“Outrageous” Diplomacy: Investigating the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Twitter

ABSTRACT

Diplomacy is traditionally associated with politeness and civility. As a fundamental element of international relations, diplomacy is rooted in professional skills and codified practices. By moving diplomacy to online platforms, diplomatic statements have been accelerated, sometimes resulting in aggressiveness. The purpose of this paper is to identify outrage in diplomatic communication. Outrage can be defined as uncivil expressions evoking emotion in the audience. This concept is examined based on the tweets produced by the Russian Foreign Ministry account between 1 December 2021, and 24 April 2022 (total: 2485 tweets). Based on the framework proposed by Berry, Jeffrey M., and Sara Sobieraj (2014. The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and The New Incivility. Oxford: Oxford University Press), qualitative analysis identifies 370 outrageous tweets. Frame analysis shows how outrage acts as a narrative tool for activating (self-)representational devices. Moreover, outrage influences the diplomatic tone, international actors’ characterisation, and international institutions’ delegitimization.

KEYWORDS:

• Diplomacy
• outrage
• Russia
• Twitter
• conflict
• framing

Acknowledgements

This research was undertaken as part of the project “International Conflicts, ICT and Power in the Age of Online Platforms: New Forms of Information Management in International Disputes, Strategic Narratives, and Nation Branding” (CUP B89I22000090001 – Principal Investigator, Giuseppe Anzera), financed by Sapienza University of Rome. Preliminary versions of this paper were presented at the IAMCR 2022 and the 2022 Italian Political Science Association conferences. We would like to express our gratitude to the conference chairs and panelists for their insightful feedback. Additionally, we sincerely thank the reviewers whose valuable comments have greatly enhanced this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://twiplomacy.com/blog/twiplomacy-study-2018/.

2 Due to space limitations and the need for thematic coherence, the results and practical examples are not detailed in this paper. These issues were previously addressed by the authors in a presentation at the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Conference in Beijing, 2022, titled “An Uncivil Diplomacy? Reorienting Diplomatic Practices on Online Platforms Under the Framework of Incivility”.

3 https://www.vicinitas.io.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Sapienza Università di Roma [grant number B89I22000090001].