One of the most severe problems with “public diplomacy” is the failure by even its proponents to agree on a definition. Sadly, this past week we saw more of the same.
Last week I wrote on the release of a new public diplomacy strategy that reflects nearly two years of leadership by Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. Released without fanfare, it was gently slipped into the wild with nary a comment by the Administration, Karen Hughes, any supporter of either. Her strategy focuses on television and radio viewers and listeners, at strategy at odds with the counter-terrorist and intelligence community’s emphasis on Internet chat rooms and websites where some of the recruiting, proselytizing, and hate happens and grows. The strategy not only prioritizes the wrong medium, but virtually ignores the grass-roots nature of many of terrorist cells that take seed and grow outside of the strategy’s narrow geographic focus. While Hughes’ strategy would have you believe otherwise, a lot happens outside the Middle East.
Interestingly, at the University of Southern California’s “Center” on Public Diplomacy the focus is on an entirely different target audience.
In order to explore some of the possibilities for public diplomacy in virtual worlds, project researchers immerse themselves in Linden Labs’ Second Life, a virtual world that imitates the real world in which we all live. Through the Center’s various Second Life initiatives, the Virtual Worlds Project is working to encourage residents to engage in these intercultural dialogues and exchanges in ways conducive to fostering a better understanding between people.
On the heels of the release of the strategy was another announcement, the Center on Public Diplomacy received $550,000 to support this mission. The Center apparently thinks the target audience has ample bandwidth and computer power to enter the virtual worlds. Who does the Center think they’re talking to?
There seems to be three positions on public diplomacy these days, and I’ll let you decide which one seems to be right.
First, you have Karen Hughes suggesting technology is low priority and “traditional” media like TV and radio is the way to go. Her audiences are key decision makers, women and children, and then “mass audiences.” She completely ignores competitors, instead focusing on the tired old, and useless, tactic of getting people to understand us.
Second, you have the Center on Public Diplomacy focusing on virtual worlds, by definition self-selective. (Heck, I know decision makers and casual readers who don’t even use RSS…) Possibly, the Center is really looking forward to try out new strategies to be deployed in the real world on a parallel Planet Earth like the DoD, but somehow I doubt it. Don’t forget the infrastructure necessary to access this realm. This is lacking in the “Gap” but not in Europe.
Or third, the Defense, Intelligence, and Counterterrorism communities monitoring and penetrating chat rooms and websites, and connecting with local communities at the grass roots level around the world, including Europe and Africa (and the United States). By the way, it’s this community that’s getting the face time in Congress, that’s now writing books on public diplomacy, and establishing the definition as the “soft power” folks stand by fiddling.
While none are perfect, which of the three do you think might reach out the right audience to create awareness and impress upon the listeners a different tactic and strategy is best? Which one is better suited for reality?
Voize says:
It seems, and I am far from the only one advancing this thought, that the re-focusing on the ever present power of perception management (ever present since it is always there, used systematic and with skill or accidentally and without knowledge) through pubic diplomacy is truly an attempt at swaying the hearts and minds of a public – the US one.
For what other motive than perception manipulation of the domestic public would any Government allows someone not only lacking past merits proving her appropriateness, but with a record of past actions disproving there to be any.
I would assume that the true intent, with “outreach” communication with publics of other nations at best a secondary goal, is to present to the US people an image of genuine devotion to diplomacy and “soft power”,of an administration “helplessly forced” to use military force and economic blackmail because it is so helplessly misunderstood by a hostile world in spite of efforts of outreach to the people of the world.
After all, why would an administration countless times proving itself to care little about what legacy it leaves for the next administration or the people of the USA to mop out and pay for once it has withdrawn from (overt) political power, care for such imprecise power as that of perception management when it has the capacity to use military and economical force – much more precise and effective, as long as one (as stated to be the case with this administration) do not look for sustainability or want to avoid blow back.
Voize says:
Excuse me…I felt I should be more elaborate when stating my opinion.
So, although breaking some norms I would like to repeat myself in generals, but add some in specifics:
If someone has the power to implement whatever he or she wants – if, as a metaphor, there is no need to rely on unpredictable decision of “buyers” to get “sell” something because one can use one’s clout to eliminate all alternatives except desired ones – is then public relations of any kind except those of demonstrating and manifesting ones power necessary?
Would it not be more likely that when this immense power depends upon the active or passive consent of the people of a nation state, these people are the prime target for campaigns of PR and perception management so as to continue to draw from them the human, natural and economic resources needed to maintain the power potential?
Would not those ostensibly targeted to make use of force less necessary by creating less adverse perceptions and decrease the mental obstacles to “national interests”, be more of a secondary target group – especially if such improved perceptions would require more of an amnesia than efforts of diplomacy and “outreach” if they are to respond less to the past and present experiences of abuse and maltreatment.
Maybe the proposed unification of all government communication into a more cohesive presentation, is more meant to decrease the amount and spread of “uncomfortable and inconvenient ” information reaching the own population, thereby reducing the friction facing policies, ideas and actions when a population starts asking or just thinking twice before going about their lives?
Frankly speaking I can not believe that anyone hiring someone with such a bad record of public relations as Karen Hughes to improve US image among people who live with past and present effects of a US showing itself to be anything but worthy of good rep and credibility, does for the official reasons – they are simply not that stupid.
The arrogance and total disregard for what people think and feel, carried out in the name of the American people and collectively attributed to the US nation, is still in power – literally, since the same people as were part of demonstrations of these traits are still in economic and political power positions. Why would they all of a sudden believe, with the knowledge of what they have been part of, that “forgive and forget” can be accomplished on any larger scale when they themselves convey both an inability to do so, as well as an expectance that no one else will either?
It seems either short sighted, or a strategy meant only to “leak back” to the home-audience to shape its’ perceptions of those ostensibly targeted rather than the other way around (clever indeed, to harness the “leakage” and back-flow of the information and making it not a side-effect as much as a main effect) to bundle Public diplomacy and Public affairs into the same package and then handing over to (yet another)seemingly inappropriate individual as Hughes.
But I have higher expectancy on those who play these puppets than to think they have failed to see the benefits of such an unholy alliance as the association of Public Affairs with Public Diplomacy – the ability to make it very hard for people to tell what is Public Diplomacy and what is Public Affairs – except by going by the labels and ask them to trust the same people that fooled them before to tell them what is what….
More plausible is that any efforts of communication control and “damage control” will be meant to make the US population less prone to stat doubting and questioning.
The troop moral is just the short term necessity, but maintaining the public moral and resolve is more valuable in the long run.
After all, given that political and economic powers to varying degrees are dependent on the presence of a people believing in the existence of the construct called nation or national state – which only exists to the extent that there is a collective agreement among people – it is much more beneficiary to have a people feeling that there is an “we” clearly separated from “others”. This has been demonstrated by the unifying force of an external and hostile world or force.
Throughout the history of government use of communication and information in particular, and psychological methods in general, to alter the behavior of people so as to level the road for various policies, the most frequent target has been the own population and social order was conflated time and time again with attempts at social engineering and social control.
It is indeed an effort to improve perceptions and decrease “friction” for “national interests”, but the public targeted is the US public and the “national interests” are not interests of a majority of an aggregate of people within territorial borders as shown through fair and democratic voting – they are interests for which the human, natural and financial resources of that national territory is used as a tool. THAT, in my opinion, is more likely that interpretation of NATIONAL INTERESTS, and all efforts of Public Relation efforts from the US government and its agencies.
In my humble opinion…..of course