By Or Blan
Normative Power 2.0 – Influences of the New Media and Information Age on the European Union as a Normative Actor in its Relations with the States of the Southern Mediterranean.
In my thesis I examine the way in which social media and the new information age has effected the EU foreign policy, specifically the way in which it is trying to use its normative power online in order to engage and influence citizens in different countries around the southern Mediterranean. By examining official Facebook and Twitter accounts of the European External Action Service (EEAS) delegations to Israel, Egypt, Morocco, The Palestinian Authority and Tunis, as well as examining the Cybersecurity Strategy of the European Union (CSEU) I wish to show how the EU is trying to both adapt itself to a new "direct & connected" communication regime and its normative power to the cyber world, by using its public diplomacy strategy online. The research then goes on to claim that this is all part of the "EU Normative Power 2.0", i.e. the ways in which the EU, as a normative actor, is changing, reacting and a adapting to the information age and to new media.