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PurposeThe European External Action Service (EEAS) is a relatively new diplomatic service established in 2010. In previous analyses, the authors noted a dominance of security and foreign policy messages emanating from the EEAS, demonstrating the European Union (EU)'s negotiating power. It was clear it had discovered the benefits of public diplomacy, but rather practised traditional diplomacy on public diplomacy specific platforms. The authors aim to pursue the monitoring of the EEAS’ strategy, covering 2019 and 2020, to understand how the use of Twitter supports the evolution of the EU foreign policy.Design/methodology/approachQuestioning if the EEAS is entering the second phase of its life cycle (launched in 2010, its introduction phase was under Katherine Ashton, 2009–2014, followed by Federica Mogherini, 2014–2019, and Josep Borrell, 2019–2024), the authors carried out a content analysis on 765 tweets. The authors used the MARPE Diplo methodological framework to compare how the EU uses public diplomacy through its EEAS to negotiate its own interests with non-EU parties under the presidency of Federica Mogherini (period 1), during the transition period (period 2) and under the presidency of Joseph Borrell (period 3).FindingsBased on the comparison with their previous studies, the authors demonstrate that, over the years, the overall discourse of the EEAS is much more oriented towards public diplomacy.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study has two limitations. The first refers to the sampling of the participants involved in the citizen science experiment: they belong to a homogeneous age category and similar education level which might have biased their analysis. Second, the authors acknowledge the usual limitations linked to citizen science. However, the authors acknowledge a growing emphasis on the outcomes for society involving citizens and including partnerships between the public and scientists as well as an increased public engagement in policy processes.Practical implicationsThe research leads into new insights regarding the European-centred translation of the EEAS messages, compared to the off-centred view of non-European contributors.Social implicationsThe citizen science approach allows to integrate the targeted public to apply public diplomacy content analysis.Originality/valueThis case study is based on the principles of citizen science and demonstrates the importance of an off-centred approach in the analysis of the practices of public diplomacy.

The purpose of this chapter is to present the validation process of a methodological approach developed by members of the MARPE Diplo Team, in cooperation with 50 South American Bachelors (fifth year) students in communication studies and international relations, from Universidad San Ignacio De Loyola (Lima-Peru). The MARPE Diplo methodology aims to identify the presence of public diplomacy using content analysis.

Scholars suggest diplomacy is transforming, no longer restricted to be performed by official State representatives. Reflecting this development, the authors address two intertwined questions: can we identify what differentiates officially State trained and appointed diplomats from the “occasional diplomat” and can we find parallels between the public diplomat and the communication/public relations practitioner?

This chapter discusses the concept of corporate diplomacy, its “reason why”, its definition, and the idiosyncrasies connected with the understanding of the word corporate in a European context, namely as synonymous with business. Reflecting on the business sphere associated with corporate diplomacy, the chapter explores how the notion of “organisation” is filling the gap, going beyond the business logic, addressing and including the broad spectrum of “organised” societal actors: from private to non-governmental organisations, from the profit to the not-for-profit sector.

The chapter introduces a diachronic approach distinguishing six periods, from traditional diplomacy to public diplomacy as the concept is conceived nowadays from a European point of view. Diplomacy is approached from a communication perspective, studying how a diachronic analysis enlightens the emergence of public diplomacy as a bridge between diplomacy and the diversity of publics. The chapter aims at developing a rationale legitimating the presence of communication researchers in public diplomacy and emphasises the link between public diplomacy, public relations and international public relations.

This chapter reflects upon the variety of activities involved during the Erasmus+ Intensive Study Programme (ISP) “MARPE Diplo: Fostering European Citizenship through Public, Corporate and Civic Diplomacy.” The authors contextualise and explain why the MARPE Diplo team decided to design a programme drawing on participatory and co-creative pedagogical approaches. They analyse step-by-step how the programme was conceived, always looking for the ideal balance between overall project aims, specific content objectives, appropriate didactics and evaluation. The authors reflect on how innovative pedagogical approaches support overcoming cultural barriers and facilitate genuine exchange and how the ISP participants evaluated the effects of these approaches on their personal learning path, during the ISP, at the end of the ISP and 18 months later. The chapter closes with recommendations for future intensive study programmes.

Professional communication practices are not immune to the impact of transformations, which have become the daily life of organisations. The researcher analyses the evolution of mutations in communication practices and norms through the experiential stories of forty-five communication professionals, all active in Belgian organisations in the profit and non-profit sectors. The study includes three age demographics each with fifteen communicators and considers their professional socialisation along the timeframe continuum of pre-Internet through to the introduction of digital social platforms. The first part of the thesis debates the theory of institutionalisation and its central concepts. The researcher refers to the organisational field where the interpretation and adoption of practices are negotiated by actors whose interests may be competing and who activate the games of power and influence. The thesis also examines the carriers and pillars of isomorphic mechanisms and then discusses the communication profession and its professionalisation by exploring the institutional actors who contribute to this process by anchoring and legitimising the practice through professional associations and academic programmes. The second part successively presents the actors of the organisational environment who exert coercive, normative or mimetic pressures (macro), the organisational transformations which impact the role of communication (meso), and the function of communication professional as well as the professionalising trajectories in response to the injunctions analysed at the previous levels (macro and meso). The researcher interprets how the canvas of temporality punctuates the successive stages of professionalisation and institutionalisation at rates that correspond to the communicational maturity of organisations in Belgium. The study observes a generational effect in the strategies adopted in relation to the challenges posed by so-called agile organisational transformations, societal expectations and technological developments in organisational communication. The permanent visibility of practice, linked to the acceleration of communication and to an attitude combining anticipation and responsiveness, brings out the normative need for a common "good use of communication practices". These "best practices" are currently the result of essentially mimetic arrangements. They are still implicit due to the lack of support from the fragmented associative landscape and because of a transfer gap between the reality of the profession and the body of knowledge taught in academic programmes. However, they are common to the three generations of communicators. While Belgian communicators are institutional actors who actively participate in the legitimisation of the communication professions, their institutionalisation, which ultimately translates into symbolic legitimacy, requires the mobilisation of all the institutions concerned., Les pratiques professionnelles de la communication n’échappent pas à l’impact des transformations devenues le quotidien des organisations. Nous avons analysé l’évolution des mutations des pratiques et des normes communicationnelles par le biais du récit expérientiel de quarante-cinq professionnels de la communication, actifs dans des organisations belges des secteurs marchands et non marchands. Leur première socialisation professionnelle s’échelonne d’avant l’apparition de l’Internet à après l’introduction des plateformes numériques sociales, soit trois générations de quinze communicants chacune. La première partie de la thèse mobilise la théorie de l’institutionnalisation et ses concepts centraux. Nous retrouvons le champ organisationnel où se négocient l’interprétation et l’adoption de pratiques par des acteurs dont les intérêts peuvent être concurrents et qui actionnent les jeux de pouvoir et d’influence. Mais nous mobilisons également les vecteurs et les piliers des moteurs isomorphiques. Nous abordons ensuite la professionnalisation et les acteurs institutionnels qui y contribuent en soutien à l’ancrage de la légitimation de la profession de communication : les associations professionnelles et les formations académiques. La seconde partie présente successivement les acteurs de l’environnement organisationnel qui exercent des pressions coercitives, normatives ou mimétiques (macro), les transformations organisationnelles qui impactent le rôle de la communication (méso), et la fonction de communicant ainsi que les trajectoires professionnalisantes en réponse aux injonctions analysées aux niveaux macro et méso. Nous interprétons comment le canevas de la temporalité scande les étapes successives de la professionnalisation et de l’institutionnalisation à des rythmes qui correspondent à la maturité communicationnelle des organisations en Belgique. Nous constatons un effet générationnel dans les stratégies adoptées par rapport aux défis que posent les transformations organisationnelles dites agiles, les attentes sociétales et les développements technologiques à la communication organisationnelle. La mise en visibilité permanente, liée à l’accélération et à une attitude qui allie anticipation et réactivité, fait émerger la nécessité normative d’un « bon usage des pratiques communicationnelles » commun. Ce « bon usage » résulte actuellement d’arrangements essentiellement mimétiques. Encore implicite en l’absence d’un vecteur associatif en communication, trop fragmenté, et à cause d’un décalage de transfert entre la réalité de la profession et le corpus de connaissances enseigné dans les formations académiques, il est toutefois commun aux trois générations de communicants. Si les communicants belges sont des acteurs institutionnels qui participent activement à la légitimation des métiers de la communication, leur institutionnalisation, qui se traduit ultimement par une légitimité symbolique, nécessite la mobilisation de l’ensemble des institutions concernées.

Le phenomene des Big Data s’est rapidement impose comme un enjeu majeur au niveau mondial pour les organisations qui les collectent et les exploitent, mais il l’est tout autant pour les individus dont les traces numeriques sont suivies, repertoriees, analysees et croisees que pour les institutions qui ont pour objectif de reguler les systemes d’information et de protection de la vie privee. Le European Communication Monitor (ECM), etude menee aupres de 2 710 professionnels de la communication...

International audience

L’article aborde l’utilisation de la plateforme interactive Twitter par le Service Europeen pour l’Action Exterieure (SEAE) comme instrument strategique de son approche de la diplomatie publique. L’analyse de contenu thematique de 340 tweets sur une periode de 29 jours indique que si le SEAE fait plein usage des fonctions specifiques de la diplomatie publique, il est neanmoins confronte au dilemme qui oppose le secret a l’injonction de transparence, apportant ainsi un eclairage public sur certaines parties du processus de negociations afin d’en legitimer les resultats qui visent la construction de benefices mutuels entre l’UE et ses publics.

L’article interroge l’influence de l’appartenance ou de l’identification a l’identite collective d’une association professionnelle squant ur la construction de l’identite professionnelle du communicant. Les experiences sociales liees a l’affiliation sont identifiees a travers la vision qu’a le communicant du role des associations professionnelles, sa perception de l’identite collective des associations professionnelles et son evaluation de la presence des associations professionnelles dans la construction de son identite professionnelle.Quatre profils identitaires emergent qui beneficient a des degres differents de l’apport des associations professionnelles : le stratege qui trouve au sein des associations professionnelles une reponse lifelong learning a son attitude reflexive et son identite d’entreprise, le conteur qui y trouve une plateforme flexible dans une identite de reseau et son besoin de personal branding, le diplomate qui y developpe graduellement son orientation vers l’autre en adequation avec son identite hors-travail et son besoin de benchmarking, et le nomade qui y vit son identite de metier et y realise son concept de Soi.Les associations professionnelles comme groupe homogene facilitent les discours constitutifs des identites professionnelles. L’identite collective qu’elles portent concourt de maniere profilee a la construction de l’identite professionnelle des communicants affilies.

This chapter analyses how the six undergraduate programmes in communication management in Flanders (Belgium) refer to or include management in their curricula in order to support the career plans of their students. As communication is inherently integrated in business courses, it will attempt to determine how management is included in BAs in communication management, and how it is defined both from the perspective of the programme responsible and of practitioners’. It proposes a six-point model for a ‘managerial attitude’ extracted from the interviews and reflections of the practitioners’ managerial needs for public relations to be embedded in a company’s policy and brought on the board’s agenda when strategic decisions are made.

Although the Flemish part of Belgium was part of the Netherlands until 1830, the countries are quite different, and that is also the case in the two parts of Belgium itself. Therefore, a brief history of public relations in the Netherlands and Belgium intersects three different stories: a story of the development of public relations as public information in the Netherlands in the 19th century; a story of public relations as propaganda and press agentry in the 20th century in the French-speaking part of Belgium; and a story of public relations as public affairs and public information in the Flemish part of the country.

International audience

International audience

International audience

ISSN : 2555-7076; International audience; Les auteures se penchent sur l’approche de la diplomatie publique par le Service européen pour l’action extérieure (SEAE) de l’Union Européenne pour négocier ses intérêts propres avec les pays hors-UE ou avec les organisations internationales. Par le biais d’une analyse de contenu thématique, elles ont défini les idées significatives qui constituent l'univers discursif de l’énoncé (Cull, 2010:12-15) qu’elles ont combiné aux catégories propres à la diplomatie publique (Zhong & Lu, 2013 et Simons, 2014:445) pour leur catégorisation. Elles ont ensuite déterminé les indicateurs propres au micro-blogging et ont identifié les catégories intrinsèques au SEAE, reprenant ses objectifs et ses axes stratégiques. L’analyse croisée du site et du compte Twitter révèle que le SEAE a découvert les avantages de la diplomatie publique, mais qu’il pratique davantage la diplomatie traditionnelle sur les plateformes propres à la diplomatie publique.

International audience

International audience

International audience

International audience