Public Diplomacy 2.0: The changing diplomatic communication in the age of social media

This study explores public diplomacy and its relation with social media within the natural evolutional process of diplomatic communication starting from the traditional diplomacy era until today. The study is constructed upon the main idea that public diplomacy has emerged as a result of traditional diplomacy's adaptation to a more complex international ecosystem including new non-state actors empowered by web 2.0 technology. The integration of public diplomacy and social media can be regarded an important progress for present day's diplomacy. However, with its all new norms and dialog-based nature, social media has become a challenge for diplomacy practitioners. In this study, six Twitter accounts of foreign embassies in Turkey have been analyzed from the perspective of Kent and Taylor's dialogic theory. The findings indicate that embassies use Twitter for informing purposes only, which is far from dialogic approach. Another finding is that avoiding dialog with their publics is a general attitude for all embassy accounts. Possible motives that interrupt the dialog between embassies and their publics are discussed according to the findings and previous studies on this subject. Key Words: Public diplomacy, diplomatic communication, dialogic communication, Twitter, embassy