Elsa Hedling

The overarching aim of the book is to provide the first comprehensive account of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy and its dissemination through digital diplomacy. In contrast to other scholarly studies of digital diplomacy that tend to view it as a technological and apolitical device for online diplomatic communication, this book examines the specific political dynamics of digital diplomacy. It posits that digital diplomacy is a highly political practice and form of communication. The book offers an in-depth examination of the interdependent relationship between digital diplomacy and feminist foreign policy, with an empirical focus on Sweden. Additionally, it introduces a novel theoretical framework to analyse the political characteristics of digital diplomacy, emphasising the oscillation between antagonism and agonism at the intersection of feminist foreign policy and digital diplomacy. In sum, the book provides new theoretical and empirical knowledge of why, how, and in what ways power-political dynamics are produced, sustained, and transformed within the contexts of feminist foreign policy and digital diplomacy. While the focus centres on Sweden, the authors contend that their novel approach to examining the political dynamics of digital diplomacy and feminist foreign policy applies to other country case studies as well. This is an open access book.

This thesis explores the relationship between politics and new media in the context of digital diplomacy. In contrast to dominant mediatization approaches to politics that consider political logic to be dominated or even replaced by media logic, it develops a politics-centered approach where mediatization is considered an interinstitutional process. Using the case of the EU’s digital diplomacy, the thesis analyzes how practices of digital diplomacy have developed and are talked about among their practitioners. The conclusion is that mediatization of politics happens through an interaction of media logic and the hosting political context, where expectations, threats, leadership, resources, skills, learning, and individuals influence the practices where new media and diplomacy ultimately blends.