by Tom Fletcher
Emboldened by the reaction to these experiments in authentic communication, we also experimented with the use of digital tools to increase trade between Britain and the UK. We wanted to use social media to connect our companies with the right Lebanese networks. So we launched a matchmaking service for businesses, using online dating technology. We doubled business in three years, and the UK/Lebanon Tech Hub is now flourishing. I hope that it will create the companies that invent the products we do not yet know we need, but will find we cannot live without.
More than blog posts, I tried to use Twitter to get across our support for Lebanon’s stability, to present a more open and engaging image, and to promote the UK. Sometimes this meant unconventional approaches, such as trying to pick online fights with the Iranian and Syrian presidents, or individual regional politicians. For example, when the Russian presidency tweeted about an Olympic truce during the Sochi Winter Games, I tweeted back that they should therefore stop providing the Syrian regime with weapons for the duration.
Often it involved retweeting the views of others, or articles that reinforced our positions. At the moment the Lebanese presidency fell vacant, I started a Twitter campaign in which people set out what they would do for the country if made president. When the Parliament extended its mandate, we organised a flashmob of schoolchildren to showcase national unity. We ran an online campaign called #Leb2020, to try to get people to focus more on the future, and to create coalitions for change.
And not a Ferrero Rocher in sight.
In my last week in Beirut in 2015, as I careered between belt-busting dinners and emotional farewells, the BBC sent journalist Matthew Teller to Lebanon to look at this naked diplomacy in action. Over several days, he pressed me to explain why I was trying something different, and this exchange formed the basis of a World Service documentary, The Naked Diplomat. I wanted to show that this social media effort was just part of our effort to focus on what diplomats actually do best: stopping people killing each other. Just without all the paraphernalia that slows us down. We were scraping those barnacles off the bottom of the boat.
Below is an extract from our discussions. It forms what is in some ways a stream of consciousness, the product of exhaustion and exhilaration, and I hope that its unpolished state retains an immediacy that conveys what we were trying to do, and my raw excitement about the potential of connecting in new ways – the foundation of Naked Diplomacy that is the subject of this book.
One of the things we’ve had to get used to is a loss of control, it’s a more anarchic environment we’re working in, so you’ve got to trust your people to get stuck in. We’re trying to use social media to get to people. If people are watching EastEnders, I’ll get on EastEnders. I think social media is for everyone, even ambassadors. There are lots of risks from being on it. There are security risks for me, there are reputational risks – it’s not to everyone’s taste, it can become pretty self-indulgent. But the biggest risk is not to be out there engaging in those conversations, and I see the role as ambassador as not just representing a government to a government but representing a people to a people. You’ve got to connect.
There’s still a need for confidential negotiations, for a certain level of secrecy, for old-fashioned message-passing. The digital is the tip of the iceberg, and you’ve still got to have an iceberg beneath the surface.
I’m also making some tough comments about the way politics works here and the way that a lot of these oligarchs are standing in the way of change – I’m saying some quite risky things about them. I’m trying not to be this arrogant, Western diplomat saying this is how it should all be, because they’d kill me for that. I want to start a debate, I want to start a conversation.
The Lebanese are terrific people and through social media I’ve found a connection with them that I would never have had otherwise. The response we’ve seen from them on social media is a reflection of the fact they know how passionate I am about this job, they can see it because it’s come through over four years. So they’re reflecting some of that and it’s very humbling and it’s very moving and I’m heartened, but that doesn’t depend on me at all. There’s a whole embassy machine that is up there on the border supporting the army, that is getting the textbooks to the kids, that is securing the embassy, promoting British interests, that is projecting soft power, and to be honest you can take the ambassador out, hopefully not literally, and that work goes on.
It’s not to everyone’s tastes, and lots of my colleagues look at some of the stuff and roll their eyes. We’re all trying to do our jobs in different ways to suit the local context. What I’m not doing is saying ‘here are the Rice Krispies I had for breakfast’ and me in my underpants and so on. The Sunday Times wrote a couple of years ago saying ‘isn’t it crazy that the ambassador in Beirut is tweeting that Father Christmas came last night with a picture of an empty stocking by the fireplace at a time when the Middle East is in flames’. But if you’re going to do it authentically then you’re going to have to bring a bit of your own personality. The fact was I didn’t spend Christmas morning running around refugee camps, I spent it opening stockings with my two boys. I think it’s no harm to show an element of normality.
If at any point it’s detrimental to national policy I shouldn’t be doing it, because at the end of the day I have one job, and that’s to be the ambassador of Her Majesty’s Government in Lebanon. I think it’s a difficult balance between public and private for all of us – we’re building the plane as we fly it. I played in a football match with Lebanese celebrities in order to highlight the message of One Lebanon. But if you’re running around scoring goals and that’s going on YouTube, that can quickly tip into self-promotion, rather than just promoting your national brand.
If you stacked up my 10,000 tweets over four years, I hope you’d be able to say there’s a narrative that runs through that and that it’s all about Britain’s interests, it’s about making Britain more secure, making Britain more prosperous, and helping Lebanon get through this tough period. Now there’ll be stuff around the margins of that, which is there to draw people in. Like doing a tweetup with one of the divas about her favourite British music. But that’s trying to get people to join our conversation on issues where we need to win the argument. There are massive global challenges ahead of us. We’ve got to find a way to gain people’s trust, gain legitimacy in order to influence those arguments in the right way, and a huge amount of what I’ve been trying to do on social media is basically saying to people: let us be in that argument.
I reckon I have more chance of getting the support that we need to get to the poorest here, of preventing instability here, of preventing ISIL crossing the border, of reducing the risk of radicalisation if I can enlist the largest possible coalition, and I can’t do that just sat in an embassy writing press statements and giving interviews. I’ve got to do it by mobilising people through social media. And we don’t know if that works or not – we’re going to have to come back in ten years’ time and judge it then. But I’d much rather be trying it than not trying it.
Digital changes every aspect of what diplomats do. Sadly it’s been a fact of life that Lebanon has been hit by crisis in the past, and we have to anticipate that it will be hit by crisis again. Most days I read in the reports about different folk who would like to kill me, and not just in my own government. We did our last evacuation in 2006. We have between 4,000 and 6,000 Brits here at any one time and I have to be prepared to press the button on a big evacuation at very short notice. The media timelines are getting shorter and shorter. It wouldn’t be very long after a big security situation here before I’d have people standing in front of the building saying ‘what the hell is the embassy doing?’ So we have to react very fast. We would be communicating with the Brits here by Twitter and over Facebook, using social media to tell them in real time where they should be, what they should be doing, areas to avoid. I think this is the area of greatest change in the way that diplomacy is done in my time in th
e Foreign Office. I’ve got a lot of military guys here who tell me that no plan survives contact with the enemy. It will never be perfect, but surely using digital technology is better than trying to send out a press release or a letter to every Brit. You’re more likely to get the message through fast.
Digital has also transformed our work promoting British companies. We sell more whisky, salmon, luxury cars, yachts here per capita than anywhere in the world. Not many people would expect that. And we’ve used digital technology, like online matchmaking, the same tools that people have used to find a partner, find a date, find whatever else they’re looking for, to connect British companies with Lebanese networks. That’s the business model that’s worked.
If you think about 2012 – the Jubilee, the London Olympics – there was a real pride about British soft power. For the first time in my experience we felt like we owned that whole British brand here. A massive part of that is Manchester United, a massive part is Daniel Craig, and the British artists who come out and perform. The last four years we’ve had all sorts, Tom Jones to Joss Stone, Keane, Snow Patrol, Ellie Goulding – and of course they’re much better ambassadors for the UK than I could ever be. We give them a platform to go out there and project that sense of modern Britain.
They take persuasion. Part of our travel advice says ‘please avoid large crowds’, and the singer of Keane rightly pointed out that ‘we tend to attract quite large crowds’. David Gray is coming this weekend, and I spent a long time explaining to him why it is worthwhile. You could argue that we should focus just relentlessly on the grim situation around us, and most of this embassy are doing that. But we also have a role in projecting a modern Britain in the midst of all that. If we stopped doing that every time there was a crisis here we would never do it. It can sound a bit trite, but actually people do want to carry on living. Particularly the Lebanese. They’re notorious for bouncing back. Any time a conflict ends they’re back in the clubs and the bars and the restaurants, in the mosques and the churches very quickly, and so I think we’re tapping into that sense of resilience that the Lebanese have.
Yes, we have a mixed British reputation in the Middle East – we can argue about whether it’s justified or not, and I spend a lot of my time having that argument with people here. But we’re not just about the distant past. I’m a postcolonial ambassador, and I feel that using popular artists to project a different Britain to the one people are expecting, starts to correct misconceptions.
Digital diplomacy can be used for good and bad. Look at the way that Islamic extremists use these digital channels to recruit, to spread their message – they worked out before any of us the power of visuals in this medium and they’ve done that in a grim way but very effectively, to get attention for their cause. It makes us rivals in this space, we’re going toe to toe, and if we’re not out there trying to fill it, then someone else is going to fill it. So, yeah, I’m in that battle against ISIL in that space, and this is another form of warfare.
There will always be an element of secrecy and there will always be an element of a lack of transparency. I don’t want to live in WikiWorld where we’re just completely open about everything we do. Like reality TV but even more boring. Following me around with a camera 24/7 wouldn’t be effective diplomacy or TV. And one thing I do say to ambassadors who are looking at coming onto social media is: don’t fall into the trap of dancing naked on the Tube – you will get a lot of retweets, a lot of views and probably a lot of likes, but it doesn’t mean that you’re building up influence or respect. Quite the opposite: people are laughing at you, not laughing with you.
Look, power is moving from these hierarchies, and jobs like mine are in a hierarchy. In a structure, it’s like a British banquet, everyone knows where to sit, there’s a menu, it’s very straightforward, very logical. Now it’s much more like a Lebanese meal, it’s a bit more anarchic, and chaotic, because power is moving out to those networks, and I can see that happening all the time. I can feel power draining through my fingers as an ambassador. I am working in a job where I represent governments, and governments are becoming weaker, compared to other sources of power, and within government diplomats are becoming weaker compared to other bits of government. People aren’t waking up in the morning wondering what is Diplomat X thinking, so we have to work harder to get our message across, and that’s why we do social media.
It’s exhilarating and frightening when stuff does go viral, when it takes off, but what we’re not trying to do here is muscle in or establish rules and structures around this space, we’re competing in it with everyone else, on their terms. It’s anarchy out there. You have to earn the credibility and the trust to keep it interesting. One of the things I find excruciating about lots of the replies is the ones that start ‘Your Excellency’. Titles like that actually get in the way of what we’re trying to do, because it creates an artificial barrier. When people are prancing around styling themselves as Excellencies, it gives them a sense of elitism and separation that is no longer justified or useful.
Not everyone is online. It’s a narrow window compared to the world population. But it’s an enormous window compared to the people we could reach ten years ago or twenty years ago, and so you’d be insane not to be out there using it. And a billion people are going to come online very quickly, so we need to be there too.
There’s an unfollow button. People are very free not to follow me, not to follow the embassy account, I reckon you have a certain proportion of people who are interested in what you’re saying, a certain proportion who are a little bit curious, a certain number who are following because they’re actually quite hostile, and are waiting for you to screw up, a certain number of people who are annoyed by it but quite like being annoyed. I don’t know, I can’t read the minds of the people who’ve chosen to follow me, but mostly they’re sticking around, so they’re doing it for some reason.
In diplomacy you often have to speak to people you disagree with. In fact you normally speak to people you disagree with. If I insisted on only speaking to people with Swedish morals I’d have a very boring job. The militia leaders, the warlords who were in place at the end of the civil war do control a huge amount of power. If I want Lebanon to stay standing, if I want to promote British interests, then I do need to engage them vigorously. I suppose on social media I’m talking to everyone. I was talking to the Iranians on social media at a time when it was unfashionable to do so, I regularly have arguments with Syrian regime and with Hezbollah supporters on Twitter, so actually social media is allowing me to have conversations that I can’t have in my more traditional role, where there are limits.
I know you’re often told not to feed the trolls, I’ll often go back and reply to people and quite often that works, you get into a debate and you find that their initial hostility ebbs away. They’ve got a perception of what the British ambassador is, they want to lob a brick at him, and when he actually picks up the brick and lobs it back they’re quite interested and surprised and they want the discussion. There is a school of thought that says it is best not to draw attention to opposing views, but I have always preferred being on the front foot in rebutting them, as they otherwise tend to fester. This morning on my blog, I got tons of really fantastic and encouraging replies. But I got one saying ‘basically all these Lebanese people are being fooled by this guy, he’s Satan in disguise, and we all know the Brits are only here to assassinate us’, so I replied ‘sorry, you’ve caught me out, obviously I admit it: I am the Little Satan, and I am here to assassinate you all, job’s up, game’s up’. I would normally go back, engage a few times, but if I get someone who is tweeting in a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, a really abusive way at me, I’ll block them. Life’s too short.
Four years ago I’d get asked to remove tweets and so on, because I was probing the line, I was trying to find where the line should be. So we’re learning all the time, we make mistakes all the time. I’ve only deleted two tweets. Early on I tweeted I was on a yacht. Every ya
cht we sell here creates ten jobs in Plymouth, so I tweeted something like ‘I love my job, I’m on a yacht off the coast of Beirut, this is a win-win for jobs in Beirut and jobs in Plymouth’. I was trying to show accessibility but also demonstrate that being on a yacht was actually for a reason. But the sense was that the last thing the Foreign Office needs is ambassadors telling people they’re prancing around on yachts. So I deleted that one. I wouldn’t tweet a picture of me drinking a glass of champagne in the rare moments I get to drink one, no one needs to see that. It doesn’t help us to get our message across about what we’re really doing, which is not swanning around swigging champagne.
The other one I deleted, there were public sector strikes on pensions in Britain, and I tweeted that I was too busy that day to strike, but I had sympathy or solidarity with the people striking. And it was pointed out to me by the PM that this wasn’t the right thing to tweet on a government handle. Now if I’d been tweeting on a @Tom Fletcher123 handle then fair enough, if I’d walked down Whitehall with a T-shirt saying ‘back the strikes’ then that would be fine. But I agree it was wrong to tweet from a government handle that I had sympathy and solidarity with the strikes, so that for me was quite a clear example of where the line rests.
… I have self doubt every time I press send on a tweet, or finalise a blog, because you think: am I going to screw this one up? Is this the one that causes some great outrage and ends up with British flags being burnt across the region or embassies being torched? You do feel that responsibility. I question myself every day about the decisions we take on security. Am I keeping the staff safe? It only takes one mistake there to overwhelm everything else we’ve done here in the last four years.