Suchergebnisse

Nation-state efforts to account for the shift in the global communication environment, such as "public diplomacy 2.0," appear to reflect inter-related transformations – how information and communication technologies (ICTs) change the instruments of statecraft and, importantly, how communication interventions serve as strategically significant foreign policy objectives in their own right. This paper examines two cases of foreign policy rhetoric that reveal ways in which the social and political role of ICTs is articulated as part of international influence objectives: the case of "public diplomacy 2.0" programs in the United States and Venezuela's Telesur international broadcasting effort. These provide evidence of the increasing centrality of ICTs to policy concerns and demonstrate how policy makers translate contextualized ideas of communication effects and mediated politics into practical formulations.

The election of President Barack Obama in 2008 was hailed by many as a positive development for the image of the United States abroad. Yet the Obama presidency, by itself, does not constitute a public diplomacy strategy. This article addresses the state of U.S. public diplomacy at the start of the Obama administration and references how media reaction to Obama's election provides insight into the role of the presidency in U.S. public diplomacy and its ability to translate popularity into tangible policy gains. Public diplomacy is considered in this article as both a communication strategy and foreign policy imperative that has been neglected as an institutional means to amplify the global popularity of the president and U.S. foreign policy objectives. The article argues that the confluence of Obama's personal communication efforts and policy strategy and the global context of ubiquitous social media technologies indicates a productive moment for U.S. public diplomacy planners and policy advocates to capitalize on the president's popularity through a reinvigorated strategy of engagement.

"Entertainment Technologies" published on by Oxford University Press.

In late 2003 through 2004, the Saudi American Exchange conducted an exchange program, the Formula 1 Global Marketing Challenge. This program is presented in this article as an example of applied, grassroots public diplomacy; a program that facilitated intercultural communication between Arab and U.S. graduate and undergraduate students. The Formula 1 Challenge is described as a structured set of activities leveraging both online and in-person collaborative exercises focused explicitly on establishing mutual understanding of culturally grounded communication and media consumption practices. The program is argued to reflect a possible alternative conception for public diplomacy as a state-centric, media-driven set of policies—and reflects a public diplomacy exercise that embodies dialogue-oriented activities called for in normative prescriptions for U.S. public diplomacy.

AbstractSince 2002, US communication-based foreign policies have resulted in the launch of two high-profile international broadcasting stations — Radio Sawa and al-Hurra television — as well as other failed ventures such as the 'Shared Values' documentary campaign and the Hi Arabic youth magazine. These policies have, at best, delivered mixed results as a form of public diplomacy for the United States. The principal objective of this article is to illuminate how governing beliefs about public diplomacy might have mitigated its success, by identifying the implicit policy imagination revealed in policy arguments. This article investigates the discursive imagination behind US international broadcasting programmes and how public debate outlines an 'argument formation' for US foreign-policy rhetoric. Three episodes of policy argument between 2001 and 2005 are assessed as demonstrative of a rhetorically constructed policy imagination that prompted a broadcasting strategy that was incompatible with the communicative norms of its targeted foreign audience.

Since 2002, US communication-based foreign policies have resulted in the launch of two high-profile international broadcasting stations - Radio Sawa and al-Hurra television - as well as other failed ventures such as the 'Shared Values' documentary campaign and the Hi Arabic youth magazine. These policies have, at best, delivered mixed results as a form of public diplomacy for the United States. The principal objective of this article is to illuminate how governing beliefs about public diplomacy might have mitigated its success, by identifying the implicit policy imagination revealed in policy arguments. This article investigates the discursive imagination behind US international broadcasting programmes and how public debate outlines an 'argument formation' for US foreign-policy rhetoric. Three episodes of policy argument between 2001 and 2005 are assessed as demonstrative of a rhetorically constructed policy imagination that prompted a broadcasting strategy that was incompatible with the communicative norms of its targeted foreign audience. Adapted from the source document.

The elections of president Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 provided pivotal moments in U.S. relations with foreign publics. Examining the kind of communication cultivated between public diplomacy practitioners and publics, this article focuses on social media discourse about the 2012 U.S. election posted to U.S. diplomacy efforts on Facebook. We analyze information generated by U.S. embassy sites in Bangladesh, Egypt, and Pakistan to understand the qualities of the communication engendered by these public diplomacy overtures, the nature of public argument via the media platform, and how the election served as a process to further contemporary U.S. public diplomacy. We found that the discussion that took place in response to the announcement of Obama's reelection did not resemble a deliberative forum for debating U.S. foreign policy or regional implications. Rather, much of the messaging on these sites constituted what we term "spreadable epideictic." Implications are charted for research and practice.