'Regimes of Truth’ in Digital Public Diplomacy: How ChatGPT Structures Credibility, Legitimacy, and Conflict Narratives

  • Unique Paper ID: 193686
  • PageNo: 619-630
  • Abstract:
  • Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are becoming part and parcel of the diplomatic process, but the role of these generative tools in building geopolitical knowledge has not been properly examined. Most of the current literature primarily frames AI as an instrument of balance-of-power, a governance dilemma, or a tool for disinformation amplification. However, this paper questions the role of ChatGPT's linguistic outputs in shaping political reality. Based on the Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) with references to Michel Foucault and Theo van Leeuwen, the paper uses ChatGPT (GPT-4o) outputs to perform a discourse analysis of three purposely selected case studies: the credibility ranking of state-funded international broadcasters, the comparative description of the Khalistan movement and ETA, and narration of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The prompts are run 5 times until they meet the threshold, generating 15 outputs from 3 structured prompts, in May 2025. The methodological design guaranteed the reproducibility and systematic coding in all cases. The analysis of three case studies highlighted recurring discursive patterns. In the first case study, ChatGPT showed hierarchical ordering of credibility by placing Western media outlets as more credible. In the second study, the chatbot exhibited classificatory anchoring, framing ETA as a terror group and Khalistan as a political movement. In the third case study, which discusses the Israel-Palestine conflict, ChatGPT adopted a neutral narrative, using objective, diplomatic language to describe the situation. These three patterns exhibited by ChatGPT do not reflect ideological intent but reproduce the historically sedimented regimes of truth embedded in the model's large and anonymous training corpus. This paper argues that ChatGPT is a producer of governmental discourse that silently structures diplomatic knowledge, especially when human involvement is not present. The paper also underlined the importance of AI literacy for international relations scholarship and foreign-policy practice, arguing that critical engagement with AI-mediated information production is essential.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{193686,
        author = {Nilotpal Bhattacharjee},
        title = {'Regimes of Truth’ in Digital Public Diplomacy: How ChatGPT Structures Credibility, Legitimacy, and Conflict Narratives},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {10},
        pages = {619-630},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=193686},
        abstract = {Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are becoming part and parcel of the diplomatic process, but the role of these generative tools in building geopolitical knowledge has not been properly examined. Most of the current literature primarily frames AI as an instrument of balance-of-power, a governance dilemma, or a tool for disinformation amplification. However, this paper questions the role of ChatGPT's linguistic outputs in shaping political reality. Based on the Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) with references to Michel Foucault and Theo van Leeuwen, the paper uses ChatGPT (GPT-4o) outputs to perform a discourse analysis of three purposely selected case studies: the credibility ranking of state-funded international broadcasters, the comparative description of the Khalistan movement and ETA, and narration of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The prompts are run 5 times until they meet the threshold, generating 15 outputs from 3 structured prompts, in May 2025. The methodological design guaranteed the reproducibility and systematic coding in all cases. The analysis of three case studies highlighted recurring discursive patterns. In the first case study, ChatGPT showed hierarchical ordering of credibility by placing Western media outlets as more credible. In the second study, the chatbot exhibited classificatory anchoring, framing ETA as a terror group and Khalistan as a political movement. In the third case study, which discusses the Israel-Palestine conflict, ChatGPT adopted a neutral narrative, using objective, diplomatic language to describe the situation. These three patterns exhibited by ChatGPT do not reflect ideological intent but reproduce the historically sedimented regimes of truth embedded in the model's large and anonymous training corpus. This paper argues that ChatGPT is a producer of governmental discourse that silently structures diplomatic knowledge, especially when human involvement is not present. The paper also underlined the importance of AI literacy for international relations scholarship and foreign-policy practice, arguing that critical engagement with AI-mediated information production is essential.},
        keywords = {},
        month = {March},
        }

Cite This Article

Bhattacharjee, N. (2026). 'Regimes of Truth’ in Digital Public Diplomacy: How ChatGPT Structures Credibility, Legitimacy, and Conflict Narratives. International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT), 12(10), 619–630.

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