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Building bridges or digging the trench? International organizations, social media, and polarized fragmentation

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  • Ecker-Ehrhardt, Matthias

Abstract

Communication professionals working for International Organizations (IOs) are important intermediaries of global governance that increasingly use social media to reach out to citizens directly. Social media pose new challenges for IO public communication, such as a highly competitive economy of attention and the fragmentation of audiences driven by networked curation of content and selective exposure. In this context, IO social media communication has to make tough choices about what to communicate and how, aggravating inherent conflicts of IO communication between comprehensive public information (aiming at institutional transparency) - and partisan political advocacy (aiming at normative change). If IOs choose advocacy, they might garner substantial resonance on social media. IO advocacy nevertheless fails to the extent that it fosters the polarized fragmentation of networked communication and undermines the credibility of IO communication as a source of trust - worthy information across polarized 'echo chambers'. The paper illustrates this argument through a quantitative content and social network analysis of X/Twitter communication on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM). Remarkably, instead of facilitating cross-cluster communication ('building bridges'), United Nations accounts seem to have substantially fostered ideological fragmentation ('digging the trench') by their way of partisan retweeting, mentioning, and (hash)tagging.

Suggested Citation

  • Ecker-Ehrhardt, Matthias, 2024. "Building bridges or digging the trench? International organizations, social media, and polarized fragmentation," Global Cooperation Research Papers 34, University of Duisburg-Essen, Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:khkgcr:300240
    DOI: 10.14282/2198-0411-GCRP-34
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Adler-Nissen, Rebecca & Zarakol, Ayşe, 2021. "Struggles for Recognition: The Liberal International Order and the Merger of Its Discontents," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 75(2), pages 611-634, February.
    2. Mark Copelovitch & Jon C. W. Pevehouse, 2019. "International organizations in a new era of populist nationalism," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 169-186, June.
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