Tag: Social Media

Social Media Musings, Southeast Asian Edition

Post author By
Post date 21/01/2011
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3172471924_4b9cc6bddc — Foreign policy: Still behind walls or more open to the people? photo: tbSMITH/flickr

As the highly contested treasure trove of the State Department WikiLeak just keeps giving and giving, an interesting and under reported cable came to light earlier this week. It had to do, quite unexpectedly, with the social media strategy of the US State Department and specifically, the US Embassy’s social media efforts in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Jakarta? You ask. Yes, interestingly enough the US mission in the growing Southeast Asian archipelago nation is the most active of all in this ‘new’ and rapidly evolving field of public diplomacy. With more than 300,000 ‘Likers’ on Facebook at present and an impressive presence on Twitter and Youtube, the US mission in Jakarta was in a push to get a significantly bigger budget for its social media outreach in advance of President Obama’s November 2010 visit, the leaked cable reveals. Although the cable reveals nothing particularly controversial, it gives interesting insights into the growing importance of social media in America’s outreach efforts in highly connected developing countries, particularly in Asia. It also provides insights into the growing, albeit not openly publicized, funding involved in spreading the message about the US, its leadership and about its policies in the region by directly and interactively reaching out to a younger generation, active on Facebook and other social media channels. And the strategy seems to be working- in less than a year, the number of Likers on their Facebook page has grown six-fold, from 50,000 to 300,000 and the number of Twitter followers from 1,000 to more than 16,000, with regular interaction from fans of both services.

This development begs a lot of interesting questions about the future of public diplomacy:

Are other diplomatic missions, even just other US missions around the world, taking note of the Jakarta Embassy’s success?

Is there something unique and special about the Indonesian environment where social media-focused outreach efforts find particularly fertile ground beyond Obama’s personal connection to the country?

Is the ‘soft power’ message that they are getting out uniquely suited to the kind of informal, multisensory interactivity that services such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube represent and do these provide a highly fertile new ground for such ‘persuasive’ activities and the building of soft power across the world?

Is social media changing the landscape of public diplomacy drastically and for good and what might its long-term effects be?

Does this finally bring foreign relations closer to the people and their concerns or is it simply a veil behind which business-as-usual continues (the highly fortified US embassy in Jakarta, seen above, is a powerful reminder of this metaphorical paradox)?

For more information on this fascinating topic, check out our recent ISN Insights package on E-Diplomacy and look out for an article coming up in February on the specific impact that social media is having on foreign relations.

Tags Politician, Diplomacy, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Internet, Public Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Social Media

The Politics of Twitter

twitter image — Shifting sands or a tool that is here to stay? Photo courtesy of Rosaura Ochoa/flickr

Barack Obama’s 2008 election campaign may still be the benchmark for the use of social media tools in politics, but some surprising new actors are embracing Twitter in particular in an effort to reach out to voters and citizens in a more personal and immediate way.

While leaders of ‘old Europe’ still seem quite reluctant to use the service (David Cameron, in his pre-prime minister days, once famously blurted out that “too many twits [it’s tweets, David] might make a twat”), politicians in South Asia are embracing the service as a means of reaching a very large number of citizens, very quickly.

Among them, Shashi Tharoor, the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and member of parliament, who tweets several times a day, even using his stream to respond to constituent concerns. He has also run into trouble for his tweets. Although this may have given his follower numbers a boost, the ability to reach and interact with 825,000+ followers in such a dynamic and instant way is a feat in itself and a potentially powerful tool for governance in an unwieldy country like India.

Why have leaders in the West not embraced this new form of instant interaction? Do they fear that they may say something unwise, even controversial on a service that is anything but forgiving in its immediacy, or do they fear the barrage of responses they may get to an unpopular comment? While Silvio Berlusconi’s PR people might have made a wise choice in keeping him from the service, it could prove powerful in narrowing the divide between the ‘rulers’ and the ‘ruled’ and in making politics more relevant to millions of politically apathetic young people.

Tags Government, Politics, Social Media, Politician, New Media

Web2.0 Revolución?

Post author By
Post date 11/05/2010
1 Comment on Web2.0 Revolución?

Hugo Chavez in Milano, courtesy of rogimmi/flickr

Recently, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez signed up on Twitter. I am sure that almost the whole IR community saw his appearance on the microblogging platform. Even though it was very surprising to see Chavez on what he used to call a “tool of terror” but now calls a “weapon that also needs to be used by the revolution,” no one took time to look thoroughly on what is going on on Chavez’s Twitter page.

The presence of Chavez on Twitter tells us the following facts about the Venezuelan’s president’s social media behavior:

He uses a Blackberry.
He’s following only five people: Diosdado Cabello R the Venezuelan secretary of Public Works and Housing, but also the country’s former interim president during the 47 hour-coup in 2002; Reflexiones de Fidel, the Cuban propaganda agency; his own political party PSUV; Tareck El Aissami, the newly appointed secretary of the popular power for justice whom father was the president of the Baathist party of Venezuela (and who, according to conspiracy theorists, has some ties with the Taliban); and Correo del Orinoco, the official press agency of the Venezuelan regime.
He has a ‘populist’ approach even on Web 2.0. His first tweets greeted his new followers. He has also engaged in strong political debate with some of his followers, which makes his Twitter page look more like an open forum than a Twitter account. Only six of his latest 40 tweets are actually proper ‘tweets’ and not reactions or direct interactions with other users.
His account is so popular that he has hired 200 “Twitter” specialists to manage it.

But if we look even closer the account, it is astonishing to see that he is interacting only with ‘new users’ or users that are only following him or other followers of Chavez. Plus these new users only interact with Chavez in a positive and eloquent way. A user even registered to warn him of a danger against his personal safety.

If we have this in mind and we are now aware that 200 specialists are there to ‘manage’ his Twitter account, it is realistic to assume that his team could be responsible for creating fake accounts and interacting with him in order to develop a positive and rather liberal approach of the use of Web2.0.

And if we quickly look at the numbers: 50,000 personal messages in 2 weeks mean that the specialists are handling approximately 17 messages per day. And I don’t believe that this is enough work for one person for one day.

So, Hugo Chavez on Twitter: Web 2.0 revolución or Venezuelan propaganda on a new platform?

Tags Journalism, Government, New Media, Technology, Social Media, Venezuela, Politician