The use of digital diplomacy as a tool for symbolic violence: Framing analysis of Russian–Turkish relations on Twitter

Abstract

Symbols are primarily used by diplomatic actors to better project the core ideas behind certain political initiatives. Author defines symbolic violence as a practice, manifested in deliberate action of a given diplomatic actor to damage his adversary’s reputation, status and dignity through a certain set of actions, such as linguistic violence (e.g., insult, intimidation), disobeying diplomatic tact and so forth. This study aims to examine whether it is possible to establish how a change in practice (in the example of Russia–Turkey relations before and after the downing of the Russian fighter plane Su-24) originates, utilising an alternative practice – theoretical toolkit – contradictory framing of the past. To achieve this, the author examines what potentially might cause a change in practice in the Russia–Turkish case and to what extent the potential of social media can be harnessed by governments to shape public opinion and influence diplomatic actors’ international reputation. The methodology employed was based on previous practice and framing studies that have perfected the tools necessary for the detection and analysis of frames. In this research, these tools were employed on 140-character-long tweets. Identifying general themes was achieved through thematic analysis, the method for identifying, analyzing and reporting on patterns, or themes, within data corpus. The paper mentions that both Russia and Turkey attempted to narrate each other’s behaviour through framing one another on Twitter focusing on the legitimacy and morality of each other’s policies to limit the opponent’s ability to carry out the latter’s foreign political prerogatives. Moreover, as the Twitter analysis of the Russian and Turkish framing of one another showed, governments can and do harness the potential of using images and words as the weapons of symbolic violence when they attempt to impose their own narration on a given event or situation. Symbolic domination [...] is something you absorb like air, something you don’t feel pressured by; it is everywhere and nowhere, and to escape from that is very difficult [...] with the mechanism of symbolic violence, domination tends to take the form of a more effective, and in this sense more brutal, means of oppression [...] the violence has become soft, invisible. 1 Terry Eagleton and Pierre Bourdieu, “Doxa and common life,” New Left Review, 1992, 191 (1): 115. Cambridge J. Eurasian Stud. | 2017 | 1: #UZV32B | https://doi.org/10.22261/UZV32B 1 RE T AC TE D