CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Ahmed, Sabrina |
|---|---|
| Title | Understanding the Scope of Digital Diplomacy in the European Union???s Normative Engagement with Human Rights Context in Third Countries |
| Summary | For decades, many scholars interested in EU foreign policy have focused on the EU’s normative power, which is important to conceptualize EU’s political identity in the international relations. As significant tools of communication, the emergence of internet and social media has added changes to the traditional way of foreign policy and diplomacy. The purpose of this research is to identify to what extent the EU is exploring digital tools (e.g. internet and social media) to diffuse its norms and values in third countries. More specifically, this research will critically assess the EU’s norms diffusion through the digital tools in the human rights context. As a case study, its digital engagement with Bangladesh would be analysed. Despite the fact that international actors such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAs) increasingly using digital tools – commonly known as digital diplomacy – very few scholars have studied this phenomenon in any great detail. Much recent literature over the EU’s normative engagement in human rights in third countries argues that there is a gap between its human rights norms and values and their actual implementation. In this research, I aim to improve on this state of affairs by investigating the EU’s digital engagement to promote its normative power. To this end, I engage in a qualitative content analysis of EU’s usage of social media in this policy field and reveal the nature of the EU’s current digital engagement with third countries human rights. Despite the presence of EU’s human rights clauses in the trade and development agreements, the third countries’ governments do not always observe these conditions. In these circumstances and based on the empirical data, this research proposes how digital diplomacy can potentially promote the EU’s human rights norms and values among the wider public. Since the EU has already recognized the importance of digital diplomacy in its external relations and communication with third countries, this research will examine why it is not essentially being utilized in human rights. Given the importance of normative power in human rights, the recommendations stem from the research findings that digital diplomacy can necessarily promote the EU’s normative image in human rights context, which is challenged in many ways and in many parts of the world. |
| Supervisor | Puetter, Uwe; Eckhardt, Jappe |
| Department | School of Public Policy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/ahmed_sabrina.pdf |
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