Imagining the European Union: Gender and Digital Diplomacy in European External Relations

893935PSW0010.1177/1478929919893935Political Studies ReviewWright and Guerrina
research-article2020
Special Issue Article
Political Studies Review
2020, Vol. 18(3) 525 –541
Imagining the European
© The Author(s) 2020
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Union: Gender and Digital
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929919893935
DOI: 10.1177/1478929919893935
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Diplomacy in European
External Relations
Katharine AM Wright1
and Roberta Guerrina2
Abstract
The European Union has historically sought to project outwards its identity, values and raison
d’être during times of uncertainty and crisis. One of the core values stated to be at the heart of
the European Union’s identity is gender equality. Yet, while gender equality features more visibly
in the European Union’s external discourse as it seeks to position itself as a global leader in
equality and human rights, the internal challenge posed by crisis presents a real obstacle to future
developments in this area. This article examines digital diplomacy, specifically Twitter presence,
as a discursive site for constituting meaning. We thus take the digital space afforded by Twitter
as a site where the European Union’s internal and external identity is constructed in a process
of articulation and contestation. Digital diplomacy is now a salient part of public diplomacy,
increasingly prioritised over ‘traditional’ approaches. Using data gathered from Twitter on the
European Union’s 60th anniversary and International Women’s Day in 2017, this article provides
the first in-depth study of the European Union’s approach to digital diplomacy. We find the
marginalisation of gender issues from the European Union’s core narratives bringing into question
the place of gender equality as a core value of the European Union.
Keywords
gender, digital diplomacy, European Union, Normative Power Europe, crisis
Accepted: 19 November 2019
Introduction
As noted in the introduction to this special issue, the European Union (EU) Global
Strategy opens by stating that ‘We live in times of existential crisis, within and beyond the
European Union’ (EU, 2016: 7). Whether real or imagined, political and media discourse
has further reinforced this notion (Muehlenhoff et al., submitted). The EU’s normative
1School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
2School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, Bristol University, Bristol, UK
Corresponding author:
Katharine AM Wright, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon
Tyne NE1 7RU, UK.
Email: katharine.a.m.wright@ncl.ac.uk

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Political Studies Review 18(3)
credentials were significantly shaken as a result of the 2007 financial crisis, this impact of
which has been wide reaching, cutting across the full spectrum of EU policy action and
competence. As a result, the EU and its member states have been struggling to move from
a reactive to a strategic mode of policy-making, turning what started as a financial crisis
into a deep existential crisis about the very identity of the organisation. The intercon-
nected nature of this process, though contested, can be said to include an economic
(financial), social (the rise of Euroscepticism), political (Brexit), security (refugees) and
rights-based (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+)) and
gender) dimension. The position of the EU as a political and economic power is therefore
subject to a range of internal and external challenges for the project of European
integration.
‘Crises’ are never an entirely exogenously driven phenomena. Rather they are consti-
tuted discursively by both policy actors and the researchers who study these processes
(Manners and Rosamond, 2018: 28). This symbiotic relationship helps to construct domi-
nant discourses about the impact of key policy decisions and the interests that are safe-
guarded, or prioritised, in the process (Cavaghan and O’Dwyer, 2018). So while the
dominant narrative of the economic crisis has largely been focused on sovereign debt and
the financial sector, it has almost entirely erased ‘the complex dynamics of race, class, gen-
der and legal status that have helped to determine which groups have been hardest hit by the
crisis’ (Emejulu and Bassel, 2018: 110). In this context, whereas the pathway out of the
impasse positioned the interests of high earners front and centre (O’Dwyer, 2018), the
impact of the crisis on women of colour has been long and drawn out but erased from main-
stream accounts of crisis and recovery (Cavaghan and O’Dwyer, 2018; Emejulu and Bassel,
2018: 110). This is important for our analysis here as it defines the boundaries of inclusion,
exclusion and belonging to the idea of Europe. In so doing, it reproduces a specific form of
European identity, which prioritises liberal forms of equality over intersectionality.
Crises are, by their very nature, a break in the status quo. As such, they can provide
opportunities for renewal, rather than retrenchment (as the EU Global Strategy also
notes). After all, the integration of Europe as a political project was born out of a political
crisis that required new ways to restructure the political economy of Europe. Sixty years
after the signing of the Treaties of Rome, discussions about another or a different Europe
abound, drawing specific attention to the need to return to core values, their role in driv-
ing the process and developing a more inclusive vision of European integration (Manners
and Rosamond, 2018). Much of the recent critical literature on crisis has explored how
this discursive frame requires, and legitimises, extra ordinary measures to re-establish the
‘status quo ante’ (Walby, 2018). Less attention is paid to the impact of the crisis on the
EU’s identity, particularly as a norm entrepreneur and a gender actor. The EU’s ability to
find a pathway through this juncture will determine the organisation’s future position in
the global order. This article seeks to interrogate whether, and if so how, the EU has
sought to position gender equality through its digital diplomacy in the context of crisis. In
so doing, we will examine the ways in which this component of the EU’s foundational
narrative is deployed as it seeks to find a way forward out of this crises.
It would seem obvious that at critical junctures, the EU and its constituent parts would
seek to rearticulate and reassert foundational norms as a way to assert its common pur-
pose or esprit de corps (Dingott Alkopher, 2018; Walby, 2018). As MacRae (2010: 157)
pointed out, gender equality is a core component of the mythologisation of the EU’s
foundational values. This institutional narrative is based on the inclusion of the principle
of equality between men and women in the Treaty of Rome and reinforced by the Treaty
of Amsterdam which mandated gender the inclusion of a gender perspective in all EU

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policy areas (Gender Mainstreaming). The key claim by European institutions and offi-
cials is that equality not only continues to be relevant to the European project today, it is
something the EU is actively pursuing through a range of policy initiatives, for example,
the Gender Action Plan II and the 2018 Women, Peace and Security Strategy (Guerrina
et al., 2018a: 252). This process of mythologisation, MacRae (2010: 171) argues, it
intended to ‘increase loyalty and legitimacy among European women’. However, it has
proved largely unsuccessful because the reality remains that the EU is not a gender equal
polity (MacRae, 2010: 171).
The EU often draws on such normative discourses as a vehicle for European security
policy (Ansorg and Haastrup, 2018; Guerrina et al., 2018a; Guerrina and Wright, 2016;
Stern, 2011). Digital diplomacy is an important platform for articulating the EU’s identity
and a tool at the disposal of the European institutions for reinforcing the core messages
included in key policy documents. Perhaps more significantly, digital diplomacy has
become a salient site for the performance of international diplomacy as states and interna-
tional organisations have increased their use of social media in order to project their influ-
ence and reach in managing publics (Wright, 2019). This trend thus represents something
of a transformation in diplomatic practice, altering not just the methods but the meaning of
diplomacy, with the potential to increase transparency and accountability of both outcomes
and process (Bjola, 2016: 2). Digital diplomacy has changed the way in which govern-
ments and international organisations seek to share and manage messages, with social
media enabling the circumnavigation of the traditional routes for information dissemina-
tion through the media, and to engage directly with consumers (Crilley, 2016: 55). This
makes it particularly suited to supporting public diplomacy efforts.
Our focus here then is on digital diplomacy as public diplomacy. We are interested not
in the EU’s diplomatic relations with other states, but in how it seeks to engage with
broader publics and issues. Public diplomacy has been seen as ‘the Cinderella of the EU’s
global engagement’ (Manners and Whitman, 2013); however, the European External
Action Service’s (EEAS) recent investment in digital diplomacy requires us to reassess
this claim (Mann, 2015). There is therefore considerable value in an in-depth analysis of
the use of Twitter as a...