“A Digipolitical Rivalry Between Liberals and Conservatives for Social Media: Twitter, Threads and Twiplomacy of the US President Donald Trump”

Şeker C. T.

Digital Diplomacy: Trends & Features, İstanbul, Türkiye, 12 Ekim 2023

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Yayınlanmadı
  • Basıldığı Şehir: İstanbul
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
  • İstanbul Ticaret Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Abstract

The purpose of diplomacy, in simple definition, is to develop or strengthen the interest of the organization it serves by negotiating or cooperating with counterparts. Ancient diplomats used to meet for ad hoc diplomacy which had been replaced by permanent embassies in the modern world. Both ways of diplomacy were used to be carried out behind closed doors. However, public diplomacy like public relations, owing to mass media and communication, paved the way for a greater audience involved in relations. Despite this, public diplomacy, apparently, was the next stage of closed doors diplomacy as an upgraded level for modern society. However, digital diplomacy, which is put forward here as ‘the third stage of diplomatic history’, brought about a necessity to reach masses more quickly in the 21st century which became an age of digi political rivalry among nations, ideologies or related organizations. 45th President of the US Donald Trump’s twiplomacy, as argued in this study, pursued to display the will of a nativist policy orientation in the US against the globalist policy orientation in the very country. Twiplomacy, a term coined in the 21st century’s rapid growing social media world, has attracted growing attention by academic studies in recent years in order to examine changing ways of public and national relations. So, it is worth driving a picture of political rivalry between the Right and Left by focusing on a debate on social media giants, namely Twitter and Threads, that they are prone to censor some political posts whilst helping promote some others. This study does not aim at focusing on the impact of social media on international relations, rather aims at defining the ideological line, which already divides American political spectrum, now manifests ongoing rivalry via digi political landscape.

 

Key words: Digipolitic, twiplomacy, Donald Trump, America, Left, Right, ideology, social media, Twitter, Threads.