new insights for local governments to better plan their cities. In the context of digital diplomacy, social media provides a platform for governments to attain data from the public through online participation, respond to the dynamics of urban development, whilst also shaping and defending it’s interest and image for public consumption in a cost-effective manner.

So you see, the practice of digital diplomacy in the context of urban development and welfare is everywhere. From online discourses on the latest controversial government policies, user-generated campaigns on Twitter on the Lombok disaster relief efforts, advocating for our workers overseas, promotion of nationalism though live-streams and winning posts during last month’s 2018 Asian Games, even Instagram stories on the latest awards and achievements by the government and its infamous representatives.

In Bandung, take for example the case of Pak Eko. The story of a man who became trapped in his own house as his neighbours gradually built their houses around his own, leaving no room for Pak Eko to access the nearest road. Whilst the problem started back in 2016, it was only recently when Pak Eko desperately posted his house for sale on social media below its NJOP due to its lack of road access. The comments from the online community vouched for sympathy for Pak Eko and the post became viral. So viral that not long it came to the attention of the local city government to take immediate action.

When Pak Eko first posted his house online, I can bet that never in his wildest dreams that he’d get such a response from the community and local government, let alone get his problem resolved in such a short amount of time. From this case alone, we can validate 3 important points, relevant to the essence of digital diplomacy.

  1. The response from the online local community proved to be immense. With people sympathizing on Pak Eko’s misfortune, coupled with another viral ‘Pak Eko sensation’ (though no correlation, but the timing is such coincidence, right?), the news spread quickly and implicitly pushed the local government to pitch in and lend a hand.
  2. Pak Eko got what he wanted (and more) in a very short amount of time, resolving a dispute that took years of fruitless trips back and forth to local state departments and negotiating with neighbours.
  3. The viral post signaled an opportunity for the local government and its representatives in (re-)shaping the desired image that the local government is responsive to what is happening to Pak Eko and other cases alike, when in actual fact, they’re 2 years late.

Remarks on Digital Diplomacy

As with anything, there’s always going to be a hitch to digital diplomacy. Or two.

The ethics on using the internet has always been a viscous debate. With digital diplomacy, it’s important to be aware that there are information that could be too personal or inappropriate to share online. Viral campaigns could be misleading or even false. Images of people and institutions might not be as they seem or only present what they want you to see. Comments on viral posts might not always be constructive for the general public. And of course, the list goes on.

What’s more dangerous is how the mentioned digital dilemmas could further transform our digital society, emphasizing on Ross’ (2011) take on the emergence of digital diplomacy. That our evolution in our digital participation and diplomacy practices could even an extent be contributing to why we can be so defensive (or even bigoted) in our ideas, changing our way of reading and responding to online information (see Sager, 2017)

Needless to say, I guess Spongebob did leave a good moral story behind his #943 episode. It was never about the existence of the community bulletin board, it was about us and how we behaved and, consequently, evolved with its presence, for the better or for worse.

Source

Social Media
Digital Diplomacy
Digital
Indonesia
Fitur

--

--

Seruni Fauzia Lestari
Kolektif Agora

Written by Seruni Fauzia Lestari

262 Followers
Editor for

Not sure if I’m interested in politics or just conspiracy theories and drama.

Help

Status

About

Careers

Press

Blog

Privacy

Terms

Text to speech

Teams