The EU's Public Diplomacy in Asia and the World through Social Media: Sentiment and Semantic Network Analyses of Official Facebook Pages of European External Action Service and EU Delegation to the Republic of Korea

Yoon, Sung-Won; Yoon, Sung-Won; Chung, Sae Won; Chung, Sae Won

doi:https://doi.org/10.17477/jcea.2020.19.2.234

Abstract

This study aims to assess the quality of the EU's public diplomacy efforts through social media. Specifically, this research explores the headquarters of European public diplomacy (European External Action Service, EEAS) and its subordinate agent (EU Delegation to South Korea, EUDK). The main research question is "how coherently and effectively does the EU execute public diplomacy strategies in the third countries?'' This study employs both quantitative and qualitative approaches―the former for the results presentation and the latter for the results interpretation. The results are summarized in two points. First, both the EEAS and the EUDK maintained an objective position by posting only neutral perspectives on their social media. Second, the narratives of the main actors were the same, but the main themes were different according to their contexts. The analysis discusses the effectiveness of the EU's strategic narratives by focusing on measuring message reception. Its limited findings were that social media postings could not induce the audiences' active discussion of the EU's diplomatic performances. The conclusion suggests that the EU should identify the expectations from its global counterparts and use these to forge the Union's strategic narratives.

keywords: Public Diplomacy, Strategic Narratives, Semantic Network Analysis, Sentiment nalysis, Narrative Analysis, European External Action Service, EU Delegation to South Korea

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Article Contents

Vol.19 No.2

Abstract

Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia