Diplomats as Skilful Bricoleurs of the Digital Age: EU Foreign Policy Communications from the COREU to WhatsApp

Abstract

The article analyses how and to what effect diplomats navigate a landscape in which the physical and the digital have become inextricably intertwined, with emphasis on written communications in the European Union (EU) foreign policy system from the 1970s to the present. Putting International Relations literature into dialogue with Management Studies (particularly media richness theory and sense-making), it looks at how diplomats work their way through different forms of digital written communications. It addresses the effects of diplomacy’s digitalisation in terms of time, space and confidentiality. Digital tools have hastened diplomacy’s tempo and affected security considerations, while they have had mixed effects in terms of centre–periphery relations in diplomatic conversations, particularly for gender and wealth. The EU foreign policy system exemplifies these dynamics, from the spectacular rise of the COREU system to its decline in favour of faster, easier-to-use technologies such as e-mail and texting.