Diplomacia digital, ¿Herramienta o consecuencia?

Digital diplomacy is one of the most relevant controversies in the new scenario of international relations ​(Bjola & Holmes, 2015)​. Many countries are joining to make this new trend of diplomacy visible, both to understand contemporary diplomacy and to globalize and bring the world closer in economic, social and political terms. Traditional diplomacy consists of representing, negotiating, protecting and promoting the interests of a state before third parties ​(Manfredi, 2014)​. 

However, around the emerging technologies and the digital era, this concept had to evolve, to use the technological media as tools, bringing the participation of new actors to the field of international relations, such as social networks and a better communication of the interests of the states. Likewise, atrocious consequences such as the security of private information and confidentiality ​(Cercel & Saftescu, 2015)​. 

Digital diplomacy, as its name suggests, is the evolution of contemporary diplomacy. In a globalized world like ours, technology is advancing quite rapidly, bringing with its new tools that help interaction between society and government actors such as foreign ministries ​(Cortés, 2016)​. This is the use of social networks and the web to achieve the objectives set in the action and foreign policy of a country. The advances of ICTs open possibilities to modify foreign policy and end the traditional monopoly imposed by the states ​(Gonzales, 2018)​. In other words, it proposes technology as the main tool to end the conventional system where the state, headed by a minimum of people who call themselves representatives of society, choose in the economic and political sphere what is most convenient for each country or state as the case may be ​(Sandre, 2015)​. 

However, digital diplomacy does not only bring benefits, this is where the controversy begins. Those actors involved in digital diplomatic processes tend to have less privacy due to the easy leakage of information​ (Duncombe, 2018)​. In addition to this, digital diplomacy generates problems in information management which can lead to conflicts ​(Tsvetkova, 2020)​. A clear example can be seen in the criticism of the United States’ foreign policy by a writer who writes articles on international diplomatic relations: They have information, but not knowledge, there is nothing relevant to the purposes of U.S. foreign policy ​(Pizarro, 2019)​. Therefore, it can be deduced that society becomes a fundamental actor in diplomatic processes, which allows the complete handling of information by people, which, being a double-edged sword, can generate disinformation accompanied by severe consequences, such as wars or economic imbalances in a country ​(Surma, 2016)​. 

Digital diplomacy marks a new era in international relations ​(Dizard, 2001)​. Information is flowing much faster than usual. Disinformation is one of the most serious problems generated ​(Dussán, 2017)​. On the other hand, the fact that society participates in foreign policy decisions is an event of supreme importance for social progress. People are given the opportunity to make themselves heard through the different tools on offer ​(Hernández, 2019)​. 

The panorama that we see today thanks to digital diplomacy is much more transparent and clean, where with a little citizen culture it is possible to create initiatives that help improve the different social sectors that are often not taken into account and that are the most affected by the decisions that are made ​(Rodríguez, 2018)​. Digital diplomacy should be seen as a tool to solve conflicts and to undertake alternatives that stimulate international relations, but not to deteriorate them, where society is just another participant and its opinion is valid, but at the same time does not slow down the good practices that contemporary diplomacy has already constituted.