Middle East – Page 3 – IPDGC Smart Power

More on Twitter Diplomacy

September 18, 2012Middle East, public diplomacy, Social Media2 Comments

Tim Lowden questions the wisdom of Larry Schwartz, the Senior PAO in the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, employing snark in a twitter exchange with the Muslim Brotherhood following last week’s attack on the Embassy. In an interesting case of digital diplomacy, the MB had used its English-language Twitter feed to express sympathy to Embassy officials following the protests. Implicitly referring to the MB’s apparent tendency to adopt a more inflammatory tone in its Arabic tweets, Schwartz responded, “Thanks. By the way, have you checked out your own Arabic feeds? I hope you know we read those too.”

Tim found this response to be cheeky, undiplomatic, and counter-productive to dampening down tensions, especially as a response to a seemingly well-intentioned missive from the MB. Personally, I rather liked it. But I think the incident illustrates the difficulties the State Department and other governmental organizations face when using social media to interact with foreign publics and, in this case, governments.

There are several aspects of social media that make them particularly tricky for diplomats. First, they move in rapid, real time speed, with shelf lives and attention spans that are often even shorter than that of traditional media. This is at odds with a bureaucracy’s desire to vet all communications before making them public. By the time a 140 character tweet has made it up the administrative food chain, the subject has changed and State has lost the opportunity to engage in the conversation. Recognizing this, State has slowly allowed for a more spontaneous approach to social media at its embassies, especially when it comes to posting on Facebook walls and tweeting. As former Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy James Glassman writes in a smart post at Foreign Policy, Ambassadors are ultimately responsible for tweets from the Embassy, but staff is trusted to proceed with the understanding that no communication can question or contradict U.S. policy. Generally, this is never a problem. That doesn’t mean, however, that tweets and wall postings can’t cause embarrassment.

Of course, this is potentially true of any communication; after all, it was a standard press statement that got Schwartz and the embassy in trouble in the first place. Another problem for Diplomats engaging in the public sphere via new media is precisely what bothered Tim: Tone. Social media — especially Twitter — speaks in the language of snark. To be credible, diplomats don’t necessarily need to descend to the lowest form of discourse, but they do need to communicate colloquially and authentically to be seen as legitimate members of the online community. This is why I am not bothered by Schwartz’s tweet: I found it to be a nice way to make an important point that worked in the context of social media.The question of whether it “works” or not is another matter, though.

And therein lies another challenge social media pose for diplomats. Twitter, Facebook, and the like are simply tools in the strategic communication utility belt diplomats can use to engage with foreign publics. But like all forms of communication, they are ultimately meant to serve the strategic ends of, in this case, the U.S. government. The real value of social media, for instance, is a combination of mass information delivery system, and a way to humanize the U.S. government for potentially skeptical audiences who see America as aloof, or worse. Measuring effectiveness of these communications is difficult, to say the least.

Take Schwartz’s tweet. Did it serve the U.S. government’s interests? Well, if it annoyed the Egyptian authorities and people when the government was making a genuine effort to extend an olive branch, then maybe not. But if it simultaneously stood up for the principal that the U.S. won’t stand for alleged allies engaging in rhetoric that endangers U.S. personnel, while also putting a human voice — piqued though it may have been — to otherwise staid government communications, then perhaps the answer is yes. The problem is two-fold.

First, who is the audience? The answer is a combination of one’s intended audience, and everyone else that will see your message retweeted, liked, emailed, etc. In traditional strategic communication, one identifies a target audience and crafts a message likely to be persuasive to that group of people. In social media, even more than before, the audience quickly grows beyond your target, especially when communications go viral — a diplomat’s worst nightmare. This leads to the other challenge: Context. When a politician airs a political ad on TV, they have a pretty good idea of the context in which the audience is receiving that message. But embassy officials have little to no control over how their unintended audience — or even their intended audience — will be seeing their tweets. For instance, research across decades shows that one of the most important ways in which people understand news and information is through the prism of peers or elites they trust and agree with.

So if I see Schwartz’s tweet because I follow him, then I am likely to process it differently than if I have it retweeted by someone I trust but who I know is hostile to the United States. More to the point, perhaps I see the tweet in a blog post from a trusted source that goes into a lengthy rebuttal to Schwartz’s message. The point is that in a new media environment, the messenger has much less control over the reception of that message than they did in a traditional media world. This is even true for their “old” media communications, because they, too, are often sent on a roller coaster ride through the “interwebs.”

This is reminiscent of the “Twitter Wars” between ISAF PAOs in Afghanistan and, purportedly, Taliban officials in the last couple of years. The exchanges were marked by extreme sarcasm on both sides, as in this repartee:

There are a couple of potential pitfalls exhibited in these exchanges. First, unlike Schwartz’s tweet, ISAF is in full-on Snark mode, to a point that I’m not sure works for them. When you are seen as an occupying force representing a host of imperial countries, it doesn’t really help win hearts and minds to in fact sound imperious. Put another way, this doesn’t seem to be furthering the strategic communication goals of ISAF. Second, it’s not clearthat the person tweeting here is really part of the Taliban, much less representing them. A coalition or government doesn’t look very credible if it’s arguing with an impersonator. A final problem posed by the Schwartz and ISAF cases is that these online squabbles are manna from heaven for the press, which loves conflict stories, especially if they allow reporters to write “gee whiz” stories about digital diplomacy gone awry. This can often fuel the story’s jet-packed ride to viral stardom.

Then again, the press itself can not only engage in what we might call undiplomatic behavior, but discover the hard way the same perils of social media diplomats have faced. In a matter of hours on Monday, Newsweek published a grotesque cover wallowing in the worst stereotypes of the Muslim world with the headline “Muslim Rage,” then invited comments about the cover on Twitter: “Want to discuss our latest cover? Let’s hear it with the hashtag #MuslimRage.” Well, they heard it alright.

[tweet https://twitter.com/LibyaLiberty/status/247737358320037888 align=’center’]

[tweet https://twitter.com/HijabiGrlPrblms/status/247770260160266240 align=’center’]

[tweet https://twitter.com/TheDooda/status/247775994356842496 align=’center’]

[tweet https://twitter.com/monazmiahmad/status/247920922592423937 align=’center’]

Fortunately for Newsweek, a few hours and several thousand tweets later, Mitt Romney’s latest faux pas went viral and their own mishap began to travel down the memory hole, right on the heels of Larry Schwartz’s tweet. But in many ways, the damage had already been done.

@USEmbassyCairo and Larry Schwartz…. so much for saving face

September 16, 2012Middle East, Social Media1 Comment

I don’t envy the position Larry Schwartz finds himself in right now.

Schwartz, the Senior PAO and person responsible for press releases and social media at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, has been taking a lot of heat the past few days. As the smoke clears, we are now finding out that much of the uproar has been unfounded and as a result of a classic news hijack for political gain. But Thursday, Schwartz really crossed the line, and now he may be facing repercussions as the Obama administration moves to quell the media scrutiny around the situation, fend off attacks from the right, and repair damage with the Egyptian government.

Most readers of this blog are probably aware of the political firestorm that erupted after Mitt Romney made comments regarding a press release and tweets sent out from the embassy on Tuesday. To recap it quickly, Schwartz sent out a statement and an accompanying summarizing tweet at 12:18 p.m. Cairo time on Tuesday, according to this Foreign Policy article. The statement read:

“The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

More than twelve hours later, at 12:30 a.m., Schwartz made a more controversial tweet:

According to the aforementioned FP article, neither of the messages was approved by Washington, but Schwartz ran them anyway (they’ve has since been removed).

After the tragic death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya not long after the events in Cairo, what was initially a rather small roller in the ocean of U.S. news became a surging tidal wave as the media began talking about the protests all over the Arab world, the infamous film blamed for them all, and what we should do next.

Mitt Romney jumped on the opportunity and lambasted Obama for being “apologetic” to the protesters and not standing up for American values like free speech. It was a political move, and an obvious news hijack. The facts are now out that the press release was preemptive, and that Schwartz disobeyed orders. Also, reports like this one from Erik Wemple, saying the release was in no way an apology anyways, are surfacing all over. Regardless, the Romney campaign has used it to start a larger debate questioning Obama’s leadership in the Arab world as a whole.

As for Schwartz and his decision to send out the press release prior to protests beginning, he was spot on. He did what he could to calm down what was probably a growing rumor that something was going to happen regarding the offensive nature of “The Innocence of Muslims”. There are rumblings that the film may have been used as a scapegoat for a previously organized protest, but let’s not bother with that. The man acted on information, and acted well.

In my opinion, you can’t blame him for sticking by his statement later, and adding that the embassy condemned the breach. To his credit, President Obama recently said, “And my tendency is to cut folks a little bit of slack when they’re in that circumstance, rather than try to question their judgment from the comfort of a campaign office.” Schwartz and his colleagues were the ones dealing with a breach of security, and he did what he felt necessary to condemn it. In addition, it follows an acceptable line of thought while under attack. Romney can talk all he wants about promoting free speech, but when a mob is attacking your compound, you might not want to be spouting American rhetoric. Maybe it wasn’t exactly what Washington wanted it to be, but it surely wasn’t overly detrimental.

At this point in the sequence of events, it appeared Schwartz would have his reputation restored. He was under pressure and he did what he thought he had to do.

But then, Thursday happened, and the media is once again on his case.

Somehow, after seemingly making it out unscathed, it appears Schwartz was actually only in the eye of the storm. This article in The Atlantic, as well as many others, documented this exchange between @USEmbassyCairo and @Ikhwanweb, the official handle for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood:

I want to stop here and note a few things. Firstly, as of March 2012, the entire country of Egypt had 215,000 users on Twitter. The Twitter account for @USEmbassyCairo has a little over 28,000 followers, and at first glance, it seems a large number of them are more than likely not located in Egypt. A relatively tiny number of Egyptians in relation to the population of the country are seeing these posts, and yet the U.S. media coverage of them is more than superfluous.

Because of that, internet posts are meaningful and permanent. Someone always gets a screen grab of an ill-thought-out tweet, and it appears that such a situation is what happened yesterday. I have no idea what the Arabic feeds of the Muslim Brotherhood said, but I know that a knee-jerk response from an American diplomat to the current party-in-power over a public forum is definitely not what the Obama administration is looking for right now.

The move by Schwartz, who is undoubtedly under a lot of stress, insinuates that the party had some form of involvement with, or was instigating, the protests on their Arabic feeds. And that now carries even more weight, considering the Cairo protests seemed to fuel others, and have resulted in American deaths. Such an insinuation may have the propensity to create further tensions between the governments and/or stir the emotions of what is an already volatile Egyptian public.

More likely, the bigger headache for President Obama will be this incident giving the Republican party more fuel for their fire in saying the current administration has mishandled Middle East/North Africa affairs on a larger scale. Twitter is used as a device of public diplomacy by the State Department, and Schwartz just turned 180 degrees and called out the recently-elected Egyptian government for at best, not responding well to the situation, and at worst, contributing to the protests. Even if that information was to exist (and I am in no way saying it actually does), Twitter is surely not the right medium to address it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Romney and his advisors make haste in using that information to further their cause, possibly by saying Obama should have removed Schwartz after the first round of unapproved messages.

It appears President Obama has to do a little more damage-control than originally thought. I’m interested to see how this plays out, what Schwartz will face in the days ahead, if there will be an official response from the Muslim Brotherhood, and if the Romney campaign will triple-down on their cries of poor management by Obama.

All of the political bickering aside, we as Americans are all mourning the loss of Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone S. Woods. Let us all hope that the other protests end peacefully, and that U.S-Egypt, and U.S.-Arab relations in general manage to make it out of this mess, despite the Twitter gaffes.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and not ofTake Five, IPDGC or GWU.

A Battle over Narrative in Syria

September 13, 2012Middle EastLeave a Comment

Assad and Rebels — **Bashar al Assad and the opposition are both struggling to define the narrative in Syria.**

While many of the uprisings of the Arab Spring appear to be have transitioned from bloodshed in the streets to struggles within a political structure, the conflict in Syria endures. Neither President Bashar al Assad or the opposition appear to have charted a clear path to victory, and with the death toll climbing (according to activists) to more than 20,000, no clear path to the end is in sight. What a transition it has been from the early days of the uprising, when Syrian protestors gathered in largely peaceful protests in Damascus. Syria has seen a lot since those days – a violent crackdown, a gathering rebellion, a failed UN Peacekeeping mission, and multiple attempts from the outside world to intervene and stop the bloodshed.

But the fighting in Syria is not simply on the battlefield and in the streets: an equally important struggle is being waged in the realm of public perception.

**Paul Danahar**
(Source: Indiatelevision.com)

Back in June of 2012, NPR’s On The Media interviewed the BBC’s Paul Danahar on the evolving propaganda war within Syria. In the early days of the conflict, the regime was loath to allow reporters to catalogue the brutal crackdown that was taking place. Al Assad claimed that the opposition to his country was a mixture of Al Qaeda elements and foreign powers, and that his regime was all that stood between Syria and an extremist Islamist state. Few people took these claims seriously at the time, but over time, says Danahar, that narrative has become somewhat true.

“I think it’s become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy. He talked about there being Al Qaeda elements in Syria last year, and I think now there are Al Qaeda elements. So they’ve managed to worm their way into the structure of society because the society has become completely chaotic. His claim that the other governments are fiddling around in his back yard, they’re also true. He’s created the environment for the kinds of things he warned about happening to actually happen.”

It is correct that Al Qaeda and foreign fighters are taking part in the fighting. In many ways, Syria has now spiraled into the protracted civil war that everyone feared it would be. The rebellion – a fractured, disorganized collective of armed groups – has yet to provide the same sort of unified opposition that their counterparts achieved in Libya, and as a result, the deeds of individual factions are able to shift the narrative of the whole opposition. Images and videos of alleged mass executions of regime soldiers by the FSA have prompted a warning from the U.N. that the rebels are not immune from prosecution for atrocities.

President Al Assad’s goal in light of this is two-fold: to project his regime to both internal and external audiences as the inevitable, stable ruler of Syria, and to cast the opposition as a radical, unacceptable alternative. In some ways this objective is a continuation of the regime’s PR campaign before the uprising, in which Asma Al Assad, the president’s wife, received a glowing spread in Vogue magazine (recently dropped from the publication’s website).

**Shelling damage in Damascus**
(Source: Reuters)

Hassan Hassan of Foreign Policy documents his recent more recent PR offensive to carry the narrative – embedding journalists with Syrian forces fighting in Aleppo, highlighting captured foreign fighters and jihadists, and arranging television interviews to project confidence about the outcome of the conflict. The regime has met and given “positive commitments” to the Red Cross officials’ requests to address the humanitarian crisis, even as Syrian forces continue to shell civilian populations in Damascus and Aleppo.

By contrast, the opposition has failed to mount a similar imaging campaign, or anything close to it. Infighting and a lack of leadership in the Syrian National Council has made it very challenging for the organization direct the rebellion, much less combat the regime’s narrative with an effective counter campaign. As a result, says Michael Hughes of the Examiner, “the SNC’s poor media strategy and inconsistent messaging have allowed the Assad regime to frame the narrative.” Bassad Haddad laments the dysfunction of the opposition on display for all to see:

“We are no longer witnessing a clear-cut event where an independent pro-democracy movement is facing a dictatorship. Though the latter part holds, the former does not. The dependence, weakness, fragmentation, and divisiveness of the especially external opposition and its internal correlates are now evident to all.”

Skill with public relations doesn’t shift facts on the ground. No number of television interviews can banish the reality for Syrians of shelling and summary executions. But framing can shape the behavior of actors going forward. Perceptions of the regime’s inevitability and the opposition’s unacceptability may shift the behavior of ordinary Syrians as the battle for the country continues to play out. The belief by foreigners that the opposition is made up of radicals like Al Qaeda could stay the hand of powers with the ability to truly shift the winds in the opposition’s favor. Ultimately, If the opposition is to defeat the regime, they will need to do more than simply coordinate within the organization; they must also convince outsiders of their legitimacy and their ability to responsibly piece the country together.

New Media and Conflict After the Arab Spring

September 11, 2012Middle East, Social Media1 Comment

That is the title of the latest IPDGC-USIP report in the “Blogs and Bullets” series, written by myself and my GW colleagues Henry Farrell, Marc Lynch, and John Sides, as well as American University’s Deen Freelon. Since 2009, we have been looking at the role of new media in political protest, activism, and movements for peace around the world. Although this has been an important topic for a while, it gained particular salience in 2011 when mass protests exploded throughout the Middle East, toppling two governments and pushing several others toward the brink.

Our first report, “Blogs and Bullets: New Media and Contentious Politics,” co-authored with Morningside Analytics’ John Kelly and Ethan Zuckerman from the Berkman Institute, we took a critical look at the state of research at that time in this area and called for a more complex, empirically-grounded approach. We proposed five “lenses” through which scholars and others could examine these internet-fueled movements: individual transformation, intergroup relations, collective action, regime policies, and external attention.

In this latest report, we go a step further by zeroing in on the role of new and especially social media in the Arab Spring protests that began in late 2010 and led to the toppling of some despotic regimes — but, importantly, not all — in 2011. We did this by utilizing a unique dataset from bit.ly, the URL shortener commonly associated with Twitter but used in several platforms, including Facebook. With these data, we were able to get a sense of how important a role these media played in what some hailed at the time as “Facebook Revolutions.”

Our findings suggest a more nuanced role for new media, or at least, for the new media we were able to analyze. First, it’s important to understand what we were able to do with our data. In a nutshell, we were able to see how different links spread throughout a country, throughout the region, and throughout the world, and when they did so. Put simply, we were able to look at spikes in linking (mostly via Twitter), which coincided with major events and their corresponding hashtags (e.g., #jan25 for Egypt), and see if most of that traffic was within the given country, within the broader MENA (Middle East North Africa) region, or external to the region.

In sum, we found that in nearly all cases we examined, the vast majority of link traffic was external to the MENA region and the country in question. So, for example, many of the links being virtually passed around about the Tarhir Square protests in Egypt were amongst people in places like Europe and North America, rather than from Egyptian to Egyptian, or even from Cairo to Manama.

There are many reasons not to be surprised by these findings. For one, most of the affected countries have very low internet penetration. For another, phrases such as “Twitter Revolution” or “Facebook Revolution” conjure up the kind of very powerful media effect not seen in most of the academic literature across a variety of contexts. It’s not that media can’t be powerful, but rather that their power is generally limited to very specific instances and dependent on many factors. (And that’s assuming we can agree on what “powerful” means.)

Yet precisely because of the occasionally breathless commentary about the alleged power of new media to bring down governments, these findings are important. For one thing, by showing that at least some social media (e.g., Twitter) didn’t appear to have a mobilizing effect internally, it helps refocus our attention on what variables do explain social movement organization and effectiveness.

Similarly, I would argue these findings are important for the way in which they tell us something about what social media did do during these protests. In a sense, what we found is a “megaphone” role for social media, whereby the rest of the world was able to learn about and have conversations about these protests and the violent crackdowns that they inspired. This could have important ramifications if, as some hope, this kind of external attention can generate international pressure on regimes to avoid or suspend violent reactions to protest, much less reform or resign. This is particularly important in an era where some governments, including the Obama administration, attempt to embrace a foreign policy based on the principle of a “responsibility to protect” (R2P) citizens threatened by extreme regime violence.

With Lynch and Freelon, our next wave of USIP-funded Blogs and Bullets research will explore how activists in the Syrian uprising are using new media — especially videos on sites like YouTube — to mobilize and inform others around the world about their fight with the Syrian government. Ultimately we will also be looking at how these social media campaigns might, or might not, influence the international community’s response. We will be discussing the Arab Spring report, and the Syrian uprising, at a conference on October 2 at USIP. Watch the IPDGC website for details.

Satire as Good Publicity: How the Daily Show’s Ridicule Helps Al Jazeera English

June 28, 2012Arab Spring, Middle East, public diplomacyLeave a Comment

Samantha Been of the Daily Show at Al Jazeera English — In a 2006 Daily Show feature, Samantha Bee visited the Al Jazeera English broadcasting center in Washington, DC, poking fun at the staff and the station’s efforts to reach Americans. Here she gives presenters Ghida Fakhry and Dave Marash “tips” on how to appeal to American audiences.

International broadcasters should worry about how they are covered by the domestic media of countries in which they are trying to build audiences. How they are reported and commented on can impact the public’s receptivity.

This matters more for controversial broadcasters operating in politically sensitive times. One example I studied closely is the case of Al Jazeera English (AJE) in the United States. By covering underrepresented areas in the world, AJE holds out the promise of facilitating intercultural understanding and knowledge of international affairs among Americans. Research by Shawn Powers and Mohammed El-Nawawy (pdf) looked at how the political views of individuals viewing AJE moderated over time, leading them to term it a “conciliatory” medium.

However, AJE is not widely available on television in the United States — an inherent limit on this potential. Public opposition to AJE, beyond the conventional wisdom of the cable industry that Americans are uninterested in international news, is one reason. Aversion to AJE is rooted in the perception of Al Jazeera as an enemy of the United States. The Bush administration frequently lambasted the channel, associating it with Al Qaeda in public statements.

Many Americans hold pre-formed suspicions of the channel. In a previous study (pdf), Katie Brown and myself found that pre-reception audience bias against AJE exists in the United States. Americans were more likely to rate as credible and less biased a news report when it displayed a CNN logo, compared to when it bore AJE’s. That is not to say all of our participants opposed AJE. Mistrust of AJE correlated most highly with both conservative political ideology and prejudice against Arab Americans, limiting its conciliatory potential.

In a follow-up study published in the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, we asked whether Americans change their views toward AJE depending on how it is covered by other media, or what we call “intermedia framing.” It is based in our contention that in media-rich societies, public perceptions of newer or foreign media outlets can be influenced by how they are depicted by other media programs.

This is a potential media effect — we argue — even in an era of increased audience selective exposure, which many communication scholars argue limits how media influence people’s beliefs. In other words, while media pluralism has made it easier for audiences to select media to meet their preferences and needs, they may still incidentally learn about other media. It follows from Matthew Baum’s work on the advantages of soft news for informing the public on issues, even if inadvertent and under the pretense of entertainment.

We gauged how Americans evaluated AJE after viewing packages about AJE trying to enter the US market. One was a Daily News bit featuring Samantha Bee (see video) and typified satiric soft news, using layered humor to tease AJE and mock American news-viewing habits.

The other package typified hard news; it was an NBC News report (no public link available). It covered some of the same themes, referencing the administration’s critiques and the airing of the bin Laden videos (only shown but not commented upon in the Daily Show segment).

Our participants who watched the Daily Show’s bit demonstrated more openness to AJE, but also less prejudice against Arab-Americans. Humorous inter-media framing facilitated receptivity to the channel probably by disarming apprehensions. The hard news piece likely stoked fears related to the “war on terror.” We did not test for the specific emotional or cognitive effects that brought about perceptional changes, unfortunately.

Other researchers have shown in interest in inter-media framing and Al Jazeera English, though using different terminology, theory and methods. In a recent paper in Journalism, Kimberly Meltzer looked at how American journalists, as an interpretive community, represented AJE as it launched in the Washington, DC market. News coverage of AJE was largely positive, suggesting they generally did not share the antipathy expressed by members of the public who mobilized to oppose AJE’s carriage in other communities. She related this to AJE’s marketing and outreach efforts, which she usefully reviewed.

Whether positive inter-media actually leads to more demand to have AJE placed on American cable and satellite services is another question. Our study showed it can in an experimental setting. Meltzer observed changes in actual inter-media framing. More research on actual public reactions to AJE is needed to round this out.

There is a larger lesson for state media outlets. With the fast growth in the number of outlets, it is natural that a competitive field increases references between media. As international broadcasters face increasingly complex media milieus, there is a greater need to appeal to domestic news channels since they can influence public receptivity. That can be difficult given the natural competition for eyeballs and likely differences in ideology or interests. However, broadcasters may want further invest in media relations work to expand their PR and marketing efforts. The concept of inter-media framing

A Proposal for Revitalizing International Broadcasting in the Information Age

April 20, 2012Global Communication, Middle East, public diplomacy1 Comment

Co-author: Shawn Powers, Georgia State University

State-funded broadcasters face more competition for publics’ attention. With the wide proliferation of information sources globally, audiences have the option of accessing a multitude of news outlets while increasing their own engagement through two-way communications technologies. The growth of other international broadcasters, or state news media aimed at foreign audiences, as well as private news media, is part of increasingly complex informational environments.

For state broadcasters constrained by host governments’ strategic interests and/or lethargic bureaucracy, adapting to the information age is especially challenging. They are bound by old missions, institutional pressure, declining budgets, and domestic politics, not to mention the presumption of propaganda by many receiving publics. However, the source of their new challenges—the growth of information and communication technologies—also offers a possible way forward.

These factors along with financial crises and the demise of clear, global geopolitical polarity, has engendered identity crises among many state-run broadcasters already facing the ever-difficult dilemma between being news with instrumental purposes – the pursuit of the host country’s national interests – while not being dismissed as propaganda.

State broadcasters can re-define themselves by focusing on specific information poor and weakly governed societies, often termed failed or non-transitioning states – of which there are still dozens according to Foreign Policy’s Failed State index.

In a newly published paper in a special symposium in the Journal of Public Deliberation, we propose international broadcasters find renewal by fostering deliberative technologies in such societies. By sponsoring mediated forums for average Somalis, Afghans, Haitians and so on to discuss public matters, international broadcasters can aid development through hosting safe communicative spaces for articulating public concerns, reaching shared expectations of governance, and, advancing norms of citizen participation in public affairs.

To support this policy prescription, we offer two case studies. The first is Voice of America’s Middle East Voices (MEV) online portal, launched in November 2011. Its goals are explicitly deliberative. According to managing director Davin Hutchins, “We wanted to find a place where people could start conversations about the news. There are plenty of sites and organizations that cover the Middle East. What we wanted was a site that enhanced the level of dialogue.”

VOA’s use of deliberation technologies in non-transitioning and authoritarian states facilitated informed dialogue on divisive issues, much of which is based on user-generated content and collaborative journalism. While MEV has not reached nor involved large audiences, it offers a new model for international broadcasters to encourage the flow of information and political expression where domestic media are under assault. Such deliberative infrastructure for national and transnational dialogue is valuable as an avenue for circumventing state censors and informational controls.

The second is “Somalia Speaks,” a collaborative project spearheaded by Al Jazeera English that combines several communication technologies to solicit short message service (SMS) texts about Somalia and shares them on its website. Soud Hyder, an AJE staff member, said the project’s aim is to circulate “the perspective of normal Somali citizens” and let them “tell us how the crisis has affected them.” It tapped into the growth of mobile phones in Somalia.

Respondents expressed how the famine and decades of conflict impacted them. For example, one SMS posted on January 1, 2012 read:

“I lost both my parents and the elder brother in the bloodshed that has been going for the last 20 years. In addition, my students and their children all perished in this conflict and there is a lot which I can’t count all here.”

The graphic to the right is from the project’s webpage and it outlines the process. AJE partnered with Souktel, a cell phone service provider with a development ethos, to provide the local response number to receive the SMS texts and the subscriber lists. A crowd-sourcing platform, Crowdflower, let 80 volunteers translate 1,000 messages into English. Using Ushahidi’s mapping application, AJE’s website displayed the messages in both map and catalog formats. This exemplified the possibilities that arise from an international broadcaster working collaboratively with other technology platforms and organizations.

With adjustments, both the MEV and “Somalia Speaks,” could be used to better facilitate domestic information flows. For example, AJE could have done more to re-circulate the texts through Somali media. This would be easier, of course, if Al Jazeera goes forward with its planned East Africa news channel. Similarly, VOA could find ways to expand circulation of user-generated content beyond the Internet, perhaps through its broadcasting functions. These projects do show how international broadcasters can engage in particular media poor environments to benefit local publics.

Some may argue that deliberation, or institutionalized public exchange, is impossible in authoritarian and failed or failing states. Lisa Wedeen’s excellent ethnographic study of public engagement in Yemen, Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen (2008), shows how overly formalistic definitions of deliberation do not capture the vibrancy of public sphere practices in informal, everyday life settings. She examined Qat chews, in which circles of men share the mildly narcotic leaves while discussing public issues and exchanging information. This is a form of Yemeni citizenship in action even in lieu of a fully functioning state or formal civil society. Our proposal would mean more mass mediated channels for the spreading of such deliberation among wider audiences.

Broadcasters may protest that this puts their primary audiences in a handful of countries. This proposal complements rather than supplants current broadcasting. Also, as the case studies show, such projects can generate valuable content for reporting. For example, AJE reported on a market fire in a region in Somalia where there are no journalists after receiving text messages. This alone can give state-sponsored news organs something novel to contribute. Such reporting adds to, rather than replicates or spins, the dominant news stream, and is more interesting than the typical fare showing the host country in a good light.

We recognize that development problems cannot be resolved by talk and the exchange of ideas alone. Rather than a panacea, this is about a pragmatic use of state resources to benefit foreign publics with the understanding that this is not done selflessly. There must be mutual benefit.

Building on notions of deliberative development, we argue that international broadcasters can offer positive, incremental improvement of the internal flow of information and expectations, which can fuel growth in civil society and improve informal or quasi-governance structures – potential precursors to more responsive institutions. By serving as proxies in places with weak media, broadcasters get a new purpose, a developmental one, and this is a step forward for both.

Of course, since they are intervening in foreign information spaces, broadcasting agencies must approach carefully, self-reflexively and in partnership with groups and audience members in receiving countries.

If this proposal interests you, read our full paper, “A New Purpose for International Broadcasting: Subsidizing Deliberative Technologies in Non-transitioning States.” Feedback is welcome either below in the comments or email us directly at smp [at] gsu [dot] edu. Or find us on Twitter: @shawnpowers and @wyoumans.

The Future of International Broadcasting (mountainrunner.us)
US International Broadcasting: Success Requires Independence and Consolidation (mountainrunner.us)

China, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, the Arab world, and the Vatican: New Books on Public Diplomacy Span the Globe.

April 18, 2012Global Communication, Middle East, public diplomacyLeave a Comment

New books on Public Diplomacy, December 2011 through April 2012

Take Five readers: Let us know if you like this resource, and we’ll make it a quarterly feature.

1) At the 2012 London Book Fair. Professor Zhao Qizheng is launching his two new books in English. They are Cross-Border Dialogue: the Wisdom of Public Diplomacy, published by the New World Press, and How China Communicates: Public Diplomacy in a Global Age, published by the Foreign Language Press (together constituting an English version of his Chinese book entitled Public Diplomacy and Cross-Cultural Communication, published by Remin University Press, 2011). Zhao says, “I’m trying to present a picture of the real situation in China, to reduce misunderstanding and eliminate the foreign reader’s sense of unfamiliarity with the country.”

2) The People’s Peace Process in Northern Ireland, by Colin Irwin (April 2, 2012) — From the book jacket: ‘I recommend this book to all those involved with peace making and peace building, political negotiations and public opinion polls, as well as those with a particular interest in Northern Ireland. … I am persuaded that the unique approach [Irwin] developed of running public opinion polls in co-operation with party negotiators contributed significantly to the successful outcome of our efforts. – Senator George J. Mitchell.

3) Cyberspaces and Global Affairs by Sean S. Costigan and Jake Perry (Jan 1, 2012). Note Part II: Web 2.0 and public diplomacy includes the following articles: – Call for power? Mobile phones as facilitators of political activism; – ICT infrastructure in two Asian giants: a comparative analysis of China and India; – Information (without) revolution? Ethnography and the study of new media-enabled change in the Middle East; – The political history of the internet: a theoretical approach to the implications for US power; – US identity, security, and governance of the internet; – Information and communications technologies and power; – Social media and Iran’s post-election crisis; – Viewpoint: combating censorship should be a foreign policy goal; – Viewpoint: an alternative prospect on cyber anarchy for policy-makers. About the editors: Sean S. Costigan directs MIT CogNet and teaches information technology at The New School, and Jake Perry is an independent scholar.

3) National Relations: Public Diplomacy, National Identity and the Swedish Institute 1945-1970 by Nikolas Glover (Jan 1, 2012). Says the author: “My study focuses on the Swedish Institute for Cultural Exchange with Foreign Countries, 1945–1970. … It postulates that identifying with and promoting a particular national identity in the post-war world has been a question of relating the nation to others … The concept of national relations leads me to engage with historical research on public diplomacy, the history of communication and the history of nationalism.”

4) Diaspora Diplomacy: Philippine Migration and its Soft Power Influences by Joaquin Jay Gonzalez III (Dec 27, 2011). The author talks about “the remarkable and untapped soft power that international migrants possess and how various actors—from governments, NGOs, business, the church, and international organizations—could tap this valuable resource to enhance global cooperation, development, and understanding. With detailed and intimate illustrations from the experiences of the Philippine diaspora in San Francisco, London, Dubai, Dhaka, and Singapore…”

New paperback editions:

5) The New Arab Media: Technology, Image and Perception by Mahjoob Zweiri and Emma C. Murphy (Mar 29, 2012; hardcover published January 2011). ISBS says “topics examined include: the impact of Al-Jazeera * implementation of the internet in the region * the use of the media for diplomacy and propaganda * image culture * the use of the internet by religious diasporas * information and communication technologies and the Arab Public Sphere * the influence of satellite television on Arab public opinion * the explosion of local radio stations in Jordan.” .

6) Kosovo’s Diplomacy: How can Public Diplomacy have an impact on Kosovo’s political and diplomatic position? by Alban Dermaku (Jan 23, 2012; hardcover published January 2011.) Book flap text: “The declaration of independence marked a new era for Kosovo and its relations with the countries that have recognized its independence. Since then Kosovo is striving in its diplomatic efforts to achieve broader international recognition and become a member of the United Nations. … In modern times, public diplomacy is receiving broad recognition as a crucial element for understanding and influencing foreign publics.”

Postgraduate Theses from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, new on Kindle eBook:

7) Prioritizing Efforts to Improve Foreign Public Opinion of America: Applying a Business Model to Discover and Create Customer Value by Anthony J. Sampson – Kindle eBook (published Apr 12, 2012; thesis written in 2007 for the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA). Author’s note: “Given the reality of fiscal and resource constraints, America could not possibly address all of the concerns of the foreign public; rather, America must focus its efforts on the factors that are likely to make the greatest impact. This study identifies negative factors that interfere with favorable foreign pubic opinion and suggests an analytic framework for prioritizing those factors.

8) The Holy See and the Middle East: The Public Diplomacy of Pope John Paul II by Ronald Patrick Stake – Kindle eBook (published March 31,2012; thesis written in 2006 for the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA). Author’s note: “This thesis considers changes in the diplomacy of the Holy See with respect to the Middle East … between 1990 and 2003. Policies … involved (1) establishing full diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the State of Israel; (2) convening the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for Lebanon, ending in the papal visit to Lebanon in May 1997; and (3) opposing the 1991 and 2003 U.S. led wars against Iraq. …{T}he thesis argues that new circumstances occasioned a rethinking of the Holy See’s interests in light of the development of modern Catholic social teaching.”

From the Trenches

April 5, 2012Cultural Diplomacy, Middle East, public diplomacyLeave a Comment

“You are an unofficial representative of the American people.”

These were the words of Richard Gong, the head of the Public Affairs Section at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. It was September 1997, and I had just started what I hoped would be an exciting year as a Fulbrighter. I’d been awarded a position as a Senior Scholar at the University of Indonesia, where I would be teaching in the graduate program of the American Studies department. You could also say that this was the start of my career in public diplomacy.

Guest lecturing to graduate political science graduate class at Cairo University — I guest lectured for graduate political science graduate class at Cairo University

During the next twelve months, I watched the fall of a dictator, the complete reorganization of a media system, and the beginnings of democracy in a majority Muslim country. I also learned Indonesian, re-focused my research to the study of journalism in Southeast Asia, and began to do work in public diplomacy that has since taken me all over the world. The lessons I learned in Indonesia have been useful not only in other Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, Burma, and Timor Leste, but also more recently in on a USG speaker-specialist trip to post-revolutionary Egypt.

My start in public diplomacy may have been somewhat accidental, but I’ve been engaged in it for the past fifteen years. I’ve been a speaker-specialist in ten countries, and although the topics and challenges have varied from post to post, I’ve never forgotten what Richard said.

I like that I’m “unofficial.” As someone who’s spent a lot of time around embassies, I can’t imagine anything more difficult than being a diplomat, and having to guard each and every word I say. I’ve met some great diplomats and some mediocre ones, but the best are those who truly engage with the countries in which they are posted, while never forgetting who it is they work for.

Narrative writing class at Alexandria University — My narrative writing class at Alexandria University

In my work, engagement means taking each country and its media system on its own terms. In Egypt, I spent a lot more time talking about the Indonesian press system than I did about what we have in the United States. There’s a lot that Egypt could learn from Indonesia, another country that emerged from over 30 years of authoritarian rule with a tightly controlled press. As I pointed out repeatedly, the man who in my opinion was Indonesia’s best and most democratic president, Abdurrahman Wahid, was not only a highly regarded Muslim scholar and one-time student at Al-Azhar, he was also the man who abolished the Ministry of Information. As any Indonesian can tell you, democracy, good journalism, and the values of Islam are not incompatible.

I also like that I don’t represent the American government, but rather the American people. In nearly all of the places I’ve been — during Democratic and Republican administrations alike — it’s a cliche to say “we like the American people, we just don’t like your government.” In Egypt, this meant that I was free to point out the weaknesses of both American and Egyptian media coverage of the handful of American NGO workers who were flown out of the country in apparent violation of the principle of an “independent judiciary.” It also meant that I was free to note the hypocrisy of those Egyptian commentators who ascribed all progressive reform to “foreign interference.”

Accidental or not, this is public diplomacy from the trenches, and it’s what I’ll be writing about during my upcoming sabbatical year. As I tell visiting journalist friends who come to the US and meet my classes, they may be the first Indonesian or Malaysian or Bangladeshi whom my American students have ever met. At a time in which “we are all Khaled Said” or “we are all Trayvon Martin,” we are all public diplomats as well. Like it or not, in this interconnected world, each one of us is engaged in public diplomacy.

The Public Diplomacy Challenge in Pakistan

March 26, 2012Middle East, public diplomacyLeave a Comment

Tomorrow, President Obama meets Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan on the margins of the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul. A central topic is likely to be the status of relations between Pakistan and the United States, which have been severely strained in the aftermath of a military operation gone bad along the Afghan-Pakistan border in November. During the operation, due to what military investigators described as mistakes at higher echelons on both sides, U.S. and Pakistani forces exchanged fire. Twenty-four Pakistani soldiers were killed, inflaming public opinion in Pakistan, suspending military cooperation and putting its fragile civilian government on the defensive.

The other casualty in the episode was U.S. public diplomacy in Pakistan. Not so long ago, the United States and Pakistan were speaking of a long-term strategic partnership. But after a string of events over the past 15 months, the relationship is in intensive care. Even before the November border incident, two-thirds of Pakistanis viewed the United States as an enemy, not a partner. A pillar of the Obama administration’s regional strategy starting in 2009 was transforming the relationship with Pakistan’s civilian government – and the Pakistani people. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the late Special Representative Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, together with U.S. Ambassadors Anne Patterson and Cameron Munter, began a broad and candid conversation with different segments of the Pakistani population that chipped away at years of pent-up frustration and misperception. An aggressive U.S. response to destructive flooding in Pakistan in 2010 helped as well.

But these public diplomacy gains were easily swept aside last year. First, an intelligence operative with diplomatic status killed two Pakistanis on motorbikes (he claimed in self-defense) that led to a protracted standoff over treaty obligations under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Pakistan released him after negotiating compensation for the victims’ families but the public diplomacy damage was severe. Three months later, there was the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, a justifiable action from the standpoint of U.S. security, but nonetheless perceived in Pakistan as a violation of sovereignty. And there is Pakistani public frustration with on going drone operations, which the government in Islamabad is more familiar with than it lets on publicly.

When it comes to public diplomacy, this is as difficult as it gets. But does this matter? Well, when it comes to reducing the ongoing threat of violent extremism, there is no country in the world more important than Pakistan. Pakistan’s links to the Taliban, the Mumbai attack and domestic plots involving David Headley, Faisal Shahzad and Najibullah Zazi are well chronicled. This is not to indict the entire country – Pakistan has suffered far more casualties from terrorism than the United States. It is to say that the U.S. cannot defeat, dismantle and deter al Qaeda and its affiliates, the reason we are militarily engaged in the region, without building a stable long-term relationship with Pakistan’s government and its people.

This will be a lengthy and difficult process, which can be the starting point for tomorrow’s meeting between the President and Prime Minister. They should begin the recovery by first acknowledging the pervasive mistrust that handicaps the relationship and undeniably contributed to the tragedy in November. Notwithstanding political tensions on both sides, they need to reaffirm that, once Pakistan completes its review, high-level delegations from both countries will reconvene to reach new understandings on cooperation and support. Ultimately, if the United States seeks a partnership with Pakistan, and vice versa, both countries need to be more forthcoming.

The Troubling Power of the US Military over Foreign Policymaking

March 16, 2012Middle East, public diplomacy3 Comments

In reading about the difficulties confronting American policymakers in Afghanistan, one point struck me as especially troubling. The New York Times reported:

“Any accelerated withdrawal would face stiff opposition from military commanders, who want to keep the bulk of the remaining American troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2014, when the NATO mission in Afghanistan is supposed to end. Their resistance puts Mr. Obama in a quandary, as he balances how to hasten what is increasingly becoming a messy withdrawal while still painting a portrait of success for NATO allies and the American people.

The Times is reporting that the “resistance” of the Pentagon to what many of the president’s civilian advisors are saying creates a dilemma for him. This quandary arises because open knowledge of Pentagon resistance forces the president to balance his administration’s apparent desire to “hasten” US military withdrawal against his need to maintain support from NATO allies and American citizens—support that would be undermined were the commander in chief to appear to overrule the Pentagon’s “stiff opposition.” In other words, the military’s willingness to publicize its opposition to civilian policymakers creates pressure to which the president must respond.

"The military’s willingness to publicize its opposition to civilian policymakers creates pressure to which the president must respond."

Is it healthy for a democracy when elected leaders worry about winning the military’s support as much as winning that of the country’s citizens’ or allies’?

Not only does it seem problematic for the military to implicitly threaten open opposition should the president choose a policy the Pentagon dislikes. It’s also worrisome because any seeming “Pentagon” consensus in opposition might be nothing of the sort. The institutional voice of the Joint Chiefs could largely reflect who won out in bureaucratic maneuvers, turf battles and individual jockeying for career advancement. The Pentagon’s stands do not necessarily reflect rational deliberation or application of neutral technical expertise.

America’s unhappy experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq could yield at least one benefit if they spurred systematic renewal of mechanisms ensuring civilian control of the US military.

Related articles