Elsa Hedling

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Verified

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• Phd (Political Science)
• Professor (Associate) at Lund University

This article explores the transformative role of practices of countering digital disinformation in European Union diplomacy. It argues that an overlooked dimension of the change brought by the rise of digital disinformation is located in the emergence of everyday countering practices. Efforts to counter disinformation have led to the recruitment of...

On March 26, 2020, the leaders of the Group of 20 major economies (G20) convened in an emergency virtual meeting to discuss the extraordinary situation facing the world. Virtual summitry provided a stark visual contrast to the traditional staging of modern multilateral diplomacy―leaders were suddenly responsible for their own staging, leaving them...

In 2018, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) carried out Trident Juncture, its largest military exercise since the Cold War. The event was promoted on social media featuring Lasse Matberg as “the face of NATO.” Matberg is an Instagram influencer, model, and lieutenant in the Royal Norwegian Navy, with an impressive physique and Viking looks....

Social media are increasingly important tools in diplomacy. Diplomats are expected to use social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to communicate with each other and with both the domestic and international publics. This form of communication involves displaying positive emotions to generate attention in a competitive informat...

European Union (EU) diplomatic representation in third countries is performed by both the Member States and by the EU Delegation. This hybrid system of representation functions through EU coordination. As social media have become important channels of state representation, coordination also takes place in the domain of digital diplomacy. This artic...

The advancement of digital technologies in the last decade has introduced new tools, workflows and stakeholders in diplomacy, creating significant information demands and a state of “digital stress.” To navigate these challenges, diplomats employ coping strategies that leverage their reflexivity and autonomy to manage demands, prioritize tasks, and...

This chapter sets the stage for examining gendered disinformation within feminist foreign policy analysis. It traces the rise of gendered disinformation as a security threat, emphasizing the transformative impact of digital technologies and social media on the dissemination and logic of disinformation strategies. The chapter explores how authoritar...

This article unpacks the politics of disinformation attribution as deterrence. Research and policy on disinformation deterrence commonly draw on frameworks inspired by cyber deterrence to address the ‘attribution problem’, thereby overlooking the political aspects underpinning attribution strategies in liberal democracies. Addressing this gap and b...

Introduction The rise of digital disinformation as a threat to liberal democracies confronts the role of gender relations in foreign policy in new ways. The acceptance of ‘gendered disinformation’ as a foreign policy issue signals a gender-informed understanding of digital disinformation as a security concern. Digital disinformation campaigns that...

The overarching aim of the book is to provide the first comprehensive account of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy and its dissemination through digital diplomacy. In contrast to other scholarly studies of digital diplomacy that tend to view it as a technological and apolitical device for online diplomatic communication, this book examines the speci...

This article analyzes learning in the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) by way of drawing on recent theoretical advancements on the concept of communities of practice (CoP) in international relations (IR). The article presents an analytical framework that distinguishes between reproductive and transformative learning in relation to lev...

This chapter examines the interplay between digital diplomacy and feminist foreign policy by advancing a theoretical framework based on three key processes of politicisation: (a) articulation, (b) resonance and (c) contestation. This framework captures the fluctuation between antagonistic and agonistic political dynamics and the interplay between d...

This chapter is the methods appendix of the book The Politics of Feminist Foreign Policy and Digital Diplomacy. It contains three sections. The first section focuses on methodological choices and data collection, including documents, social media data, campaigns, online observations, and interviews. The second and third parts discuss the practical...

This concluding chapter highlights the key findings of the book and explores the trajectory of the politics of feminist foreign policy and digital diplomacy amidst evolving and changing geopolitical dynamics. With the abandonment of feminist foreign policy by the new Swedish Conservative-led government in 2022, we unpack the ramifications and oppor...

This chapter examines the role of political leadership and the utilisation of digital diplomacy in advancing the norms and objectives of feminist foreign policy. It explores the various roles that leaders play in the political articulation, resonance and contestation of feminist foreign policy in the digital realm. It specifically analyses how and...

In this chapter, we explore how online opportunities, emerging from visual language, symbolic representation and global visibilities productively diffused the communication of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy to global audiences. The launch and trajectory of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy involved the management of visual representations and clos...

This chapter examines how Sweden’s feminist foreign policy was constructed and managed as a nation brand during its eight years of existence. This particular nation brand built on and was informed by Sweden’s longstanding state feminist tradition as well as its more recent digital sophistication. As the chapter shows, Sweden’s feminist foreign poli...

This chapter discusses the rise of virtual diplomatic summitry and its place in the digitalisation of diplomacy. Virtual diplomatic summitry refers to the diplomatic summit meetings that take place through technologies for virtual interaction such as videoconferencing tools, and that take place partly or completely in virtual venues. Virtualisation...

This article focuses on the quest for digitalisation in peace mediation and to the extent to which digital disruption is reshaping its practices. While digitalisation in the wider field of diplomacy has seen dramatic changes in its practices, peace mediation is a ‘latecomer’. The article explores the constitutive effects on specific norms and pract...

This article examines the role of digital norm contestation in feminist foreign policy (FFP). It analyzes how states that participate in digital diplomacy are involved in challenging and resisting norms, values and expectations related to feminist positionings in the digital environment. The article presents an analytical framework for the study of...

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits adaptation, alteration, reproduction and distribution for non-commercial use, without further permission provided the original work is attributed. The derivative works do not need t...

In this piece we investigate Sweden’s distinctive approach to the Covid-19 pandemic, by arguing that it has challenged its public image. Chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has been “the face of the Swedish experiment” and we propose that he has acquired celebrity status. His performance during the pandemic, and the reception thereof, surpasses the...

The European External Action Service (EEAS), launched in 2010, has developed in EU foreign policy during a time of internal and external crises. The task of consolidating EU diplomacy has meant forging a new diplomatic service of practitioners from multiple EU institutions and member states. As such, it has become a melting pot of EU foreign policy...

At a time of profound transformation of the international system, the liberal world order is seemingly giving way to a new power-based order. Amidst rising right-wing populism in the Western world, a global backsliding of democracy, and blatant breaches of liberal norms, such as human rights and the rule of law, the role of the European Union (EU)...

This article analyses how the launch of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy marked a change in Sweden’s digital diplomatic efforts. It draws on three strands of research: digital diplomacy, foreign policy analysis (FPA) and feminist scholarship. Informed by FPA, the article explores the relevance of political leadership, bureaucratic agency and politi...

As a growing number of diplomatic practices take new digital forms, research on digital diplomacy is rapidly expanding. Many of the changes linked to digitalization transform or challenge traditional ways of doing diplomacy. Analyses of new forms of “digital diplomacy” are therefore valuable for the advancement of practice approaches in internation...

This article examines how the mediatised context of foreign policy provides new opportunities for political leaders to both frame and project their own leadership role to new audiences. The past ten years have witnessed a sharp rise in political leaders’ use of new social media to communicate on a range of foreign policy issues. We argue that this...

This article draws attention to storytelling in public diplomacy. Based on interviews with officials in the European External Action Service (EEAS) and a campaign on social media, it explores storytelling in EU public diplomacy. It treats storytelling as narrative strategies that tap into the power of dramaturgy and visual elements to mediate emoti...

work in progress

The Europeanization of civil society comes in many shapes and forms, as illustrated by Jacobsson and Johansson in chapter 1 of this volume. Accordingly, there are numerous dimensions at play in Europeanization processes that could have implications for civil society organizations (CSOs) in Sweden. In this chapter we focus on capturing the participa...

This thesis explores the relationship between politics and new media in the context of digital diplomacy at the European External Action Service (EEAS) 2011-2017. In contrast to dominant approaches to the mediatization of politics that consider political logic to be dominated or even replaced by media logic, it gives greater emphasis to the role of...

This article explores Sweden’s multiple roles in foreign policy in relation to its actions as an EU member state, seeking also to contribute to the understanding of small-state roles and behaviour at the dawn of a new age of uncertainty in Europe. Based on analytical tools derived from role theory within foreign policy analysis, as well as European...

This article explores how and why Swedish-based civil society organizations (CSOs) in the welfare area engage with the European Union (EU). Europeanization is understood as a two-sided process in which the EU influences national actors while national actors are engaged in usage of the EU. The data collection was conducted through a systematic study...

The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is one of the newest additions to the EU civil society field and one of the remains of the aspired democratic reforms of the failed Constitutional Treaty. It moves beyond previous institutional arrangements with civil society by inviting citizens to participate directly in EU politics. The ECI has previously...