Evocative Screens

Ethnographic Insights into the Digitalization of Diplomacy

Bibliographic Data

ID2236727
AuthorsKristin Anabel Eggeling (0000-0002-3987-5301, University of Copenhagen, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume19
Issue1
Publication date2025-02-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Political Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1749-5679 • E-ISSN: 1749-5687
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ips/olae046
OpenAlexW4408329844
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited45

How is diplomacy, a profession long premised on face-to-face interactions, adjusting to life with and on the screen? In this article, I present insights from 5 years of fieldwork (2018-2023) focused on the diplomatic scene in Brussels. I approach this material through Sherry Turkle's concept of the 'evocative object' to theorize how digitalization relates to diplomatic practice. In contrast to most existing scholarship that works with remotely collected digital data such as images or tweets, I work ethnographically and explore the associations screens evoke among diplomatic practitioners themselves. If in the form of a smartphone in a diplomat's hand or as a projection surface on a meeting room wall, I show how the screen emerges as an effective and an affective object that diplomats relate to in multiple ways. By paying attention to how diplomatic practitioners relate to the screen, we can capture pragmatic rituals, professional priorities, and formal procedures just as much as personal anxieties, power struggles, and informal relations of competence and trust. Overall, the article contributes detailed empirical insights into the lived experience of an otherwise largely closed-off world and nurtures a new theoretical language to make sense of the digitalization of international politics

Diplomacy · Epistemology · Ethnography · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Anthropology · International Business and FDI · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Philosophy