The international relations of Facebook

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Wednesday, May 13, 2009 - 4:06 PM Share

Earlier this week Facebook VP of Global Communications, Marketing, and Public Policy Elliott Schrage gave an interview to cfr.org that's worth reading. As you would expect, Schrage was pretty upbeat about the use of social networking technologies as a means for political action:

So, do I see Facebook as being an incredibly valuable tool for public diplomacy? Absolutely.
Some of the most interesting uses of Facebook have been for the purpose of social action, which is essentially political action, whether it's an extraordinary rallying of support by the Colombian community around the world to protest the terrorist activities of FARC-the Colombian militants-or whether it's students protesting bank fees and bank charges in Great Britain, or whether it's the Obama presidential campaign generating almost six million supporters on Facebook as a means of communicating his policies, his positions, and his campaign activities....
Frankly speaking, some of our greater successes are in countries where the means of distributing information have not been easy or without friction. So, for example, in Colombia we have remarkable market penetration. In Indonesia we have among our fastest-growing market share. Chile, I believe we have close to 50 percent of the online population now on Facebook. In Europe we're doing extremely well. And in the Middle East we've achieved very interesting degrees of penetration, and in fact just recently announced that we are launching right-to-left languages in addition to left-to-right languages.

There's an obvious PR element to Schrage's spiel, but then again, let's wander over to the Financial Times' Najmeh Bozorgmehr on how Facebook is being used in Iran's presidential elections:

As they struggle to compete against an Iranian president who enjoys the support of a powerful state apparatus, leading candidates in June’s election are resorting to Facebook to spread their messages....
“We are using new technologies because they have the capacity to be multiplied by people themselves who can forward Bluetooth, e-mails and text messages and invite more supporters on Facebook,” said Behzad Mortazavi, who is in charge of Mr Moussavi’s campaign committee.
He said the wireless technology of Bluetooth would be used “extensively” to send out speeches and photo slideshows. The supporters of Mr Moussavi have opened about 20 Facebook pages calling on others to vote for him and have attracted about 7,500 members so far.
Although Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s opponents on Facebook are not yet campaigning against his re-election, their posts may help strengthen the anti-incumbent mood among the elite.
A page called “I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who dislike Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad” has so far attracted more than 35,000 members, the highest number in all pages related to the president.

Yeah, the thing about that Facebook page is:

35,000 is still pretty small;
The site has been up for 18 months as an experiment to see of Ahmadinejad is lss popular that George W. Bush. So far, the numbers don't bear this out;
The site is administered by someone from Sweden;
I'm willing to bet that not everyone who's joined is registered to vote in Iran (they all do seem to be quite attractive, however).

Question to readers: is the power of social networking real or exaggerated in "countries where the means of distributing information have not been easy or without friction"?

EXPLORE:GLOBALIZATION, GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, INTERNET

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FORMER GRAD

8:03 PM ET

May 13, 2009

bad answer

Professor,

are you a bit depressed nowadays? These anthropologist-like questions suggest indeed your mood must be down...

ps: sorry, but the joke came to easily.

SAM

12:39 AM ET

May 14, 2009

FP is focusing on Moussavi in

FP is focusing on Moussavi in Iran's election. Keep an eye on Karrubi Dan, or you'll be surprised

JHASKELL7

1:39 AM ET

May 14, 2009

By far, the best

By far, the best international relations use of facebook: http://www.theatlantic.com/a/facebookhumor.mhtml

DJUHA

11:20 AM ET

May 14, 2009

Twitter IR

A friend of mine was involved in this:

Web-Savvy State Officials Deny False Madagascar Rumors on Twitter

WASHINGTON -- U.S. diplomats on Thursday "tweeted" down false rumors they feared might lead to a siege on the American Embassy in Madagascar.

State Department officials turned to Twitter feeds after dubious claims appeared on the micoblogging network that Madagascar's newly ousted president, Marc Ravalomanana, had sought refuge inside the U.S. Embassy in Antananarivo, the Indian Ocean island's capital.

Web-savvy State officials kicked into gear and within minutes, the agency had posted its own "tweets" denying the false reports on Ravalomanana.

"Misinformation can have serious consequences, and when we saw the story breaking that way, we decided we had to do something about it quickly," said deputy State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid. He added: "The situation was fluid and the embassy was open. We had to protect our people."

The State Department's two-part Twitter reply: "We are aware of media reports that President Ravalomanana of Madagascar is seeking sanctuary at the U.S. Embassy in Antananarivo." And then: "President Ravalomanana has made no such request and is not in the U.S. Embassy."

The same message was sent simultaneously by e-mail to the State Department press corps but most major news outlets, including The Associated Press, had not reported the claims in the first place.

"We wanted to get the accurate information out in the place where it originated and that was Twitter, and it was good that we had the ability to do that," Duguid said.

There was no way to confirm if the department's efforts prevented an incident, but several foreign-based Twitter users corrected erroneous accounts of Ravalomanana's whereabouts, Duguid said.

The State Department has had a Twitter feed available through its Dipnote blog since last year, but officials said that it appeared to be the first time the social networking tool had been used to counter a potential crisis.