Platformed Protocols and Affective Authority: Digital Diplomacy as Semiotic Performance

This article examines digital diplomacy as platformed protocol, conceptualising it as a multimodal, affectively charged, and culturally encoded symbolic practice embedded within the infrastructures of digital platforms. While existing research has addressed the migration of diplomatic practices to online spaces, the semiotic dimensions of these practices remain underexplored. Drawing on classical semiotics, social semiotics, multimodal discourse analysis and critical semiotics, the article develops a layered methodological approach to analyse how diplomats and institutions utilise visual, textual, and gestural signs to construct authority, legitimacy, and relational positioning within platform environments. Through case studies including video-mediated diplomacy, affective framing on social media, TikTok diplomacy, iconographic geopolitics, and cultural coding, the article demonstrates how these practices operate as socially situated semiotic resources, negotiating visibility and soft power while navigating the logics of platform capitalism. The findings contribute to scholarship in communication, cultural studies, and international relations by revealing how affect, technology, and symbolic power intersect in contemporary diplomatic practices, offering a scalable framework for analysing digital diplomacy across platforms and geopolitical contexts.