Intensification Cycle in Digital Diplomacy

Abstract

The path of the international system is driven by political, economic, and social developments. COVID-19 has been an influential and transformative crisis which has had a huge impact on the world order. It has highly affected international affairs, is capable of transforming the system and is one of the world’s major occurrences since the Second World War. The first impact has been that the crisis has forced all areas of public and private life into a rapid digitization process. In fact, the process had started before the pandemic, but the COVID-19 crisis triggered the transition process at an extraordinary intensity. As in a variety of other sectors, digital diplomacy has been highly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, which has brought momentum to the digitalization process of diplomacy. This paper analyzes digital diplomacy in the digital age, with a focus on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The research uses a theoretical framework that clarifies the distinctions between traditional and new public diplomacy. The article addresses the process of diplomacy responding to the new normal requirements in terms of technical impact. It provides an overview of the digitalization process of diplomacy, which was intensified by the pandemic, and examines the post-coronavirus global trends in terms of potential assumptions.