Conference Agenda

This paper presents a discourse analysis of European Union digital diplomacy transmissions in the Philippines relating to the dispute over islands in the South China Sea. Applying the discourse historical approach proposed by Wodak (2009), the paper examines how intra and extra-textual contextual factors, such as political realities and EU policy, shape the regional bloc’s articulations online. The data analyzed indicate that the regional bloc's digital diplomacy articulations on the South China Sea territorial disputes are shaped by the context in which they are produced. Facebook posts on the topic were found to be influenced by intertextual, interdiscursive, and extralinguistic factors. That is to say, the EU’s social media content creators crafted their posts by considering: (1) existing texts and publications that could be referenced in statements; (2) discourses, or ways of thinking, that are part of the EU’s usual repertoire of concepts; and (3) relevant events, such as the Arbitration Award by the UNCLOS Tribunal, high-level meetings between EU and Philippine government officials, and news of Chinese incursions in contested territory. It is argued that even if the European bloc is a non-determinant actor in the conflict, it has continuously published posts on the topic, articulating its position on the matter that is couched in the language of multilateralism and legal norms. Consequently, its positions have generally aligned with Philippine interests.

Digital diplomacy is a relatively new topic in diplomatic studies, and it refers to the pursuit of foreign policy objectives using the internet and social media. Few studies have been published on the ways the EU has used online tools to pursue its interests in the Philippines, and none of them have examined how the European bloc has articulated its views on the territorial dispute between the Philippines and China. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the academic literature, while simultaneously contributing to the scholarly work on EU-Philippine relations, maritime territorial disputes, and digital diplomacy.

Trade has long been considered 'the principal instrument of foreign policy for the EU' (Sapir, 1998, 726). Bossuyt et al. (2020) argued that differences between EU trade and foreign policy were growing, highlighting an apparent lack of 'synergetic coherence between the trade and foreign policy realms in the EU' (Bossuyt, 2020). However, the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) can be seen as the European Union's attempt to integrate trade policy into its foreign policy objectives. For example, the EU’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (2021) emphasized the significance of securing FTA deals with 'like-minded' countries in the region. This paper examines the nexus between the EU’s trade and foreign policies and their potential impact using the EU-NZ FTA as a case study. Arguably, the success of EU foreign policy relies on positive reception from third countries. This study presents New Zealand's perceptions of the EU and the EU-NZ FTA. The methodology involves a two-fold approach: firstly, employing a systematic media analysis to explore how the New Zealand media portrays the FTA; and secondly, conducting 30 interviews with key figures in New Zealand across three cohorts: government, business, and journalists. The paper reveals an increasing inclination of the EU towards Non-Trade Policy Objectives (NTPOs) (Borchert et al., 2021). Yet, the New Zealand case study shows that the FTA's impact on local perceptions of the EU was less significant than anticipated, despite considerable efforts by the EU and its 27 EU Member States to incorporate New Zealand's preferences. This can be attributed to historical conflicts and a perceived lack of accommodation by the EU in certain sectors.

From an interactionist point of view, EU, like any other international actor, is a social structure consisting of roles performed by its constituent units (Harnisch, 2012). It is proposed to conceptualize the EU's actorness as "the ability of a subject to imagine and realize a role for himself in a different context of international relations." This ability, as the theory of roles of interactionism suggests, arises in 1) a critical situation; 2) in the interaction of social and material resources, creative actions and (internal and external) expectations. The arena for role reversal is the EU-China strategic partnership, where both sides play out their respective international roles through a competitive role-playing process that develops within a given partner-rival dichotomy frame. The scientific significance of the project lies in the fact that for the first time an attempt will be made to comprehend the actorship of the EU with the help of its interactionist concept and in changing geopolitical conditions.

The aim of the paper is to determine the mechanism for building the EU's actorness in the changed geopolitical conditions through the "rethinking" of its roles, the field for which is the Strategic Partnership with China. The solution of the research problem involves a two-stage model. Firstly, rethinking the international role of the EU in response to problematic situations in international relations, such as the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, which increase the "anxiety" of the European society, actualize the request for ontological security and call into question the established approaches and practices of interaction with third countries. Secondly, an analysis of the attempt to realize their “imaginary role in social interaction, the arena for which the ambivalent EU-China strategic partnership is chosen, and serves as the arena in which the EU and China realize their respective international roles through a competitive role-playing process games.