ASTK18425U Summer 2023 - Diplomacy in the Digital Age

Volume 2022/2023
Education

MSc in Political Science

MSc in Social Science

MSc in Security Risk Management

Bachelor in Political Science

 

Summer 2023 (Week 33 & 34)

Content

This research-based summer school has a two-fold ambition of introducing and involving students in:

(1) the emerging literature and practice on digital technologies and diplomacy (2) the world of research through a concrete book project, resulting from my ERC project DIPLOFACE.

 

Ad 1) Digital technologies appear to dramatically change how we make war and peace, how we consume, migrate, identify, and relate. Across digital infrastructures and social media platforms, boundaries between private and public, local and global are blurred, while algorithms shape what becomes visible and possible in world politics. Yet, there is little clarity about what we mean by ‘the digital’ and how we understand digitalization as a productive force in international relations. This summer school explores how diplomacy performed with and through digital devices and technologies.

 

Ad 2) The course is also a master class, allowing students to go under the hood of academia and invite them into the research lab. We will discuss and experience what it means to publish and how we go from observations to analysis and how students themselves might contribute to research.

 

Who should participate?

The school is aimed for students interested in:

  • digitalisation, technology and diplomacy and how we might theorise and study these phenomena.
  • how research works in practice and how what it means to write an academic book or article
Learning Outcome

Knowledge:

 

To aim is to provide participants with:

  • an understanding of how ‘the digital’ and digital technologies shape diplomacy and world politics in everyday practice
  • an introduction to different approaches to ‘digitalisation’ and ‘digital transformation’ with a particular emphasis on anthropological and sociologically informed approaches
  • an understanding of how the academic world works in practice and how to do and evaluate scholarly work
  • a better grasp of their own knowledge and place in the political science profession

Skills:

 

  • Participants will train and improve their ability to present and write concisely and to develop coherent arguments and analyses.
  • Participants train their skills in reviewing and evaluating different kinds of material, from academic journal articles to webpages and guest talks.
  • Participants will strengthen their feedback skills and get a better sense of their own professional strengths and development opportunities

 

  • Participants will sharpen their writing and reading skills, focusing on how to be more precise and engaging.

 

Competences:

  • At the end of the course, participants will have a broader and deeper understanding of practices and theories of diplomacy in the digital age and will be able to apply this understanding to concrete empirical cases and examples.
  • Participants will have developed a new vocabulary for understanding digital transformation, digitalization and how it shapes social life.

 

  • Participants will have obtained a hands-on experience with how research works in practice and what it means to write an academic book or article.

 

Literature

Two books:

  • Adler-Nissen, R and K Eggeling, Everyday Diplomacy in the Digital Age, forthcoming
  • Marres, N (2017) Digital Sociology: The Reinvention of Social Research, London: Polity Books

 

Key journal articles in the field of IR, diplomacy and beyond, including:

  • Adler-Nissen, R & A Drieschova (2019) Track-Change Diplomacy: Technology, Affordances, and the Practice of International Negotiations, International Studies Quarterly 63(3):531-545.
  • Eggeling, K & Adler-Nissen, R (2021) The Synthetic Situation in Diplomacy: Scopic Media and the Digital Mediation of Estrangement. Global Studies Quarterly 1(2):1-14.
  • Bremmer, I (2021) The Technopolar Moment: How Digital Powers Will Reshape the Global Order, Foreign Affairs 100:112-128
Students will benefit from having at least completed IR 2.
Participants must:
• read all the required course literature
• engage actively in the discussion
• participate in the group work and writing exercises.
The summer school is an activity-oriented course.
It combines lectures, guest lectures, group discussions, individual work, and student/scholar presentations, and it offers participants the option of receiving continuous feedback.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Class Instruction
  • 28
  • Total
  • 28
Continuous feedback during the course
Peer feedback (Students give each other feedback)
Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Portfolio
Type of assessment details
Portfolio exam
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
No external censorship
Re-exam

 

- In the semester where the course takes place: Free written assignment

- In subsequent semesters: Free written assignment

Criteria for exam assesment
  • Grade 12 is given for an outstanding performance: the student lives up to the course's goal description in an independent and convincing manner with no or few and minor shortcomings
  • Grade 7 is given for a good performance: the student is confidently able to live up to the goal description, albeit with several shortcomings
  • Grade 02 is given for an adequate performance: the minimum acceptable performance in which the student is only able to live up to the goal description in an insecure and incomplete manner