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Eric Van Rythoven

@ericvanr.bsky.social

572 Followers 984 Following

Writing and teaching on security, diplomacy, and emotion in global politics.

Consider the case of Musk’s role in the 2024 UK riots. In July accounts on X began to falsely claim that a Muslim refugee was responsible for the murder of three young girls in the city of Southport. This triggered a series of far-right protests and violence across the country, some targeting mosques and hotels sheltering migrants. A key figure in mobilizing the protests was Stephen Yaxley-Lennon—also known as Tommy Robinson—the founder of the English Defence League and a highly influential anti-Islam activist. Robinson was previously banned from Twitter for hateful conduct in 2018, but his account was reinstated by Musk’s amnesty policy. Robinson used his X account to stoke the riots by pushing anti-Muslim narratives to hundreds of thousands of followers, including claims that Muslim asylum seekers were terrorists and rapists.
Finally, this article aims to provoke a reconsideration of ‘space’ in debates about digital diplomacy. One of the key contributions of digital diplomacy scholarship is in pushing how International Relations (IR) thinks about space beyond territory, and to consider the digital spaces where new forms of statecraft can emerge (Adesina 2017; Bjola et al. 2019; Manor 2019). Yet discussions of these digital spaces are often limited to new technologies and their potential for disruption. This stops short of considering how digital spaces themselves become invested with social and emotional meaning (Solomon and Steele 2016: 277). Digital spaces, whether they be websites, dating apps, or the social media platforms used by diplomats, take on symbolic meanings which shapes our interaction with them.
Second, my argument pushes scholars of digital diplomacy to start examining the politics of social media companies. Studies of digital diplomacy typically treat social media companies as neutral parties; as a kind of apolitical infrastructure upon which diplomatic practices travel, but not as political actors in their own right. Yet a growing literature on the international politics of Big Tech and algorithmic governance shows how these firms become key sources of political authority (Srivastava 2023).
Far from being benign, Goffman viewed facework as frequently involving threats and symbolic violence (Faizullaev 2017; Wong 2021). Coupling Goffman’s ideas to debates about aesthetic insecurity (Steele 2012) brings into focus the recurring problem of insecurity in diplomatic facework. This is a much needed perspective for a field which emphasizes the role of soft power (e.g. Adesina 2017) and assumes diplomacy is non-violent (Bjola and Holmes 2015)
The face management approach to digital diplomacy then is not simply about the projection of a positive public image, but doing so amid recurring aesthetic insecurity. This view of digital diplomacy is not meant to preclude other definitions: states certainly engage in digital diplomacy to communicate with foreign publics, frame events, and generate legitimacy for different policies. The claim is simply that the purpose of managing face and limiting aesthetic insecurity lurks in the background of these acts. The crucial implication of this, however, is that when new sources of aesthetic insecurity emerge, they can threaten a state’s ability to manage face.
Ayn Rand justifying her affair in a manipulative way.