Diaspora as Digital Diplomatic Agents: ‘BOSNET’ and Wartime Foreign Affairs

Abstract

This paper integrates a different perspective into the diaspora literature, by placing it within the frame of digital diasporas and war time engagement in actions and initiatives traditionally considered as diplomatic. We reconstruct how digital diaspora diplomacy developed during a time when the Internet was relatively new and diplomatic tools were limited due to an ongoing conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We examine BOSNET, an online epistemic community of Bosnian diaspora IT pioneers, with a shared set of normative and principled set of beliefs about the independence of their homeland, and collected, shared and spread information about what was going on in their country. We label their work as ‘policy innovation’ engagement and performativity as 'informal' behaviour, as it was unscripted, uncoded and unregulated by any written conventions or state strategies.