Digital diplomacy has become an interesting area of research especially in the field of
international relations and diplomacy. With the advent of social media platforms, it
provides an avenue for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Malaysia, Wisma Putra and
the diplomatic missions of Malaysia to practice digital diplomacy and engage with
domestic and foreign audiences, agencies and other stakeholders. This study aims to
analyse the Wisma Putra’s digital diplomacy in terms of; (1) the implementation
strategy, (2) how growing concern of misinformation affect Wisma Putra’s digital
diplomacy and (3) how Wisma Putra used digital diplomacy for crisis communication.
This study relies on qualitative analyses which are in-depth interview and content
analysis. In light of four core organizational factors that determine the extent on
digitalization is embedded within MFA proposed by Hocking and Melissen (2015),
Wisma Putra has fulfilled the factors of supportive internal structure and roles and skills.
However, the absence of guidelines in effective rules and risk management and the
presence of digital ‘champions’ posting mistakes in the social media need to be
addressed. In accordance with the said factors, the strategies used to implement Wisma
Putra’s digital diplomacy is still in its developing phase and have not been formulated
properly yet. Wisma Putra’s growing concern of misinformation affect its digital
diplomacy in terms of having a restricted engagement with social media users, tailored
postings in the social media and providing counter-arguments or rebuttals. For crisis
communication, Wisma Putra uses digital diplomacy to issue Travel Advisory for
official warning on the safety of a country and coordinated entries in social media in
the event of emergency during crisis. Recommendations for future research and
limitations are also outlined in this dissertation for enhancing the corpus of digital
diplomacy for Wisma Putra.
