Diplomacy “online”, Albania at 71st in the world

Increasingly, diplomacy around the world selects social platforms to communicate with the people, given the benefits of internet use, governments have a new opportunity to achieve foreign policy goals through their country's promotion.

Smaller countries enjoy the same opportunities to improve their image and presence around the world. The so-called “e-diplomacy” or even <x2wiplomacy” is seen as an extension of traditional diplomacy, not as substitute for early communication channels at the state's direction level.

“Twitter” is now considered the most used tool of digital diplomacy, with 260 personal accounts of heads of state and executives from 125 countries around the globe, even though the leaders who use it personally are only 30.

The survey of “Digital Diplomacy” for 2016, which examines 210 foreign ministry, placed Albania 43rd in this form of diplomacy, which means the first in the region. Next came Kosovo 71st, Serbia 94th, Macedonia 118th, Bosnia to 141st and Montenegro at 144th.

It's interesting how Serbia doesn't have an official account of its Foreign Ministry, while many foreign embassies there have pages on Twitter”. The same situation is presented in Bosnia, while unlike those two countries -- Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia -- apart from having such an account, use “Twitter” as a way to communicate their daily activities to the public.