Diplomats as Skilful Bricoleurs of the Digital Age: EU Foreign Policy Communications from the COREU to WhatsApp

What is it about?

The paper analyses how and to what effect diplomats navigate a landscape in which the physical and the digital have become inextricably intertwined, with a particular emphasis on written communications in the EU foreign policy system from 1970s to nowadays. First, by putting IR literature into dialogue with Management Studies in general and with media richness theory and sensemaking in particular, the paper looks at how diplomats work their way through different forms of digital written communications. Second, the paper addresses the effects of diplomacy’s digitalisation in terms of time, space and confidentiality. Digital tools have hastened diplomacy’s tempo and affected security considerations, while they have had mixed effects in terms of centre-periphery relations in diplomatic conversations, particularly for gender and wealth. The EU foreign policy system exemplifies these dynamics, from the spectacular rise of the COREU system to its decline in favour of faster, easier-to-use technologies, such as email and, more recently, texting.

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