The Layalina Review
VOL. V NO. 6, February 27-March 12, 2009 This media shift has transformed the traditional notion of the audience. “Citizens are not mere receiving vessels for press releases and whatever you put on your government website,” continues Drapeau. “They are not a captive audience.” Instead, the modern-day audience is comprised of “groups of individuals having conversations with their families at the proverbial watercooler.” Jay Rosen of NYU's PressThink agrees with Drapeau’s characterization of the new media consumer. For Rosen, “the people formerly known as the audience are those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern.” Today’s audience utilizes “tools that were once exclusively used by media people to capture and hold their attention,” Rosen continues. Likewise, Associated Press CEO Tom Curley explains that “users are deciding what the point of their engagement will be – what application, what device, what time, what place.” This new dynamic has important implications for public diplomacy and the way that governments are able to disseminate their messages. In an examination of public diplomacy in the digital age, PBS suggests that “much of this war of ideas will be played out on new media such as the internet.” Drapeau similarly emphasizes the need for governments to “pay more attention to their brands” in light of these new media developments. “Organizations should talk to people with whom they hope to create relationships, because word of mouth is still the most powerful force for spreading trusted information. If you don’t know who’s out there talking about your brand, how do you know who to influence when the time comes?” he asks. Drapeau points to Colleen Graffy’s use of Twitter to connect with overseas journalists as part of her State Department public diplomacy mission as an example of such outreach. Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables users to send and read other users' updates of up to 140 characters in length, is one particular new media technology that has received significant press coverage. In Eureka Deja Vu, Rita King comments that having Members of Congress “twittering” isn’t necessarily a bad thing “if they use it properly.” King argues that “what Members of Congress choose to say…tells us something about them as people. And that’s valuable in a democracy.” She nevertheless cautions that “it is beneficial for people to have a discernment process over what’s worth saying and which fleeting thoughts are best left to the recesses of one’s own mind.” William Bradley of the Huffington Post is less enthusiastic about Twitter. Bradley predicts an atmosphere of “commentators, conventional and unconventional alike, tweeting feverishly into the ether, hoping their bleeps capture a moment’s attention.” He further argues that “if there’s one thing our media culture has already been lacking, it’s context.” Meanwhile, PBS also highlights potentially dangerous implications of the advances in internet technology. “With the rapid proliferation of internet technology, some in the national security community are turning their attention to the possibility of large-scale online attacks – cyber-terrorism – and how public diplomacy may prevent them,” notes the news site. hile there is little evidence that terrorists have “weaponized the internet,” continues PBS, they “have turned the internet into a battlefield in the war of ideas.” PBS therefore concludes that “without effectual public diplomacy gains, the specter of cyber-terrorism will grow more vivid as a new generation of would-be terrorists comes of age.”
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