Whose reality is it anyway? The decline and fall of the common ground in public diplomacy

Public diplomacy scholars have argued that the strategic use of disinformation by nefarious states and non-state actors contributed to the decline of social media as a public diplomacy tool. Social media sites, once viewed as a tool to democratize and revolutionize diplomacy, are now viewed as a societal ill. Yet this article argues that many states contributed to this process. The reason being that digitalized public diplomacy activities shifted from online interactions to the creation and dissemination of mediated realities. As a result, social media became home to multiple and conflicting mediated realities while social media users began subscribing to very different depictions of reality, driving societal tensions. This article concludes by arguing that the study of digitalized public diplomacy must redefine public diplomacy as an attempt by diplomats and digital publics to reach an agreed upon definition of reality that they choose to act on. Moreover, it calls on scholars to conceptualize the middle ground as that place where diplomats and digital publics can express their different perceptions of reality and narrow gaps between conflicting perceptions of realities. This suggests that the practice of public diplomacy in the digital age should not focus on disseminating appealing narratives but on creating a shared definition of reality which is not divorced from other mediated realities such as the ones shared online by states, non-state actors and the media. Ultimately, public diplomacy in the digital age is a quest for meaning and collective sense making that can only emerge from open discourse.