The role of the public diplomacy in digital communication: a comparative study of Turkey and the G8 countries

The aim of this doctoral thesis is to examine the digital communication activities and management of public diplomacy actors. With this purpose, digital communication activities of public diplomacy actors in Turkey and the G8 countries were compared within relational and transactional perspective and digital communication management of Turkish public diplomacy actors was examined. This study, which is a pioneer in digital diplomacy, is important to demonstrate the value of digital communication in public diplomacy. The ways in which digitalization contributes to the transformation of diplomatic activities and the theories that form policy and activities are among the the research questions of the study. In this context, it is aimed to reveal certain characteristics of Turkish digital diplomacy and to determine the impulses behind the conceptual change. The scope of the research is the digital channel of communication activities and public diplomacy actors in Turkey and the G8 countries. The shares held in the corporate Twitter account of Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency operating in Turkey (TIKA) and the accounts of the equivalent institutions of the G8 countries constitute the sample of the research. In the study of the data obtained in the research, the text mining method and R Project, an open source statistical analysis tool, were used. Firstly, social network analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between the institutions. Accordingly, in the matrix the German International Cooperation Agency (GIZ) has the largest density (24) and the least density is of the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA) (2) and the American International Development Agency (USAID) (2). The most frequently used words in the shares are determined and sentiment analysis is done. Finally, the most liked and re-shared Tweeter shares of the institutions were analyzed with the emotion analysis method, positive, negative and neutral expressions were determined. Accordingly, when the average sentiment analysis score of the most liked and shared tweet document from the shares of the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency corporate English Twitter account was analyzed, it was found that the share had a neutral average sentiment score. On the other hand, it is among the remarkable research findings that England, America, France and Italy focus on expressing positive emotions in the sharing of public diplomacy activities. The results of the research reveal that the institutions should realize their digital transformations as soon as possible, based on the long-term communication strategy, enabling the implementation of the single-center and diplomacy culture methods and tools on digital platforms.