From Targeting to Tailoring—The Two Stages of Public Diplomacy’s Digitalization

Marcus Holmes argues that the digitalization of public diplomacy can be influenced by two types of “change.” The first is gradual, bottom-up change in which the adoption of technologies by diplomats impacts a foreign ministry’s use of digital technologies. The second is abrupt, external bottom-down change that is caused by exogenous shocks. This chapter argues that the Crimean crisis of 2014 was an exogenous shock that had a dramatic impact on diplomats’ use of digital technologies. In its wake, diplomats’ implemented top-down changes to their digital communications including the development of new digital strategies for obtaining public diplomacy goals. This chapter offers a series of case studies from Canada, Russia, Israel, Iran and India that demonstrate the impact of the Crimean crisis on the digitalization of public diplomacy.