I’d like to comment on Livingston’s blog
post from Group 3 this week. (http://aupublicdiplomacy.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/is-public-diplomacy-fit-for-the-arab-spring-livingston-blog6/) S/he
discusses the “problem with identifying the ‘role’ of public diplomacy in the
Arab Spring” because of the “long disconnect between what a nation chooses to
broadcast to foreign audiences and what it prefers to keep silent.” S/he focuses more, however, on the internal
government’s public diplomacy efforts as they face uprisings and riots from
their people about their policies. I
definitely agree that that is one important aspect of public diplomacy, but I
think the fact that the public is taking matters into their own hands and
organizing themselves around various causes (often also through social media
outlets) is the public’s diplomacy. Were
they to agree to dialogues with the government, which would be even better
diplomacy, in its conventional understanding of discussion and dialogue. Additionally, one can think about how other
foreign governments are tracking the words and the actions of the
nation-in-turmoil’s public, and how those states’ public diplomacy efforts are
connecting with the people uprising.
Unfortunately, governments are still
trying to repress their publics’ outspokenness.
This mainly comes from a desire to stay in power and not give up their
government to the demands of their people.
Jillian York’s article discusses the challenges of “freedom of speech”
with the arrest of bloggers in various regions of the world, the tracking and
censoring of bloggers and other social media users, and the concern of
“state-sponsored online propaganda” (40).
Professor Hayden mentioned these challenges as well in the lecture this
week, specifically Internet penetration, press freedom, economic “comfort”, and demographic/sectarian
divides. These concerns hinder the
progress that the public’s social media presence and on-the-ground activism.
Still, despite the notion that these conflicts had been brewing
for years, waiting for an opportunity to explode and get the word out for a
regime change, I think social media efforts of public diplomacy absolutely have
the power to change a situation. York
says it “has created an unprecedented environment in which like-minded
individuals and disparate networks are able to connect across geographical
boundaries, which will no doubt allow new movements to flourish” (40). I wholeheartedly agree with that statement,
and think that social media can therefore be used for public diplomacy efforts
very successfully, due simply to the wide range of people it has access
to. The
New Media and Conflict After the Arab Spring report mentioned the fact that
older forms of media often picked up stories from the social media networks and
globalized that same story even further.
Once the international community starts becoming aware of internal
situations and getting involved in those affairs, it puts greater pressure on that government to
react and adapt their policies to better serve their public.
I know I've been posting various additional links to articles lately, but as Ian pointed out a few comments/posts back, it just points to how timely of an issue the "social media" revolution is, and how it is transforming the way diplomats are required to conduct diplomacy and business in their interactions abroad, especially with the local public. Roland Paris of the Canadian Defense and Foreign Affairs Institute wrote a report on this "digital diplomacy," stating how incredibly important it is for diplomats to get accustomed to using social media effectively and in "real-time" in their diplomacy efforts, and points to this as the reason Canada may be lagging behind in its public diplomacy. He writes: "Many countries, including the US and Britain, are now encouraging their diplomats to use social media as a regular part of their job – not simply as a virtual 'listening post' to monitor political discussions, nor merely as a megaphone for broadcasting press releases, but as a forum for participating directly in these discussions. Foreign ministries that fail to adapt to the social media revolution will lose influence over time: they will forgo opportunities to shape public discussions that are increasingly channeled through social media, to correct errors of fact or interpretation in real-time, and to build networks of interlocutors and followers." This quote, summarized in the report's executive summary, really gets to the heart of the issue. We can go back and forth about how to measure social media's success, or particularly certain its influence on public diplomacy efforts, but the reality is that so many people (diplomats, included) throughout the world are using these techniques to get the word out and respond to events in real-time, and not chiming in with your own Twitter feed, for example, makes one look uninformed or uninterested in the issue, and people following that issue will choose to look somewhere else for their information, which truly does seem like a missed opportunity, as Paris's report suggests.
ReplyDeleteThe report in full can be found here: http://www.cdfai.org/PDF/The%20Digital%20Diplomacy%20Revolution.pdf
Likewise, an article on NextGov, referencing the same report, points to the United States' success, and specifically the State Department's, in utilizing social media networks in their main diplomacy efforts. The article incorporates this link, which shows examples of various U.S. Embassies abroad using "Vine" and/or short videos to broadcast an aspect of cultural diplomacy to the public: http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/emerging-tech-blog/2013/06/vines-bind/65027/
The rest of the article can be found here: http://m.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2013/06/united-states-dominates-social-diplomacy/65345/