The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2014 27 Jesse Smith is a graduate student in national intelligence and security studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He was the Journal’s summer 2013 editorial intern. Digital technology, incorporating the most recent developments in social media and mobile applications, is having a profound effect on diplomacy. BY J ESSE SM I TH SUCCESS ANDGROWING PAINS: OFFICIAL USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AT STATE D iplomacy is a practice as old as nation-states themselves, but the way in which it is performed has changed continuously with time. When the United States and the Soviet Union squared off in the latter half of the twentieth century, using a telephone hotline and imagining what life was like on the other side of the Iron Cur- tain, few envisioned that only a few decades later technology wouldmake such a situation seemworlds away. It seemed similarly inconceiv- able that in 2013, social media and other digital technologies would give the Foreign Service and the public virtually limitless access to the lives of individuals and the actions of governments all over the world. On an informal level, the “blogosphere” is verymuch a part of themodern Foreign Service, particularly for those who joined the Service during the past decade and also for those serving in remote places, as The Foreign Service Journal has documented in past issues (March 2008, November 2009 and June 2011) .The American Foreign Service Association’s website features a comprehensive list of blogs bymembers of the Foreign Service community that a re updated regularly (see p. 30).This list is consistently one of the five most popular pages on the AFSA site. But digital technology—including themost recent develop- ments in social media andmobile applications, in particular—is having a profound effect on diplomacy at the formal, official level, as well.The newmedia technologies have already significantly altered how foreign affairs agencies represent themselves and publicize the policies they implement—to other governments and publics, as well as to potential employees. Social media allows more people inmore places than ever before to access suchmessages, and this has permanently reshaped how the State Department and other foreign affairs agencies organize themselves and staff their offices. While all six foreign affairs agencies represented by AFSA— and AFSA itself—maintain some formof social media presence, FOCUS SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE FOREIGN SERVICE