The Effect of Economic Ties on Digital Diplomacy

Abstract

Summary The article examines how economic ties between host and guest countries affect the emotional valence in the social media content published by digital diplomats. Strong economic ties will lead digital diplomats to adopt a positive tone because such ties raise the potential costs of verbal aggressiveness online. A positive emotional valence on social media also serves to cultivate good public perceptions of the guest and its economic activities. To evaluate these claims, the article analyses 53,601 original tweets published by 88 Chinese diplomatic missions on Twitter from 2014 to 2020. It finds that economic ties have a strong positive effect on the tone adopted by digital diplomats. As the host’s trade dependence on China increases, Chinese diplomatic missions are more likely to adopt a positive tone on Twitter, especially when talking about politics and business. This research contributes to the study of how countries use social media to conduct diplomacy.