Analysis of engagement in digital diplomacy

In today’s world, diplomacy is not limited to traditional channels of communication such as official meetings; it is actively moving into the digital space. Social networks, blogs, and online platforms play a significant role in shaping public opinion, influencing both domestic and foreign relations between countries.

In international research, engagement is understood as the degree of interaction and activity of an audience in response to the online communication of diplomatic institutions. It is expressed through actions such as likes (reactions), comments, reposts, citations, or ignoring content on social networks.

Engagement shows the level of interest and participation of the audience in discussions initiated by diplomatic structures and can be considered one indicator of their effectiveness. At the same time engagement highlights the channel’s active actions to attract an audience.

Engagement analysis is used in different contexts — marketing and media as well as diplomacy: in ministries of foreign affairs and international governmental organizations. This tool is important for making informed decisions and increasing the effectiveness of communication strategies.

Studying the level of engagement allows diplomats to track how the audience responds to key messages, initiatives, and foreign policy statements. This makes it possible to promptly identify support, criticism, or potential crises, which is especially important under evolving digital international relations.

Engagement data help model and forecast changes in public opinion, study cumulative deliberation, and identify possible political or social consequences of digital diplomacy. A high level of engagement may indicate the formation of new political trends, heightened public interest in certain issues, or the need to adjust a foreign policy course. Engagement is measured both with quantitative metrics and qualitative indicators.

Examples of simple and complex quantitative metrics are given below. A more complete list can be found on popsters.ru and tgstat.ru, as well as on other analytics services that develop their own approaches to measuring audience engagement.

If we talk about assessing the activity of the channel itself, then indicators such as the following are used:

In addition to counting metrics, researchers of digital diplomacy also resort to qualitative analysis. The purpose of this step is to assess the depth of user engagement. First of all, the academic community commonly uses:

Obtaining data for studying the engagement of diplomatic channels becomes more difficult every year. The main limitation is that social media owners often restrict access to their APIs (Application Programming Interface) due to misuse of user data by malicious actors.

For this reason, to conduct engagement analysis in digital diplomacy, scholars have to use platforms that allow data export without an API (Telegram), create specialized research accounts (X), turn to programmers and available toolbases that can provide alternative ways of obtaining information, or use special analytics services.

Although such services are mostly used by marketers and media managers, they also help analyze digital diplomacy. They can provide an export of raw data, deliver calculated quantitative metrics for a certain period, and offer ready-made indices based on primary data (e.g., ER, ERavg, VR, etc.).

Note that on certain platforms it is possible to export the text of messages, the number and type of reactions, and also see where a post was reposted for subsequent sentiment analysis, topic modeling, and network analysis. Below are links to official websites and instructions for working with available analytics services that operate with both Russian and foreign social networks.

Before starting the analysis, it is advisable to form an understanding of which quantitative metrics you want to use. Before you begin, try answering the following checklist questions to choose the ideal analysis tool and avoid redoing work.

To demonstrate the functionality of analytics services, we will focus on TGStat.ru. The choice is justified by several factors:

As an example for the analysis, we will take the Telegram account of the  the Consulate General of Russia in Dubai. After analyzing the graph we may note that within one calendar year the number of readers increased 7-fold — from 5,000 to 37,000 subscribers as of February 2025.

According to the chart showing the number of posts per month across the entire lifetime of the channel, the "Consulate General of Russia in Dubai" channel published 126 posts from March 2022 to February 2025. Peak activity occurred in March 2022, October 2023, and June 2024 (17, 19, and 24 posts, respectively). The chart also suggests that the channel prefers original posts, as indicated by the minimal number of reposts from other sources.

Although the number of posts remains small (over 35 months of the channel’s existence, 126 posts were made, or about 3.6 posts per month), Figure 2 shows that from October 2023 to February 2025 the average reach fluctuates in the range of 10 to 135 thousand views. Sharp spikes are observed, presumably related to the use of emotional content.

Despite fluctuations, reach consistently exceeds the values that were observed before October 2023, which indicates sustained reader interest in the channel. However, the instability of indicators requires further analysis to identify key factors affecting the dynamics of views. These same data confirm the LiveDune study, which suggests that the less often a channel is active, the higher its views.

It is also worth paying attention to engagement indicators from the perspective of interactions. As follows from the chart above, in peak values the share of actions on the channel reaches 23.5 percent. At the same time, about 5 percent of readers leave reactions, write comments, or repost on a regular basis. This may potentially indicate the presence of a stable audience on the channel.

To conclude whether such user interaction can be called "active," one should, for example, compare the channel data with platform averages, if such data are publicly available. According to LiveDune, average engagement values for channels with 25−50 thousand subscribers are around 1.6 percent. Thus, the indicators of the channel "Consulate General of Russia in Dubai" can be considered high.

To assess posting effectiveness, reach, and interactions on the channel, one can also compare it with similar resources. In this case, the "Consulate General of Russia in Phuket" would be suitable. In comparative analysis, you will be able to conclude how successful the channels are at engaging audiences, given similar goals and objectives.

Optimal comparisons may include official accounts of government bodies, diplomatic missions, international organizations, personal pages of diplomats, as well as media and expert communities. Analysis should be conducted using the same metrics (reach, interactions, sentiment), taking into account content types and platform algorithms, as well as regional differences in social media use. This makes it possible to objectively assess communication effectiveness and adapt a digital diplomacy strategy.

Engagement analysis in the case given above seems incomplete, because de facto we obtain only external indicators of the channel. Therefore, the authors of this textbook recommend always supplementing quantitative metrics with content analysis or network analysis (you may choose the method at your discretion). This will make conclusions more complete and clearer for readers of your scholarly work.

Information about citing and cited channels may indicate:

These data help identify key channels with the greatest influence, as well as detect new trends and interests in society. In the context of analyzing academic publications or media materials, this can help not only assess content popularity, but also study the dynamics of public opinion formation and information diffusion.

In Telegram, when comments are absent, valuable information about the sentiment of audience perception can be assessed through readers' reactions. Information about reactions can be obtained by exporting data using the "Export chat history" function and converting the file from .json to tabular .csv formats. After export and formatting, you can determine the number and type of reactions left on posts and identify which ones prevail.

In the case of the "Consulate General of Russia in Dubai," one important preliminary factor should be considered: the channel offers its readers 11 reactions to choose from (February 2025), some of which can be considered positive and some neutral. Negative reactions (according to the emojiall.com emoji library) are absent on the channel at the time of analysis, although they were available earlier. In total, 35 types of reactions were used on the channel, according to data obtained from the Telegram export.

Using the exported table (the counts of the specified reactions were obtained by summing across all posts published on the channel), we can draw a conclusion about the content presented on the channel — in this case, humor likely prevails. Based on the results of preliminary preparation, further sentiment analysis of audience reactions can be conducted.

When formulating conclusions about the nature of engagement in digital diplomacy, you can answer the following questions (and you can always add your own ideas).

In addition to difficulties in obtaining data, there are other serious limitations for engagement analysis in digital diplomacy.

All these factors highlight the need for a comprehensive approach to analyzing digital diplomacy that includes not only quantitative metrics but also qualitative research such as sentiment analysis and topic modeling.