Who is closerto whom? Exploring communication networks of EU delegation and its member states’ embassies in China

Abstract

How difficult is the EU to speak in one voice, especially in this digital age? This study uses social network analysis to explore the digital public diplomacy of the EU and its Member States (MS) through their social media activities on Chinese Weibo. It finds that the EU Delegation’s identity as a group leader is recognized by most member states, but generally, it has a weak coordinating role and lacks conversation with the third-country entities. Social identity theory and its extended model are employed to interpret the community formation of the EU and its MS’s communication network, especially how they interchange between an individual country, an EU membership identity, an intragroup identity, and a group identity. The study reveals that most EU MS play a more independent role in their digital public diplomacy activities in China rather than as a member of the Union, and the status of key members, such as France and Germany, is not inferior to that of the EU Delegation at all in the European intragroup in terms of as an information hub. This potentially would weaken the EU actorness at the global level once their voices are different from that of the EU.