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William J. Fulbright argued that “In the long course of history, having people who understand your thought is much greater security than another submarine.” Or as John Stuart Mill put it, “A neighbor, not being an ally or an associate, since he is never engaged in any common undertaking for joint benefit, is therefore only a rival.” A focus on relationship building at every level is what can and should separate public diplomacy from propaganda, lobbying, and public relations.
Today, a greatly expanded number of private groups and actors are participating in outreach initiatives across borders. Transnational monologues, dialogues, and partnerships take place every day, both within and outside of the boundaries of official government-initiated or -sponsored public diplomacy. These private initiatives can complement and/or provide models for formal state public diplomacy strategies—or, in certain circumstances, undermine the government’s goals. Governments should be actively aware of and responsive to this alternator competing communication flows to encourage and/or support positive developments and to correct misinformation and engage in dialogue when necessary.
Using facts to reach to the truth. This has been the mission of journalism since its inception few hundred years ago. Controlling, managing and regulating the media content is one of the favourite strategies of both dictators and so called liberal democratic governments across the world to achieve desired results? Is it possible anymore? With concept of Public Diplomacy being mounted by the various nations, no longer the response for a foreign policy initiative is a matter of time. Because events are happening dynamically. It was traditional culture to assume that experts had the facts thus to engaging them will lead to the discovery of truth. But today no more. There are as many experts out there as many people are carrying mobile phones, internet connection, direct to home TV connection, access to community radio and modern digitally convergent technologies.
This is the competitive world of news media. This is the news business world. More than that this is the world believing in sharing. This is the world affirming their right to know by exercising the technologies at their disposal to write letters to the editor of the foreign press or circulate the crucial health related information outside country by text messages if their domestic government is not allowing to defend the freedom of information and thus inviting larger crisis. There is sophistication out there in sharing information because people who have these technologies have been upgrading the standard and quality of living due to whatever opportunity coming at their doorstep; due to globalization, due to democracy or due to education.
So, sharing information, sharing content like music files, photographs, presentations, documents, research knowledge, arts and cultural images, movies is great metaphor for Public Diplomacy or what originally envisaged by the world Glasnost pioneered by Mikhail Gorbachev. Speed of reporting, accessing the information and accessing the impact of the news is not only the issue. The amount in which people are able to influence the course of events going to be reported by shear strength of social media and reach to the mass media they have makes it near impossible to predict the flow of events, let alone flow of information. Remember, Agra Summit? President Pervez Musharraf used the breakfast tables to address the global print and electronic media live, so as to give Indian diplomatic establishment a lesson of ideal real time strategic initiative in Public Diplomacy.
Television being event based dynamic medium, Public Diplomacy cannot be unilateral communication. Edmund Gullion, the pioneer of the term Public Diplomacy defined it in following words which later world witnessed through the telecast of different wars by CNN: “Public Diplomacy is the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy . . . [including] the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with those of another . . . (and) the transnational flow of information and ideas.” Therefore PD has to be performed through the multimedia engagement because limitations to the clarity, credibility and increasing cacophony of particular media may destroy whole diplomatic mission.
Power has been becoming more fragile, vulnerable and brittle. The power of mobile has begun to show its effect. As one Reuters report says: “Cheap 'go-anywhere' cameras and phones are challenging the credibility of governments, corporations and the traditional media. Increasingly routinely, a cheap, "go-anywhere" camera or mobile phone challenges the credibility of the massive human and financial resources of a government or corporation in an acute crisis. The long-held conventional wisdom of a gulf in time and quality between the news that signals an event and the whole truth eventually emerging is fast being eliminated. The new lightweight technologies available to almost anyone mean a new capacity for instant scrutiny and accountability that is way beyond the narrower, assumed power and influence of the traditional media. The core implications are twofold. First, this new technical reality has dramatically foreshortened the news and information cycle from a few hours to often no more than a few minutes. Second, those cell phones and digital cameras of the proliferation of new "information doers" have swiftly modified and broadened the assumed definitions of the media landscape in a crisis. The new ubiquitous transparency they create sheds light where it is often assumed officially there will be dark.”
All these developments are creating deficit of legitimacy because there is flattening of information across the globe. Public information space has grown enormously beyond the power of fourth estate. Systems of institutions in the democracy and media are set up for old style of thinking. Everyone out there is journalist. Then media has to find a way out to accommodate those voices otherwise credibility of the Public Diplomacy initiatives and legitimacy of the media will be under question. So, there is no benefit of doubt will be given to the establishment. The buzzwords in every foreign policy capital is “Its media dammit!”
Nick Gowing, a chief Presenter of the BBC has completed the study about the contemporary challenges being faced by Media and Government Institutions. He elaborates how the power of state to control citizens has declined. The real challenges are challenges of real time. Exponential technological changes are redefining, broadening and fragmenting the media landscape in dramatic ways. This impacts directly and profoundly by way of two new realities; first on assumptions on media of crisis and second nature of power. In a crisis, there is a relentless and unforgiving trend towards an ever greater information transparency. In the most remote and hostile locations of the world, hundreds and millions of electronic eyes and ears are creating capacity for scrutiny and new demands for accountability. It is way beyond the assumed power and influence of the traditional media. This global electronic reach catches institutions unaware and surprises it with what it reveals.
Gowing further says, “These dramatic changes in the information dynamic have created not just a Tyranny of Time but also a Tyranny of Time Line. Today, time lines of media action and institutional reaction are terribly out of sync. The moment any crisis incidence takes place there is an imperative to fill the resultant information space not within hours but within minutes. Competition to be an ‘information doer’ is immensely ruthless and unforgiving. Too frequently media and government institutions are unwilling to even contemplate or plan for the possibility of improbable ‘Black Swan’ event that will undermine their perceived power and effectiveness. The immediate policy challenge is to enter information space with self-confidence and assertiveness as the media do however incomplete the official understanding about the enormity of what is unfolding. The institutional systems and mindsets are neither prepared nor in place to match the flow of information disseminated by information doers. The relative passivity is compounded by latent but inappropriate fear of entering the space due to the inherent risks of being wrong or too hasty about the nature of the crisis.
But to describe these ‘information doers’ or ‘motivated amateurs’ as a ‘citizen journalist’ is a long way to go. The more appropriated process to describe these proactive initiatives by citizens would be related to ‘social media’ which do not employ the traditional mediated process of journalism. The best high value brands in the traditional media will always want to check facts and mediate scrupulously the material these new ‘information doers’ provide in order to protect their brand reputation. The intent and technological capacity to manipulate or deceive from anywhere in this digital world is well proven. In the end, any semantic differences over the phrase or label to describe should come second to accepting that they are increasingly significant, contributing, ad-hoc members of media matrix which is now broader, deeper and more multi-layered.
Each of these three “layers” of public diplomacy—monologue, dialogue, and collaboration—is essential at certain times and under certain situations. Nothing can match the poetry, clarity, emotional power, and memorability of a beautifully crafted speech or proclamation. Nothing helps build mutual understanding as well as a thoughtful dialogue. And nothing creates a sense of trust and mutual respect as fully as a meaningful collaboration. In today’s world, however, while monologue is an essential advocacy tool that public diplomacy practitioners can and must use to raise awareness about their country’s policies, identities, or values, deliberate advocacy is only a small component of the messages flowing across borders. The nature of the global communications environment makes it inevitable that (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse) one-way messages are transmitted transnationally on a daily, hourly, and even minute-to-minute basis.
Such communications, more often than not, take place outside the boundaries of formal public diplomacy programs. Popular entertainment products, global news flows, and the private circulation of information (and often misinformation) about the domestic sphere are just a few among many critical factors in shaping national reputations. There are many times when thoughtless or inadvertent forms of monologues, including those by private actors, or by public actors in private moments, contribute to a country’s reputation abroad. Messages designed for domestic or private consumption may well reach international audiences who will interpret (or misinterpret) them according to their own experiences, cultures, and political needs.
While dialogue between cultures is an admirable goal, it begins with dialogue between individuals, whether they are representatives of governments or private citizens meeting in a hotel conference room or an online chat room. Contact is generally most effective when four conditions are met: (a) Participants have equal status or ability to participate, (b) They have common goals such as a sports team or the improvement of a neighborhood association, (3) The contact is free from competition between their respective groups, and (4) the contact is supported by social norms and/or community authority.
Collaborative projects almost without exception include dialogue between participants and stakeholders, but they also include concrete and typically easily identifiable goals and outcomes that provide a useful basis and structure upon which to form more lasting relationships. The benefits of collaboration have been recognized by a number of leading scholars across a range of conditions. Research into team building, business cooperation, social capital, conflict prevention, democracy building, and development all point to the potentially transformative power of collaborative endeavors for public diplomatic relationships.
States that are the most economically prosperous and socially cohesive, with the highest governmental approval ratings, are overwhelmingly rich in “cross-cutting social capital” (i.e. groups and voluntary associations that cut across class, race, ethnic, and religious lines). Moreover, states and/or regions of states with failed governments that had flourishing bridging social capital were more prosperous and more likely to implement coping strategies that helped to ameliorate the problems of governmental breakdown (e.g., community run schools, health clinics, and barter programs).
In this world of economic, political, and cultural interdependence, monologue, dialogue, and collaboration, when appropriately practiced, are all essential tools for effective public diplomacy, both online and offline. Public Diplomacy is by its nature transparent, but it cannot be contrasted with traditional diplomacy as an activity which by definition serves only good ends. A more diffuse, difficult-to-measure goal is relationship building—the cultivation of ties with decision-makers and opinion leaders from various sectors of society. Traditionally this could have been done on the cocktail circuit, but power in modern societies is much more distributed and networking has to be more active and more strategic. Measuring success here would entail measuring access to, and gauging the disposition of, the target group. Even more long-term and diffuse in purpose are the most “public” events of PD: cultural programs and academic exchanges, outreach, media relations, and the activities that would be gathered under the out-of-favour term “branding.” If you host a film festival, you can quantify the publicity received and the audience in attendance, but the effect of such events is cumulative and “payoffs” are long-term.
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Ref:
-> Public Diplomacy in the Information Age, Conference by Ministry of External Affairs, 10th Dec. 2010, New Delhi
-> Geoffrey Cowan and Amelia Arsenault, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 2008 616: 10, ‘Public Diplomacy Moving from Monologue to Dialogue to Collaboration: The Three Layers of Public Diplomacy’)
-> Mark McDowell, Public Diplomacy at the Crossroads: Definitions and Challenges in an “Open Source” Era, The Fletcher Forum Of World Affairs; Vol. 32:3 Special Edition 2008
-> Gowling, Nick. 'Skyful of Lies' and Black Swans: The New Tyranny of Shifting Information Power in Crises. RISJ challenges. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2009. Print.
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