Twiplomacy; Representing Iran's foreign policy on Twitter

Abstract

Twitter is a social media that provides widespread engagement and interaction possibilities. In the last decade, the media has attracted the attention of politicians, especially diplomats, and has become a platform for the reflection of their priorities, values, and ideas. The use of this infrastructure has created a new type of diplomacy called "Twiplomacy", and more than 92 percent of the member states of the United Nations have a user account and represent their identity and their country on Twitter. In Iran, politicians and diplomats have not been able to keep up with this trend to have an active presence. By using the Ontological Security Theory, this essay seeks to explore how Iranian officials, especially diplomats, can represent the identity and norms of the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran on Twitter. The main question is how Iranian politicians narrate themselves on Twitter. In order to investigate this question, in addition to Twitter of Iran's Foreign Minister, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu's tweets were also considered as the main rivals of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ontological narration on foreign policy. Accordingly, the following criteria were summarized as Iran's foreign policy narratives: First, Iran as a security maker of the region; second, Iran as an economically developing state; third, Iran as a compliant with international obligations; and last, an independent Iran.

Keywords

• twiplomacy
• twitter
• ontological securtiy