VOL. V NO. 16, July 17-July 30, 2009

Social Media Taking the Lead in Public Diplomacy

In a White House Press Briefing on July 15 by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Foreign Affairs, Judith McHale, discussed new initiatives by the State Department focusing on social media. McHale salutes it as a “model of creative public diplomacy for the 21st century” that embodies Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s vision of using smart power technology to engage nontraditional audiences.

The aim is to send highlights of major Presidential speeches via text message and email to subscribers throughout the world in order to “create and sustain the kind of global dialogue […] that makes America a smarter and stronger nation,” declared McHale.

She explained that the strategy compliments the President’s aim to re-engage with citizens around the world. The key is to continue providing valuable content and information, and to welcome citizens into a global dialogue.

However, blogger JJohnson 47 explains that Gibbs remains doubtful of the efficiency of such a program, as the State Department has a poor record of maintaining embassy contacts around the world. “Most diplomats have neither the skill nor the software to track their relationship with host-country nationals of interest,” writes the blogger, implying that there is no way to assess if the people received the message.

Social media offer built-in measures of success (number of comments, number of those who sign up for messages, etc.), but these statistics often produce unreliable numbers.

Philip Seib of the Huffington Post notes that US Public Diplomacy still lacks coherence and influence, despite the popularity of President Obama. Seib explains, “A simple definition of public diplomacy is a government (and some non-state actors) reaching out to foreign publics, rather than confining itself to the government-to-government communication of traditional diplomacy.”

He asserts that the Obama Administration so far has failed to come out of the Cold-War model, assuming that the world “yearns for information from the US.” This is no longer the case today, especially in the Arab world where major networks such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya enjoy widespread credibility. In contrast, Seib points out that American efforts, such as Al-Hurra, go unheeded in the region.

Seib highlights, “US public diplomacy, grounded in enlightened policy, must be rebuilt, and not just for the Middle East.” The success of US public diplomacy initiatives relies heavily on listening to other nations, and will require a creative approach to and an acknowledgment of the rise of virtual states on the internet.

“Virtual states must be engaged through a virtual public diplomacy that features sophisticated understanding of religious and cultural sensitivities as well as the politics and technologies of the moment,” he concludes.

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