And the Public Diplomacy Award Goes to...

If there were a red carpet award ceremony for PD efforts by
governments, China would win for country trying the hardest to use PD
to its full potential. The Chinese have taken to PD well and they mean
business with their programs. This to me means that China clearly
recognizes the power PD has. It is also no surprise that the Chinese
took to a diplomacy tool that’s sole purpose is to influence- its
right up their ally, what they have been trying to do within China all
along! This is one reason why I believe that the Chinese don’t have a
problem with using the word propaganda when it comes to PD, as Wang
says their word for PD is external propaganda as opposed to the
propaganda within the state.

Few can doubt that China has not only taken to PD, but has its various
tools and mechanisms worked for it? To be clear, I don’t think China
needs PD to help its supposed “rise” in the world. I think that its
rise, which is mostly economic based, makes other countries and
powers nervous. China knows this so it’s putting an image out there of
the friendly rising power. The Chinese realize that if they don’t keep
and create allies while it gains international notoriety its power
will be seen as a threat, which will hinder its rise.

One of the ways that China is trying to spread its influence is
through its cultural diplomacy, which is facilitated through its
Confucius Institutes. According to the China Daily there are 523
centers around the world today. These centers contain classrooms for
teaching Chinese and each one is supposed to partner with a
university or a cultural institution. While the spread of these
Institutes is a great cultural diplomacy effort by China, is it working?

Well personally, when I think of China I think of major human rights violations, specifically in the labor sector where workers are paid inadequate wages and children workers are abundant, but that from my undergraduate education. I also think of communism and limited access to the freedoms I have in America such as access to unfiltered information (that I know of) and a transparent government. However, I am not sure if this means that China’s public diplomacy isn’t convincing or working so much as the domestic policies in place in America make it so I am automatically distrustful of anything coming from China.

Whatever the case of my biases no one can deny that China’s public diplomacy strategies are ambitious and probably working very well in areas such as Africa where China provides a lot of economic support. So what will happen to China’s international public opinion is not set in stone, but it seems to be going in a good direction.

Sources:

Yiwei Wang Public Diplomacy and the Rise of Chinese Soft Power, The ANNALS of the

American Academy of Political and Social Science 2008 616: 257-273

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-04/23/content_9766116.htm

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20071231ko.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-brown/chinas-public-diplomacy-h_b_515546.html

On Anholt

Simon Anholt uses nation branding as a way of transforming countries international images for the better. Is this different that a pubic relations campaign for a celebrity or a cereal? It doesn’t sound like it to me. Anholt talks about countries using tourism promotion, exported products, policy decision, investment, cultural exchanges and the people in the country as the way a country creates his identity. Maybe its because I have been reading articles related to public diplomacy all semester in this class and some what in International Communication, but all I can think is, “Duh?” While my comment may be sophomoric, that is exactly what I think of Anholt’s analysis. It seems to me like he is saying everything that everyone has ever said about public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy and even foreign policy to an extent and not even bothering to really repackage it as something innovative but rather just uses a new word to entitle the same regurgitated ideas. To be fair, I do not know if Anholt came before all the other readers in class. I could take the time and look at the publishing dates for all of those other papers, but instead I think that I can safely assume that Anholt is not the creator of all of the PD ideals that he espouses in his article.

When I heard nation branding, I guess I had an idea in my mind that it would be more of a business approach to the items that we have learned in PD class which have more of a governmental feel. In other words I thought he would have a new perspective. That is not what I found. However, all those things being said I do not think that his argument is a bad one, just intuitive and he doesn’t add any depth or innovations to the old ideas. Maybe this is a case of Anholt not wanting to give away his branding secrets, since Efe said in class that he sells his ideas to countries for lots of money, but I think that an example of how he uses these ideas in practice may have helped differentiate his ideas from the pack if not at least strengthen them.

In all I thought that the article was formulaic, but only time will tell if he actually is successful in his campaigns to change a nations brand in the international arena.

Place Branding: Where is its place in Cull's Framework?

My group decided to use Nicolas Cull’s PD framework for our group paper. So I have been spending a lot of time thinking about his five components of PD, which are: listening, advocacy, cultural diplomacy, exchange diplomacy, and international broadcasting. This week’s readings, however, are about place branding.

Place branding, as defined by Peter van Ham is “an effort to manage, if not necessarily wield, the social power of a geographical location by using strategies developed in the commercial sector” (van Ham 2020, pg 136). He continues, “It is closely linked to public diplomacy since place branding tries to affect the image and perception of foreign as well as domestic communities regarding territorial entities, be they states, regions, or cities” (van Ham 2020, pg 136). One can see that each component as a part of Cull’s framework helps to “manage” and guide a state’s image. While van Ham describes a place brand as “(amongst others [things]) determined by its culture, its political ideals, and its policies”, at times it is hard to fully fit place branding into Cull’s framework (van Ham 2020, pg 137). Of course, place branding is an important part of creating an established image through icons, logos, pictures, and marketing campaigns, but that alone does not necessarily equate to state successfully managing its international environment. Simple place branding alone will not manage perceptions of a place unless there has been political, economic, and social change to legitimize the place branding. In those cases, place branding gets watered down by all of the problems with the image itself.

Spain, for instance, was able to rebrand itself after the Franco dictatorship because of its dramatic political, social, and economic change. However, now it is attempting to rebrand its tourism industry through a new “Privilege Spain” campaign. Whether it will successful, only time can tell.

Branding Pakistan

Last week Pakistan got a bash right on its head for having no public diplomacy. It is always hard to speak for a country which does not speak for itself. "A Sinking Ship"--this is how Pakistan's public diplomacy was described by a group of our PD class.

We live in a world of images that are created mostly by the mass media. It is in the nature of the mass media to equate negativity with news. Positive things seldom make news, especially in this age of war on terror. People did not contribute generously to relief funds in the wake of devastating floods in Pakistan last year because it has been branded negatively by the Western media.

There is a litany of charges against Pakistan, but so far its government has not felt the need to engage with the people of other countries, especially the West, and tell them Pakistan's side of the story. In Pakistan, it is the extremists and terrorists who speak loudly with their daily actions. When other countries in the region--India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka--were getting a positive press for hosting the Cricket World Cup, Pakistan had been in the press for the negative reasons: suicide attacks, bomb blasts, assassinations and victimization of minorities.

If local newspapers are the face of a country, it is never rosy for Pakistan when I read them daily. The state of Pakistan seems to have receded, while terrorists and extremists shriek out at the world. This is how they brand their country as the government has fallen into a gentle slumber.

PD Quotes of the Week

Researching on Turkey's international broadcasting, I came across a great piece by Al Ahram from a year ago. Discussing the various aspects of Turkey's (then) new Arabic-language broadcaster, the article concludes:

"It is still unclear where Turkey's "soft-power" in the Arab world is heading. Erdogan is the only high profile politician in the region who criticises Israel -- Turkey's ally -- and prioritises the Palestinian question in his discourse on the Middle East. In a way this indirectly feeds Arab nationalism, which places the Palestinian question at the centre of its concerns. Ironically, Arab nationalism emerged in response to the Ottoman Empire. The dynamics might be too complex to decipher at this stage but this much is clear: the Turks have arrived."

Given all the events since, and especially the most recent "revolutions" in the MENA region, it is particularly interesting to follow Turkey's role in it all: providing guidance, leadership, as well as initiative and truly trying to live up to its projected image of being a "bridge between the East and the West."

Another interesting piece on a similar subject - that of Turkish Soap Operas - was published by Foreign Policy around the same time. Here's an excerpt:

"Four-hundred years after a nasty occupation of Arab land by the forefathers of these young Turks, the Arab world is embracing Turkey, opening its living rooms and flocking around their television sets to watch over 140 episodes of second-rate Turkish soap operas that don't even do well in Turkey itself.

If only the sultans knew that it could be done on the cheap, they could have dispatched these handsome men and beautiful women and assembled them to conquer hearts and minds in the Arab world on their behalves, saving the treasury endless amount of cash."

Great point. Indeed, modern technologies and the unavoidable transnational relationships that they have created, allow such interaction to take place. Of special note, of course, is the fact that the Arabs despised everything "Turkish" (OK, rather Ottoman, which was still associated with "Turkish") for centuries. The only explanations that come to my mind are:

- Time (but of course) and all the various developments and transformations that Turkey itself has undergone.

- Shared cultural heritage: unfortunately, there's no escaping it.

Public diplomacy implications? I guess it provides a great example, demonstrating yet again that unless there is a true change in attitude and behavior towards a people (i.e. by an actor itself) and unless there is common ground to communicate upon, achieving success in public diplomacy objectives will be very difficult, if not impossible. The source of communication and its perceived credibility on the subject matter. Nothing new, of course.

Measuring Engagement

With social media growing in popularity with the government and corporate types, its been too easy to measure the "effectiveness" of their campaigns based on the number of likes or comments on their page. But for anyone who has ever read the comments on anything on the Internet, that's probably not the best idea.

And as Prof. Hayden has pointed out, "engagement" is a squishy kind of word, a "smurf word," that can be made to mean whatever you want. And its certainly even harder quantify, or even qualify, in a report.

This MIT researcher wired his house with cameras in every room, and then made grad researchers sift through all the data they gathered over years of recording. The object? To see how and when his son learned language over time. Pretty cool.

But they also took the same idea and applied it to mass media, television shows and news, and juxtaposed, on a time axis, with what was being said online, through Twitter et al. They saw direct feedback on opinions, on what got people talking, and how long they kept talking about it.

You don't need their fancy MIT software to that, either, just some Internet-combing skills and too much time on your hands. But to see the data they pulled out in aggregate and over time, and graphed or visualized, is awesome.



Man, I love TED talks.


http://www.hulu.com/watch/223331/tedtalks-deb-roy-the-birth-of-a-word#s-p3-sr-i0

What a difference a decade makes

In the late 1990s, the US was still the dominant superpower, before the dot-bombs, before wars, before uncertainty and before Y2K. 10 years before that, the Soviet Union was still standing, albeit barely, and bi-polarity was still the norm of the Cold War. Now we have financial uncertainty, job insecurity, international instability and globalizing interactions. Accordingly, theory has move from soft power in public diplomacy towards "engagement," or long-term communication strategies with other nation-states. Anholt’s branding strategy theory has changed a little as well over the last decade.

As esteemed Guest Lecturer Efe Sevin pointed out, Anholt has chosen to update and asterisk his own* theory of nation branding from 10 years ago, from nation branding to "competitive identity." But the world has changed too, in his defense, and I’ve never been a fan of theories that can’t be put into practice.

The discussions of nation branding, public diplomacy, place management, engagement, all come to their value as a means to an end, if they affect policy and perceptions positively or negatively. People, or countries, will only fall for words so many times when actions don’t back them up. If relationships are based on credibility, it won’t necessarily make countries like one another any better, but at least there is some trust that actions, good or bad, will match their words.

That’s something that hasn’t changed at all.