EU’s Digital Public Diplomacy in China during the Covid-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic brought digital public diplomacy (DPD) to the forefront of academic and practitioner interest, given the digitalization of diplomatic activities. Existing literature, however, tends to concentrate on the results of DPD, knowledge generated for practitioners. This study aims to establish a theoretical framework for DPD studies, analysing the EU's DPD activities during COVID-19 from a processual perspective and viewing DPD as a power-laden arena of information competition leading the construction of knowledge and hegemony. Guided by Michel Foucault's theoretical toolkits, particularly governmentality, this framework employs an archaeological and genealogical approach to problematize the EU’s DPD activities. It engages with poststructuralist discourse theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, exploring inclusion and exclusion in political frontiers during crises, and examines how power becomes embedded in social relations through diverse governance techniques and the development of fantasies, which ultimately conceal the fundamental contingency of social relations and unite incompatible elements. The framework’s applicability is demonstrated by putting it to work in a case study, which focuses on the EU’s DPD towards China.