Digital city diplomacy and international cities networks: Collaboration and city branding strategies around climate issues

Abstract

Our study refers to what the communication of city networks looks like regarding mentions and frames and if the digital communication activities of city networks could primarily serve as collaborative diplomacy of governance or are motivated by self-interests such as city branding. Our theoretical frame integrates Castells’ (2010, 2009) networked society and communication power and combines various concepts from the public (digital) diplomacy, public relations, and strategic communication. In a semantic network analysis of Tweets, we analysed the communication strategies of three city networks according to their digital content ( n = 47,226) and more specifically each network's top 50 hashtags and mentions therein. We find that city networks use three different Twitter communication strategies. We propose a model describing topic-, city/mayor-, and hybrid-oriented strategies. The analysis of the three city groups undertaken here has extended our knowledge of global urban governance communication strategies in burgeoning city diplomacy.