Sweden’s early adopter foreign minister on crafting digital diplomacy

As offline problems concerning freedom and censorship continue to become online ones, we need digital diplomacy to help connect the talkers and thinkers of the world with the doers, to facilitate change. It alone may not save the world, but it will help us find new ways to come together to save it.

This was Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt's message atTedxStockholm, held in conjunction with the two-dayStockholm Initiative for Digital Diplomacybringing together diplomats, academics and developers in a 24-hour hackathon with a difference.

"Some great changes in the world have been down to human talkers and thinkers -- but now we must join with the doers of the world," said Bildt, referring to the Diplohack, a multidisciplinary event designed to create models for how digital diplomacy can facilitate real world change.

"Diplomacy is essentially about communication -- human minds getting together to share information and change the way in which we think, act and do. Thus diplomacy is about changing behaviour, it's about informing and creating better opportunities that might not have been there before. Can we save the world? At least we can change things.

"Diplomacy is about communication between nations and we live, thank god, in a much more open world where the voice of individual people means much more. Governments are becoming more open than used to be the case, thus public diplomacy and digital is becoming more important. It's about getting to the pulse of what's happening."

Bildt has been at the forefront of technological change throughout his career. As Prime Minister, he sent thefirst email to then US President Bill Clintonon 5 February, 1994, congratulating him on the decision to end a US trade embargo on Vietnam. He couldn't help but add, as a sign off, "Sweden is -- as you know -- one of the leading countries in the world in the field of telecommunications, and it is only appropriate that we should be among the first to use the internet also for political contacts and communications around the globe". Bildt has not stopped since: he famously tweeted his Bahraini counterpart in 2011when he couldn't get hold of him (it was revolutionary at the time) and was last year named"best connected" Twitter leaderfor mutually following 44 other leaders (President Obama may have been the first leader to sign up to Twitter, and the most followed, but he's the least connected). Bildt told Wired.co.uk afterwards that in the real world that simply means, "Now I see what my colleagues are doing. I can see what kind of message they are trying to get across which is important for me to know, whereas before I'd know only when it happened."

Bildt might have 250,007 Twitter followers, but for him it's listening to the Twitterverse that is important -- reading the "pulse" of the citizens. The Minister arrived at the event, held near a snow-covered Humlegrden park, having come straight from meetings concerning the latest events in Ukraine, where laws were swiftly passed on 16 January to criminalise protests. The day's events clearly hung over Bildt as he took to the stage. Earlier he tweeted, "Dark designs against democracy clearly behind what we saw in Kiev today [16 January]. And ultimately against independence of Ukraine," and, "Outrageous the way laws severely restricting freedoms were pushed through Ukraine parliament today [16 January]. Clearly forces pushing Belarus scenario."

Consequently, in his talk he emphasised the need for good infrastructure and connectivity in ensuring the people have a voice. It's something the Ukrainian people showed us during the November protests following President Viktor Yanukovych's refusal to sign a free trade deal with the European Union in favour of maintaining stronger ties with Russia, and again on 16 January, on Twitter. Now, those kinds of protests could be criminalised with the new laws stating individuals can be fined or jailed for pitching a tent or setting up a stage, while online media outlets have to register with the authorities and those buying pre-paid mobile phone services must provide passport information. The state appears to be at war with public protest, particularly the anonymous kind.

"Today there was a dramatic development in Parliament in the Ukraine," said Bildt. "Suddenly the regime passed seven new laws, some draconian and including freedom of the net, in ten minutes without any debates. The fastest information is on the net, which started to explode over those issues -- you get the pulse of what's happened.

"Then there was the referendum in Egypt in the last two days on the constitution -- 98 percent voted yes mmm impressive. I'm surprised it wasn't 100 percent."

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Sweden's early adopter foreign minister on crafting digital diplomacy