Ilan Manor: The digitalization of #publicdiplomacy

In this episode of The #DigitalDiplomacy Podcast, we talk to Ilan Manor who is one of the most prolific digital diplomacy scholars at the moment, a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford and a member of the Oxford Digital Diplomacy Research Group.

We talk to Manor about his book "The Digitalization of Public Diplomacy" that just came out this January: https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030044046

Manor tells us why he prefers the term digitalization of diplomacy to other terms like digital diplomacy or diplomacy 2.0, why we cannot analyse the digitalization of diplomacy without seeing diplomats and MFAs as parts of the digital society that surrounds them, about the meaning of concepts like engagement, listening and distance in the digital age and much more.

The chapter referred to in the episode on The aesthetics of violent extremist and counter-violent extremist communication was co-written with Rhys Crilley and published in the recent book Countering Online Propaganda and Extremism: The Dark Side of Digital Diplomacy, eds. Corneliu Bjola and Jammes Pamment (2019).

Among Manor’s other publications can be mentioned the monograph Are we there yet? Have MFAs realized the potential of digital diplomacy (2016), published as a part of Brill’s Research Perspectives in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy. And his analysis of America’s Selfie Diplomacy in Digital Diplomacy: Theory and Practice (2015).

Apart from these publications, he has contributed to a long series of academic journals, among them the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Global Affairs, Global Policy and International Affairs.

And he is an avid tweep and blogger and can be followed here: @ilanmanor and https://digdipblog.com/

Thank you for listening to this episode! If you liked it, please share it with others who are interested in the world of diplomacy and international relations in the 21st Century.

We’ll be back as soon as possible with more interviews with interesting perspectives on the way diplomacy is changing, evolving, and adapting to the disruptive changes our societies are undergoing these years.

The #DigitalDiplomacy Podcast is produced by the Embassy of Denmark in Spain. It is edited and hosted by Communications Officer Mikkel Larsen.

Music by Bebeto, “Ambient Loop” ((CC) / freesound.org/people/bebeto/sounds/554/ ).