Beyond Soft Power: The Rise and Fall of Turkey’s Twitter Public Diplomacy

• In Event: ICA Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Poster Session: Public Diplomacy Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This study follows up on the Uysal, Schroeder, and Taylor (2012)’s work on Turkey’s use of social media via Twitter as a means of public diplomacy. Turkey’s foreign policy has drastically changed since 2012 due to international changes that have occurred, such as the Syrian Refugee Crisis, the U.S.-led fight against ISIS, and the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. At the same time, domestic challenges such as the Gezi Park protests in 2013 and a failed military coup in July 2016, have led Turkey to drift away from the West. Five years later, this study follows up on Turkey’s current public diplomacy strategies and tactics through a qualitative content analysis of Twitter messages published by seven Turkish officials’ accounts between August 23 – November 1, 2017 N = 1,220). Applying Zaharna and Uysal’s (2015) four-quadrant model of framework to Twitter public diplomacy, this study contributes to the theorizing efforts in the new public diplomacy domain.

Authors

• Nur Uysal, DePaul U

• Jared Schroeder, Southern Methodist University