Digital Diplomacy: A Comparative Analysis of the Positions of the US Republican and Democratic Parties on the JCPOA in Twitter

The present article deals with the comparative analysis of the positions of the American Republican and Democratic parties regarding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action known as JCPOA on Twitter. The importance of this issue is related to JCPOA, as an international agreement, and on the other hand, to the position of public diplomacy and the role of Twitter. The purpose of this article is to get a detailed understanding of the effect of party approaches on the US foreign policy stance towards Iran, centered on the JCPOA. To achieve this goal, the tweets of 9 prominent members of both the Republican and Democratic parties who have Twitter activity, from the beginning of January 2015 to the end of December 2019, were studied through the method of content analysis. Then, the themes extracted from these tweets were categorized into three types of basic, organizing and inclusive ones. According to the findings of this paper both parties took similar positions as far as the US grand strategies towards Iran is concerned. However, in a number of tactical issues and cases, and specifically in terms of the JCPOA, the positions of Democratic party differ from that of the Republicans. Accordingly, the JCPOA cannot be recognized as a long-term agreement and it is necessary for the decision-makers in the field of foreign policy in Iran not to depend on the JCPOA and to consider other options as well. Finally, it seems that the use of Twitter has played an important role in the efforts of members of both major political parties in the United States to communicate with their audiences about the JCPOA.