In her PhD thesis titled “Blending Politics and New Media. Mediatized Practices of EU Digital Diplomacy”, Elsa Hedling explores the relationship between politics and new media through a study of digital diplomacy in the European External Action Service (EEAS). Mediatization, the assumption of omnipresent media logic that has permeated other social institutions such as politics, is a common approach to changing patterns in political communication, although still rarely associated with digital diplomacy. In contrast to dominant approaches to the mediatization of politics that considers political logic to be dominated or even replaced by media logic, this study gives greater emphasis to the role of the political context and its actors. In effect, attention is directed to the ways in which a diplomatic organization internalizes media logic.
Using the case of the EU’s digital diplomacy, the focus of the study is on how practices of digital diplomacy have developed and are talked about among their practioners. The empirical material consists of interviews in Brussels and observations of digital diplomacy practice. The study follows the development of digital diplomacy in the EEAS through three empirical snapshots that illustrate crisis management communication during the Ukraine crisis, responses to Russian disinformation since 2015 and the projection of the EU Global Strategy since 2016. It concludes that the mediatization of politics is concerned with the interaction of media logic (here new media logic) and the political context where expectations, threats, leadership, resources, skills, learning and individuals influence the practices in which the guiding logics of new media and diplomacy blend.
Blending Politics and New Media. Mediatized Practices of EU Digital Diplomacy