Comparative analysis of digital diplomacy strategies in Russia and the USA

Governments on Twitter

Twitter has a high popularity among politicians. According to Twiplomacy study, 187 out of all 193 UN members (97%) have official presence on Twitter (Lьfkens, 2018). The study identifies 951 accounts referred to governments' agencies or state representatives (ibid.). Twiplomacy study examines governments' and countries' leaders' activities on popular social media sites since 2012. It has given the name to all public diplomacy activities conducted via Twitter and other social media. Twitter “has given [politicians] a voice and connection to millions of people that the distorted prism of the mainstream media denied” (as cited in Lьfkens, 2012). Thus, it provides an opportunity to directly with audiences. Twitter assumes more participatory character of communication through comments, reposts or direct mentions through hashtags.

Obama the former US President was the first on Twitter among governments' leaders. He set up the account in 2007 when he had not been the President yet. During Obama's presidential term the institutional Twitter account for the US President [POTUS] was created. In contrast to Obama, who used POTUS during his tenure instead of his personal twitter [BarackObama], Trump mostly communicate with the audience within his personal twitter [realDonaldTrump]. At the same 2007 the US State Department [StateDept] came online on Twitter. Different states like Japan [Japan] or Mexico [EPN] registered their accounts the same year but they remained inactive till the middle of 2010s. The most governments' representatives registered on the platform between 2009 and 2015 (Lьfkens, 2018).

In twitterverse “The cyberspace area of twitter. This naturally extends beyond twitter.com to anywhere you can twitter, which includes cell phones.” (BrianBenjaminCarter, 2018) governments prefer to use institutional accounts; the case of Trump is rather an exception than a rule. There are only few other world leaders who manage their Twitter accounts by themselves, besides Donald Trump and Barack Obama, there are Norway's Prime Minister [Erna_Solberg], European Council President [DonaldTusk] and few others (Lьfkens, 2017). But the use of personal channels instead of institutional ones could create problems as in Trump case. Trump is widely criticized for the undiplomatic use of Twitter and in that way, he creates challenges for his own administration who needs to resolve or mitigate these miscommunication failures. For example, The Trump's tweet about Golan Heights in 21^st of March 2019 (Trump, 2019) surprised not only Israel but the State Department and the Trump's own Middle East peace team (Wilner, 2019). Due to the Trump's tweet, the White House were forced to make an official decision to recognize that Golan Heights belongs to Israel (Wilner, 2019).

As states use institutional accounts to attract attention and to increase virality of their content, they create new accounts to cover specific policy or a region. The case in point is German Foreign Ministry which started new 12 thematic and regional Twitter channels in order to “to promote transparency, further raise the profile of German foreign policy” (Federal Foreign Office, 2018). As suggested in Twiplomacy study (2018), the benefits of accounts with an institutional handle are two-fold. First, a channel will remain regardless of the person in tenure. Second, it allows institution to create more targeted accounts.

Twiplomacy study conducted by BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe 2018) researched governments participation on social media and to reveal the most followed, connected and effective world leaders and governments' agencies on Twitter. Matthias Lьfkens, argues that Donald Trump changed the way states use social media. Due to Trump's assertiveness and activity on Twitter, the tone of discourse in the Internet changed (Lьfkens, 2018). He changes public perceptions about Twitter as a source of reliable info. Now the governments which ignore or do not spent enough time and resources on digital communication risk to miss out in the global Internet. Trump has become the most followed leader with 52 million followers in 2018 (In April 2020 the audience of Trump exceeds 73 million). The second most followed leader is Pope Francis [Pontifex] he has almost 50 million followers across his nine language channels. There is no any Russian politician who could be in top-10, however, Vladimir Putin, who is not presented on the platform, is in top-10 politicians by the number of mentions (Filadelfo, 2019). The State Department [StateDept] has the most followed Twitter account with more than 5 million followers. On the second place is the Foreign Ministry of Saudi Arabia [KSAMOFA] with 2 million followers. Russian Foreign Ministry within its Russian-language page [MID_RF] concludes top-5 with 1 million followers. The number of mutual connections between states' Twitter channels is a good indicator of the state of relationships between countries (Lьfkens, 2018). Moreover, it provides the opportunity to spread messages directly to a certain government.

The top-3 best connected channels on Twitter are External Action Service [eu_eeas], Foreign Office of the UK [foreignoffice] and the English-language page of the Foreign Ministry of Russia [mfa_russia]. The number and quality of mutual connections are not just meaningless statistics, but it might be considered as an indicator of relationships. For example, in May of 2015 the US State Department and Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs started following each other on Twitter while officially the re-establishment of diplomatic relations happened only two months later. Still it is questionable whether tweets and other gestures on Twitter like following or likes should be interpreted as official statements. Twitter diplomacy is a daily routine of governments and states cannot afford to ignore it. The next section explores the use of Twitter by states to conduct public diplomacy.

Twitter as a tool of public diplomacy

Twitter as an instrument of digital diplomacy is used to conduct public diplomacy. It speeds up the spread of information, it has two-fold consequences. The case in point is the Trump's tweet (Trump, 2018) within which he cancelled appointment with Putin before and without official statement. On the one hand, this decision confused Russian authorities who considered this way of communication disrespectful, they expected any formal confirmation of the Trump's words (Zabrodin, Laru, Postnikova, & Izotov, 2018). On the other hand, this tweet informed the entire Twitterverse about this decision of Trump almost immediately. The case of Trump's recognition of Golan heights on Twitter discussed in the previous section also shows that fast spread of information caused problems with further resolution (Wilner, 2019). Twitter diplomacy assumes that users can reach large audiences. Followers see a post immediately after its publication. The use of hashtags and mentions of other users significantly increase the number of views.

From the constructivist perspective, Twitter is a meaning-making and identity construction tool of governments. They employ it to enhance country's image and present themselves as global superpowers or regional leaders, allies or rivals, As the social theory of IR suggests, these representations are not based on de facto relationships between countries, but rather on perceptions about these relationships and each other. The country's activities on Twitter influence perceptions of others about one own image. Nation-branding is one of the key elements of digital diplomacy, aiming to favorably position the country on the international arena and facilitate a productive and mutually beneficial relations with other countries. In 2015 the US State Department supported the LGBT rights campaign, by replacing the US profile image on Twitter with a picture of the rainbow flag. Manor (2019) argued that it was one of attempts to recover the global image, which was damaged by the aggressive politics toward the Middle East in 2000s, as a democratic country that supports LGBT rights and human rights.

Twitter is chosen because of the following reasons. Firstly, it is freely available in all the countries of the world, besides several exceptions like China or North Korea. Secondly, the platform is the most popular social media network among politicians and governments (Lьfkens, 2018). Twitter is a reliable source of information because of its news-friendly character. Within the growing popularity of Twitter among politicians, they more consciously use the tools, create thematic channels and try to engage with the audience. By using Twitter governments have a capacity to influence and construct identities, moreover by filling up the information space they facilitate the process of country's image enhancement and counter disinformation.

Conclusion

This study relates to the research area that focuses on digital diplomacy by placing it within the field of public diplomacy and examining Twitter diplomacy as one of the instruments of digital diplomacy. As instrument of foreign policy, public diplomacy focuses on influencing foreign audiences. Constructivists understand public diplomacy as a power that influences identity construction of others by promoting the image of the country. At the same time promoted image is the reproduction of country's identity which defines national interests and based on the ideas and values. The findings from the first chapter suggest that governments, to enhance global perceptions about the state and to remain competitive with new actors like non-governmental organizations and terrorist groups in the information space, implement digital technologies in their public diplomacy practices. The early pioneers of digital diplomacy, the scholars who studied public diplomacy (Cull, 2008; Melissen, 2005; Nye, 2008), identify that, due to the digitalization of society, web platforms, social media sites and mobile apps had become the usual instruments in governments' practice of public diplomacy, so digital diplomacy is based on public diplomacy. The general purposes of modern digital diplomacy are to be presented in the information space in order to control information flow.

Although the studies mentioned above are mostly theoretical, the evolution of techniques and tactics used by governments are also examined by the scholars (Gregory, 2011; Tsvetkova, 2015). The current academic scholarship mostly examines countries' digital diplomacy strategies in a regional context (Shahin & Huang, 2019) or focus on a particular country, like the US (Cull, 2013) or Palestine (Manor, 2015), the embassies' activities (Dodd & Collins, 2017; Shahin & Huang, 2019; StrauЯ et al., 2015), the countries MFA's activities towards each other (Manor, 2015), one specific activity like engagement (Collins et al., 2019; Ittefaq, 2019) or one event (Manor & Crilley, 2018). Thus, there is a lack of studies examined digital diplomacy strategy in the global context, i.e. the strategy of MFA in general without binding to the event. This thesis by contrast aims to explore multilateral digital diplomacy on Twitter by looking how states communicate with wider audiences and a variety of different state and non-state actors in the global information space.

There are a few studies which examine certain social media campaigns of the US government agencies (Khatib, Dutton, & Thelwall, 2012; Љimunjak & Caliandro, 2019). Just a few authors conduct a comparative analysis of countries activities on Twitter or in the Internet, in general. Manor (2015) focuses on Russia's MFA and the US' State Department digital diplomacy on Twitter but examine them towards each other not in the global context. Finally, none of the aforementioned studies do not clearly identify strategy of any current digital diplomacy campaign. The researchers formulate recommendations of perfect information campaigns (Collins & Bekenova, 2019) or examine the influence of country's activities on social media sites on the foreign audience (Spry, 2018). This research attempts to fill this gap and identify what digital diplomacy strategy is, which the next chapter is about.

public digital diplomacy twitter

2. Research Question and Methods

The thesis aims to identify and describe Twitter strategy of multilateral digital diplomacy and compare these approaches between the USA and Russia. This research analyzes Twitter strategies of the Russian MFA and the US State Department.

The research question is what digital diplomacy strategies the US and Russian governments employ and how different their approaches are. Specifically, the research explores key Twitter communications' purposes, their geographic captures and historical focus. The research covers the countries' activities on Twitter over a period of three months, from January to March in 2020. And aims to explore the following questions:

How two governments use their accounts? What information do they post there? What events do they discuss and how? What are direct implications of these communication efforts for digital diplomacy? What functions of diplomacy (promotion vs relationship-building) do these efforts pursue?

To address these questions the paper employs a comparative analysis focusing on how the US' and Russian approaches are similar and different. It allows to outline major similarities and differences between digital diplomacy strategies of two countries. To obtain the information necessary for the comparison the research employs mixed-method approach. First, to explore the background of both countries, including foreign policy interests, the level of digital diplomacy development, the paper uses document analysis. To identify national interests on which foreign policy based the paper focuses on the 2017 National Security Strategy of the US (President Donald J. Trump, 2017) and the 2016 Concept of Foreign policy of Russia (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2016) as documents which determines global foreign policy goals for the countries. To explore the level of the development of digital diplomacy the study examines the information on official websites of the State Department of the US (https://www.state.gov/) and Russian Foreign Ministry (https://www.mid.ru/). However, not all information needed is available online, for example the instructions of social media usage for the staff is public only for the US (Department of State, 2018b, 2018a) but Russia.

To answer the research question the thesis employs content analysis of 1243 Twitter posts dated from January to March of 2020 and collected in the 1^st April of 2020 from official accounts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia (English language version) [mfa_russia] and the State Department of the United States [StateDept]. These agencies are the first government agencies which are responsible for countries' foreign policy, so they determine, conduct and present governments' global foreign policy strategy. They also represent countries' approach to conduct digital diplomacy, because under digital and public diplomacy departments are under command of these agencies in both countries. The English-language versions were chosen because English language audience is the biggest one in the Internet (T. M. Devlin, 2019), so it provides the possibility to target the world audience.

Content analysis of Tweets allows a research to explore key topics, cultural and political references and mentions of specific persons, events or issues. Digital and Twitter diplomacy scholars frequently use content analysis to explore public relations message strategies and public diplomacy 2.0 (Dodd & Collins, 2017), the effectivity of Twitter communication strategies (Kuџniar & Filimoniuk, 2017), “technosocial” performance of national identity on Twitter of the US (Shahin & Huang, 2019). The research employed a web-browser extension for Chrome NCapture to capture all tweets posted by the US State Department and Russia's MFA during the study period and to import it into NVivo as a dataset for a focused content analysis. NCapture allows to collect up to 5000 most recent tweets. From January to March of 2020 mfa_russia posted 610 Tweets and StateDept published 633 posts. Posted in English, these tweets explicitly outreached to the global public-making this content suitable to explore multilateral diplomacy.

The chosen period, from January to March of 2020, is not random. As research aims to examine the most actual strategies the last three months are taken. Three months is enough period to identify the typical strategy for two countries. The number of tweets, 1243 for both countries, is the quantity which could be manually analyzed within qualitative content analysis by the author of this research. The thesis mainly focuses on analysis of text messages excluding visual information and links to the third-party websites, because the general message, the gist, is presented in the text of posts, while pictures, videos and third-party links serve as illustration of the text or evidence of the facts there. As paper focuses on the content of textual information of the posts, the number of likes, retweets and comments remained outside of the research focus as well. The original tweets produced only by the MFA and the State Department, 1243 in total, constitute the main research sample.

The content analysis included several stages. First, it aimed to identify several key categories and code all tweets accordingly. The differences of presented topics suggest that countries use different themes to represent themselves to the audience. That is why frame analysis is employed to explore what exact ideas the US and Russia use on Twitter. Initial reading of tweets helped to distinguish among contents that could be coded according to the following topics: defense, cooperation, values, achievements, etc. Further identified frames are compared with foreign policy goals examined during document analysis.

The analysis also sought to understand how different coding categories complemented or reinforced each another. Comparison between Tweets content of two countries revealed significant differences in how the US and Russian governments captured and discussed different geographies and histories of their foreign policy agenda, key objectives and interests. This difference led to the second stage of the content analysis during which all Tweets were coded across 2 key categories: 1) geopolitics and 2) historical references. To conduct geographical mapping the paper introduces the method consisted of two parts. First, the author identifies all countries in respect of which a country is interested, so if there is mention of the country without negative connotation in a tweet it is counted as subject of interest, for negative ones the different category is used. For example, the first tweet of the Russian MFA is counted as the category of interest (positive or neutral), while the second one as subject of conflict relationship between countries (negative):

1) #Lavrov: India is the third largest #energy consumer in the world, while Russia is one of the world's key producers of hydrocarbons. The strategic interests of our countries in this area coincide. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020, January 15).

2) .@SecPompeo: #Iran is the world's number one state sponsor of terror--and the world's largest state sponsor of anti-Semitism. (Department of State, 2020, February 29).

Russia and the US are counted for Russia and the US respectively in case of the post covers internal issues, because as the tweets belong to the foreign policy of the country, the US for example, it is default that they are centered of the US foreign policy, while the coverage of internal issues is unusual for the agency which focuses on foreign policy issues. Second, the number of occurrences in posts is counted for each country in both categories. Based on the collected data the author of the research creates four maps for the US and Russia, two for each of the countries, within the help of online-app Datawrapper.

Finally, to identify historical references implemented by countries the research uses the following method. If a post includes mention of any historical data then the year is counted, for anniversary of some events the year of the original event is taken, for historical personality the year of death is counted, if nothing else like the data of event related to this person is mentioned. All tweets which includes reference to the future are counted as one category `the future', even though there are few which include the exact data. The paper considers the rest of the tweets, without definite reference to the past or future, as those belong to the present. Then the author counts the number of tweets for each category, for the `past' category the number of tweets for each year mentioned is counted, and creates timeline independently for each country.

Focused comparison of tweets across these categories, geopolitical and historical perspectives, helped to identify national strategies of Twitter communications as well as their implications for digital and public diplomacy of both countries.

3. Digital Diplomacy Strategies of the US and Russia

This chapter introduces the empirical part of the research. Today Russia and the US experience a decline in global perceptions of them. As the governments identify this problem, they make efforts to restore country's image in the world, so they attempt to develop digital diplomacy governance. It is important to understand motivate digital diplomacy practices of both countries, in what background they operate and what they do to enhance their perceptions in the global information space. Despite the differences in the historical development of public and digital diplomacy between two states, the modern approach to organize digital diplomacy practices is quite similar. Conducting digital diplomacy, the US and Russia have the same purposes: to improve country's image by promoting national identity and filling the information space with favorable image. Further analysis explores how exactly the US and Russia aim to achieve this goal. The last section implements comparative analysis of two dimensions used in digital diplomacy strategy by Russia and the US, geopolitical and historical perspectives.

3.1 US Digital Diplomacy

Digital diplomacy developments

The National Security Strategy (President Donald J. Trump, 2017), issued in 2017 aims to restore country's respect abroad and rebuild confidence in economic and political system at home. The Strategy explicitly refers to cyber threats urging the country to defend national interests in the digital information space. The time when Hillary Clinton took the office of Secretary of State and established the Innovation Office with Alec Ross as Senior Advisor, the us government took digital diplomacy seriously. However, it was not effective, especially in their attempts to counter the information war with Russia and China (Bole, 2018). The Internet is effectively used by authoritarian regimes to spread fake news and disinformation (Manor, 2019).The Trump's administration aimed to address these problems.

In spring 2019, the US State Department experienced a big structural change, a merger of the Bureau of Public Affairs and the Bureau of International Information Programs (Morello, 2019). The latter one was responsible for domestic branch of public diplomacy and worked with local audience, while the former one broadcasted for foreign publics. Assistant Secretary of new bureau, Michelle S. Giuda, explains the necessity of these changes (Morello, 2019):

We've got an increasingly complex communications landscape. Same thing when it comes to foreign policy. And we have to be able to adapt, to lead, to thrive and communicate American values and American foreign policy in that type of environment.

New Bureau of Global Public Affairs (GPA) aims to communicate American foreign policies both domestically and abroad. GPA directly reports to the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs and consists of several offices. The Office of Global Social Media maintains the Department's official presence on social media; the Office of Global Web Platforms runs the Department's official website (https://www.state.gov/). The creation of new bureau is more than a structural change, it is a part of the US strategic approach to counter disinformation campaigns of Russia and China (Morello, 2019). It is interesting that the merger was already needed a few years ago but was not possible partly because of Smith-Mundt statute which limits the State's interference in the media governance (Morello, 2019). However, the digital age removes boundaries between local and foreign publics.

It demonstrates new governmental approach to conduct public and digital diplomacy, which is core to success of State Department, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said (Morello, 2019). However, only the State Department's social media account is under control of the Bureau, while other institutions, including embassies and state missions, independently manage their own channels. This allows state's institutions to tailor their messages more effectively to their audiences while escaping unnecessary bureaucratization. However, this independence sometimes leads to troubles. In 2012 US embassy staff member in Cairo tweeted a message expressing his solidarity with protesters over anti-Muslim video while this clashed with official position of Washington to reject violent protests (Cull, 2018). To prevent such accidents there are several acts which provide instructions for public affairs officers to communicate US' foreign policy goals.

The Department of State defines basic rules of social media usage by Department's employees and staff of other governmental agencies both for official and personal usage (Department of State, 2018a). For example, all employees should avoid publication of personal objections in official accounts, and when they post on their own behalf they should follow ethic norms described in the same instruction (Department of State, 2018b). The other document provides information about the content and the way of publication information in official government accounts. It also determines the planning rules for digital strategy in terms of official following of foreign missions and bureaus. They “should set goals, determine the objectives that will advance those goals, define a mechanism for creating a common narrative and voice, establish measurements of success, and ensure proper management and oversight structures are in place” (Department of State, 2018a). Moreover, the message which governments' agencies communicate to the foreign publics should correspond with the US' national interest and effectively project diplomatic and development work (Department of State, 2018a).

According to National Security Strategy (President Donald J. Trump, 2017) the information space is a field of competition between the US and its rivals. The Strategy also sets a goal to promote American prosperity by recovering economy and preserving the lead in IT and research sector. The US aims to protect allies and partners from domination of one power (except the US itself) by using all available tools, including public diplomacy to “adhere to American values and expose adversary propaganda and disinformation” (p.35). Promoting America's influence in the world as a positive force which can help developing countries to achieve prosperity, Trump seeks to advance the US position in the world (National Security Council, 2017). The United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (ACPD) annually submits the report on Public Diplomacy where it analyzes mistakes, challenges and opportunities and recommends new policies. The most recent report suggested that the new Bureau of Global Public Affairs “should strengthen its ability to frame U.S. policies and breaking events accurately with foreign and domestic audiences” to increase understanding of American foreign policy and values (Walker & Baxter, 2019). Considering the decline in global perceptions of the US and objectives stated in National Security Strategy, one of the US goals in the information space is to promote the country, its values and achievements. The next section explores how this is done in digital diplomacy practice.

Digital diplomacy strategy as a part of National Security Strategy

Some scholars argue that American approach to carry out digital diplomacy is strategic and strongly corresponds to key foreign policy issues (Collins et al., 2019). The US government dynamically revisions digital diplomacy tools and strategies to reflect current foreign policy goals. The tweets of the State Department are mostly the extracts from media briefings, TV reportages, interviews. The posts are event-centered and connected with the mainstream activities of the US foreign policy. For example, when the US embassy in Baghdad had been attacked on 27^th of December, almost all tweets of the day discussed this accident and provided information about governments position and activities to deal with the problem. By doing so the State Department fills the information space with pro-American views as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo [SecPompeo] is quoted “America is a force for good in the world” (Department of State, 2020, January 24a). The idea of American power and its good intentions runs like a red thread throughout all tweets over the chosen period.

The Strategy outlines four pillars of American policy: 1) Protection the homeland, the American people, and American way of life; 2) Promotion of American prosperity; 3) Preservation of peace through strength; 4) Advancing American influence. In National Security Strategy (President Donald J. Trump, 2017) Trump argues that Russia and China, North Korea and Iran as well as transnational terrorist and criminal organizations present the main threats to the US: “[they] challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity […] to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence” (p. 2). The US Twitter diplomacy reproduces this statement: top-3 countries by number of tweets to which the US demonstrate rival relationships are Iran, China and Russia (Table 2). Following the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad State Department quotes Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Twitter “The Islamic Republic of #Iran remains the world's largest state sponsor of terror” (Department of State, 2020, January 31d).

Table 1. The US Conflict Relationships. Top-5

The defense of American citizens is put first by the government. That is why the one of key topics presented is the defense. With this idea the US could demonstrate its power by using it for protection of people and therefore make itself look good. The US identifies the threat and claims to defend its citizens, citizens from other countries and the whole world from different kind of threats: terrorists, theft of intellectual property and recent health threat of COVID-19. In view of the attack on US embassy attack in Baghdad the topic of terrorists' threat becomes particularly relevant. Thus, Trump by explaining the assassination of Qassem Soleimani in January claims that “The American people should know we [the government] will always defend them” (Department of State, 2020, January 6a). According the State Department another threat is coming from China which steals intellectual property from the US (Department of State, 2020, January 14a). In the State of the Union Address 2020 Trump claims that the US “will defend our workers, protect our intellectual property” (Department of State, 2020, February 5). The next topic is health protection for American citizens in the face of COVID-19. The State Department demonstrate the readiness to undertake efforts to assist its citizens in the situation of biological menace:

There is no higher priority for the State Department than the health and safety of U.S. citizens overseas. The Department is working closely with @CDCgov and @HHSGov to combat the spread of #COVID19 and assist all U.S. citizens affected. (Department of State, 2020, February 19a)

By promoting the idea of the defense of their own citizens the US constructs the identity of the nation which cares about people, protect them from dangers, assist in emergency cases and defend them if being attacked. At the same time the US declares the intention to protect people of non-American citizens, people of Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Venezuela and others. For example, in the context of attack on the US embassy in Baghdad in December of 2019 the State Department quotes the words of the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “the decisive defensive action President @realDonaldTrump took this past week to prevent terrorist activity and save Iraqi and American lives” (Department of State, 2020, January 6b). Moreover, America's ambitions are global, as Mike Pompeo is quoted “America is a force for good in the world” (Department of State, 2020i). The US foreign policy is not explained on Twitter as a policy in only the US' interests, but as activities for the world's good “.@SecPompeo: It's very clear the world's a safer place” (Department of State, 2020, January 6c). Thus, the US creates an identity of defender, country which is ready to protect its citizens, citizens of allies and make the world the safer place.

Trump's presidency promotes the key message “America first”. In National Security Strategy (President Donald J. Trump, 2017) Trump argues that the US offers the positive example to the world “America's commitment to liberty, democracy, and the rule of law serves as an inspiration for those living under tyranny” (p. 4). The US represents itself as carrier and promoter of democratic values, creates the image of free country which supports the fundamental freedoms and human rights. Digital diplomacy strategy through promoting democratic values and human rights by the State Department proves that. The State Department demonstrates the support of Venezuela's re-elected democratic president, Juan Guaidу, “When Venezuelan interim President @jguaido came to the United States, he found support for #Venezuela at every stop. The United States stands with the Venezuelan people, the democratically elected National Assembly, and interim President Juan Guaidу” (Department of State, 2020, February 24a). In addition to that, the US expresses support for those who stand up for human rights in protests in Hong Kong (Department of State, 2020, January 7a). The State Department also protects women rights by announcing “WomensHistoryMonth” (Department of State, 2020, March 3b). One more point is the call for an end of human trafficking (Department of State, 2020, January 11a). The important topics of State Department's tweets are religious freedom and freedom of speech, “We pray for a day when Cuban, Venezuelan, Chinese, Iranians and all peoples can speak and assemble freely without fear of their own governments” (Department of State, 2020, March 16). These posts illustrate how the US constructs its identity as a country which shares fundamental freedoms, human rights and democracy and cares about those who is subject to restrictions on the rights.

The Americans are born with the idea of exceptionalism, and the domestic audience favors the message. However for the rest of the world, it proves to be confusing and disrespectful (Wallin, 2017). Adversaries are not interested in leadership and domination of the US and the assertive Trump foreign policy decreases the US soft power (Mcclory, 2019). The specialists from USC Center on Public Diplomacy raise the same concerns. American efforts to project messages of freedom, human rights and universal truth are not positively perceived by foreign publics due to nationalist policies of Trump, including those directed against immigrants (Hare, 2020; Manor, 2017).

There is one more topic: the idea of cooperation, a call for joint efforts from the US. National Security Strategy (President Donald J. Trump, 2017) states “Together with our allies, partners, and aspiring partners, the United States will pursue cooperation with reciprocity” (p. 4). The posts of State Department's twitter represent the country's desire to work together with the states which ready to make efforts to deal with the problems: “…The U.S. will continue close cooperation with our European partners on issues of mutual concern, such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, DPRK, and China” (Department of State, 2020, January 7b). In the face of today crisis due to COVID-19 the tweet which highlights the US cooperation with G7 “President @realDonaldTrump and the other #G7 leaders are working together to accelerate our response to #COVID19, forcefully address the economic impact of the outbreak, and restore and expand growth” (Department of State, 2020, March 17). Last, but not least there are messages about US' aid and support for the countries which faced different kind of challenges such as forest fires in Australia (Department of State, 2020, January 11b) or humanitarian assistance to combat COVID-19 spread (Department of State, 2020, March 20).

The US aims to strengthen its positions on the international arena, to keep its leadership in economy, politics and in the global information space. The US government strives to overcome internal crises and develop a new policy. Considering the decline in global perceptions of the US, digital diplomacy of the country aims to increase it by promoting state's values and foreign policy in the global information space. To achieve that the State Department [StateDept] employs universal American values like freedom, human rights, democracy. The US stresses the idea of its global leadership and power to protect people and human rights. The US' government positions itself as the world savior in the context of counter-terrorism. Much attention is paid to democratic values and human rights. By underlying its own activities or calling for action of other countries the US demonstrate the support of fundamental freedoms and intention to spread democratic ideas. The main topics through which the US build its image on Twitter are presented in the National Security Strategy, so digital diplomacy strategy corresponds with the global foreign policy strategy. By conducting digital diplomacy, the state aims to present itself in the most favorable way and contribute to the state's global image.

3.2 Digital Diplomacy of Russia

Digital diplomacy developments

After the collapse of USSR Russian public diplomacy developed from the ground up because a new state aspired to adopt more democratic methods, different from those used in the soviet era. In the first decade of 21st century Russian public diplomacy promoted traditional channels such as media agencies Russia Today, Russkiy mir and others. Despite the fact that public diplomacy as a foreign policy tool was mentioned in the foreign policy strategy, in 2012 there was little understanding in the government about the goals of public diplomacy and effective ways to conduct it (Dolinsky, 2012). In 2012 Putin (2012) published an article where he mentioned the concept of soft power and public diplomacy not as factors of attraction but factors of influence which could be used by actors mostly to promote nationalism, terrorism and extremism. He also believed that public diplomacy could be used to disinform, referring to Arab spring social media revolution. Joseph Nye, the author of the soft power theory criticized Russia about for its misunderstanding of the term. He argued that Russia was not able to project an attractive image because it did not encourage its private sector and civil society to take an active role in communicating on the global stage (Nye, 2013). Thus, in Russia the realization of importance of soft power and necessity of public diplomacy development came in the early 2010s. The appropriate issues emerged in Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation only in 2013 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2013).

Dmitry Medvedev, the third Russian president, launched his personal twitter account in 2010 when he visited Silicon Valley. He was a pioneer for other politicians in Russia, for his activity in the blogosphere people in Russia and abroad called him “Blogger-in-Chief” (Sanovich, 2017). Then in 2013-14 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched its Facebook and Twitter profiles. Rossotrudnichestvo and Russian thinktanks like the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) went online as well. These practices however were not structured and reflected personal initiative of the heads of particular agency organizations. Konstantin Kosatchev (the head of Rossotrudnichestvo) stated that the problem is also that “the real Russia is better than its image”, he believed that it is caused by foreign countries which tried to discredit Russia (Kosatchev, 2014).

In the US, the Russian approach to manage online communications usage was considered as a weaponization of the Internet by contrast to digital diplomacy. Russian media expert, Peter Pomerantsev, said that since the end of 2000s while talking about information government specialists used weaponized terms like to demoralize, blackmail or subvert (Reston, 2017). The freedom of Internet in comparison to offline government-controlled traditional media channels was supported by Russian government until the end of Medvedev's presidency. Then the government took advantage of the Internet developments and started use algorithms and created so called bots and trolls which might be a real army on the information battleground (Sanovich, 2017). A fast development of digital diplomacy practices in Russia, led to up ranking of Russia from 14^th place in 2012 to the fourth place in 2017 (Shakirov, 2018). As expert on digital diplomacy Oleg Shakirov suggests Russian digital diplomacy in last few years developed enough to compete with pioneers in the sphere like the US, France and Great Britain (Shakirov, 2018). Still Russian approach to conduct public diplomacy might be characterized as assertive and coercive which aims to influence and counteract more than attract and engage. Though it would be hardly possible to pretend to be gentle and soft while gaining power and doing activities that suggest otherwise.

Today there is no systemic governance of public diplomacy in Russia. Partly the Information and Press Department (IPD) and, in particular, the Department of Digital Diplomacy implement the management function and run the main social networks of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Head of the Department of Digital Diplomacy, Sergey Nalobin, said that the main goal of the Russian digital diplomacy is to counter disinformation and offer global audiences a counter opinion, so “digital diplomacy is strategic element in the information war” (Nalobin, 2017). There is not unique guide for public diplomacy or digital diplomacy initiatives. However, Maria Zakharova, the Head of the Information and Press Department, in one of the interviews mentioned that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expect diplomats to follow formal recommendations in their use of social media for (Chernenko, 2018). These guides, however, are not publicly available. It is also could be the case of non-existence of these instructions that might be a matter of personal instructions shared through a face-to-face communication.

Russian digital diplomacy has received a boost to development recently, now it could be characterized as well equipped with technologies. Despite all the work that has been done by the government, the launch of dozens of accounts on different social media, there is not a required structure. Moreover, Russia is aggressive in its social media diplomacy to counter disinformation or to assertively broadcast its point of view. All that undermines Russia's positive image in the global info space.

In the past decade Russia focused its foreign policy efforts to reinforce its position on the global stage and was successful (Graham, 2019; Karaganov & Kobzev, 2016). While in 2014 Obama called the country a regional power (Borger, 2014), two years he publicly claimed Russia a military superpower (TASS, 2016). Russia intensified its international activities, aspiring to establish a dialogue and cooperation. Russia successfully established relationships with Middle East countries to resolve regional conflicts. The case in point is the Russia-Iran-Turkey Triangle and the Astana Format to settle the conflict in Syria (Azizi, 2019). This multilateral approach increases Russian authority on the international arena because of compromise character of the agreements reached.

Despite successes on the international arena, Russian global image remains negative, due to coercive policy and assertive way of communication with counterparts deployed by Russia (Lukyanov, 2018). After Ukrainian crisis there was a great decrease in positive perceptions of Russia globally (Pew Research Center, 2014; Pew Research Center, 2013). The title of the 2018 report of Pew Research Center sums it up: “Image of Putin, Russia suffers internationally”. At same time, global audiences see Russia as gaining influence on world stage (Pew Research Center, 2018). 2019 Soft Power report ranked Russia the lowest among 30 examined countries, identifying downward trend in the last 5 years (Mcclory, 2019). Considering this decline Russia needs to enhance its image worldwide to strengthen its position in the information space and reality. The next section explores how the state manages with the promotion of itself in accordance with foreign policy goals.

Digital diplomacy strategy as a part of National Security Strategy

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) uses twitter to promote the country and its foreign policies. The MFA strategy is to create favorable information space by implementing contrast-oppositional representation of the country. Russian message on Twitter highlights contrast between the Russian foreign policy views and activities and European and American ones. In MFA's posts the opinion of state representatives is given in the context of other countries (mostly the US') activities:

#Lavrov: We have firmly underscored our commitment to and respect for Venezuela's sovereignty and our solidarity with Venezuelan leaders and the people of #Venezuela in their opposition to the illegal pressure brought to bear by #US and its accomplices. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020, February 10a)

There is an element of comparison of countries' views on political crisis in Venezuela, so Russia demonstrates the support to Venezuelan leaders by condemning the US' policy in the region. Therefore, the main idea of representation of Russia on Twitter is to provide an alternative position for the world, to highlight the difference with western countries approach and thereby to promote its own view.

The National Security Strategy aims to strengthen the position of Russia as the center of power on the global arena, as a competitive player in the international market; and improve its relationships with adversaries (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2016). As a result, Russia on Twitter places itself as a part of new multipolar world order:

#Lavrov: Western countries have been dominating in the world for at least five hundred years. This era is now receding in the past. It is time to share power and influence and to make agreements with new strong players. #Russia #Diplomacy (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020, January 17a)

It demonstrates the Russia's desire to review the order of powers in the world and by doing so to change the perception of the world order and to have chance to claim itself as one of global powers.

The Concept highlights the increasing negative role of hard power in internationals relations and the necessity to develop a global security system with the central role of the United Nations (UN) (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2016). Therefore, it is not a surprise that Russia on Twitter refers a lot to the UN, Security Council of the UN (UNSC), Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) (Table 2).

Table 2. International organizations in tweets of Russia and the US (by number)

The foreign policy priorities also include establishing friendship relations with neighbor states, development of bilateral and multilateral relationships with foreign countries and calming tensions with adversaries (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2016). The MFA on Twitter promotes both bilateral and multilateral format. The latter one reveals in the messages: “Developing relations with New Delhi is among our absolute foreign policy priorities” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020, January 17b); “Our relations with Italy, which is our important international partner, are steeped in history and traditions” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020d); “Foreign Minister Sergey #Lavrov expressed hope that the newly appointed US Ambassador will help normalize and strengthen the two countries' cooperation in various spheres” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020, January 31). By referring a lot to many international organizations in comparison to the US (Table 2) Russia states its intention to work in collaboration with other countries. Russia uses the idea of cooperation with intergovernmental organizations to create the identity of ally “team player”. The importance to work in the multilateral way is expressed with the words of Lavrov, “Russia traditionally prioritizes expanded collaboration with its partners in the Eurasian space, primarily within the framework of @CSTO_ODKB, the Union State, #CIS and the Eurasian Economic Union” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020, January 20). The call for actions within intergovernmental organizations continues the idea of collaboration. MFA highlights that only this format could lead to the peace and stability “Russia is pursuing a line of strengthening the legal foundations of interstate communication, raising the #UN's prestige, reducing international tensions, achieving the political-diplomatic settlement of several regional conflicts” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020, February 11).