Digital Diplomacy or Political Communication? Exploring Social Media in The EU Institutions from a Critical Discourse Perspective 1

This chapter considers digital diplomacy – seen as “the use of social media for diplomatic purposes” – in the context of institutional constellation of the European Union. It looks specifically at the social media presence of the European Union (EU) as “created” by the European Commission’s (ECs) Spokesperson’s Service, i.e., the main part of the European Commission responsible for not only the shape but also the content of the EC and the wider EU social/online media presence. The chapter offers a Critical Discourse Analysis of EU politico-organisational communication on Twitter by proposing a qualitative framework for Twitter analysis that relates interactive strategies to their discursive counterparts. Similarly, social media have been key in the peculiar process of the “permanent” political campaigning of European Parliament Members, indeed often in similar ways to the electoral social-media use known from national contexts.