January 27

"Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century."

--Marshall McLuhan

1. VIDEO

Marshall McLuhan Speaks: Centennial 2011. Via PR. Image from

2. VIDEO

Джон Байерли рассказывает о Спасо-хаусе -- US envoy to the Russian Federation John Beyrle


speaks about the Ambassador's Residence in Moscow in fluent Russian; cultural diplomacy; image from

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Shireen Mazari Launches A Workshop To Explain New Threats To Pakistan's Nuclear Policy - paki-friends.blogspot.com: "There are new pressures on Pakistan to limit its ability to maintain a credible nuclear deterrence. These pressures are coming from the Conference on Disarmament, or CD as it is known, that opens today in Geneva. ... While US officials use public diplomacy to send messages through Radio Pakistan and other arms of the pro-US government in Islamabad claiming Washington has no interest in targeting the Pakistani nuclear program, US actions speak louder about the actual US policy toward Pakistan's strategic capabilities. The Pakistani government is maintaining a strange silence on the new pressures on its nuclear capabilities. ... To break this silence, a Pakistani nuclear expert Dr. Shireen Mazari



took the initiative to sensitize the Pakistani media about the new developments in Geneva. She organized a one-day closed-door briefing for senior Pakistani journalists. Over eight hours, participants were briefed about the new pressures on Pakistani diplomacy on the country's nuclear program. ... But Dr. Mazari is not alone. Ambassador Zamir Akram has told CD that Pakistan does not accept the US-led tilt in favor of India on nuclear technology. In Islamabad, an eminent former top diplomat of Pakistan, former foreign minister Mr. Inam-ul-Haq, joined in conducting the workshop. Strategic Technology Resource, which organized the workshop and is headed by Dr. Mazari, plans to offer Pakistani legislators similar exposure to position them to understand government policy." Image from

Library story time – Annette Sarajevo Redux: "About ten years ago, the Department of State started opening 'American Corner' libraries around the world. They are intended to be a spot where locals can get reliable information about the US through books, magazines, DVDs, and programming. Here in Sarajevo, the facility has a minimal selection of books, but they physical space is lovely and welcoming. Patrons can use the library's computers to access the internet, and the library puts on programs about American culture. The librarian invited me to do a weekly English language storytime for children.


I've been doing it for about a month now. I love it but it does pose a couple of challenges. First, I don't have that many picture books. And the American Corners picture book collection is even sadder than my own. Luckily, the local international school lets me check out books. And I have discovered some great websites (and here) that have downloadable pictures that allow me to make some of my favorite picture books into flannelboard stories. The second challenge is that my audience so far (except for my own children) has been non-English speaking Bosnian children." Image from article. Via WM

UK journalist union leader says VOA will eclipse a reduced BBC World Service - Kim Andrew Elliott reporting on International Broadcasting: "I don't think VOA by itself can overtake the BBC World Service audience size. US international broadcasting combined could do so, if its resources were combined, as I discussed in the New York Times, 12 July 2010 and in the Foreign Service Journal, October 2010... . VOA does have an important advantage over BBCWS in that VOA moved more quickly to develop television in several languages. BBCWS is, however, planning to develop its own television content in various languages."


British Broadcasting Catastrophe - Laura McGinnis, manIC: "The decision ... to inflict 'savage cuts' upon BBC World Service funding has sparked a firestorm of protests in Great Britain. Politicians of all stripes have criticized the cuts. The Telegraph reports that right wing Tory representatives have suggested moving funding from the budgets for overseas aid or international development. To be fair, aid and development can be used for public diplomacy purposes as well, although their scope and purpose are widely different." Image from

Advertising China - Jian (Jay) Wang, Newswire – CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy: Last week, China unveiled an ad campaign on the jumbotron screens in New York City’s Times Square to promote its national image. The two 30-second spots, titled 'Experience China,' feature the country’s celebrities and luminaries from different walks of life. So, like many other countries, China is now taking a page out of the Madison-Avenue playbook to try to get its message out. Of course, no one would naively believe that a single ad campaign like this will galvanize popular perceptions of China in the U.S. Nevertheless, it is meaningful to talk about the ad in the context of a series of undertakings China has pursued over the last several years to enhance its soft power on the world stage, from the global expansion of its media properties to the rapid growth of the Confucius Institutes. This campaign, which aims to broaden the American discourse about China, adds to the momentum of these efforts. Therefore, whatever one might think of the ad itself is really beside the point. In this case, the medium is the message. ... It also comes to no surprise that China chose, out of all places, Times Square for the campaign. Perceived as the center stage of America, Times Square occupies a privileged position in the Chinese imagination. The annual New Year’s Eve ritual is widely known in China, having inspired Chinese versions of it, for instance, at Shanghai’s own Times Square. In this sense, the ad campaign is also spatially meaningful for the Chinese public."

Palileaks – what goes on? - raymondcook.net: "These are my quick notes on the PaliLeaks farrago so far: What currently concerns and confuses me is how two completely opposite narratives are coming out of the same material, The JPost seems to accept the validity of the leaks and claims it shows the PA in a bad light and Israel is exonerated, whereas the Guardian, BBC et al see it the opposite way.


Robin Shepherd claims it shows the settlements were never an issue; Melanie Phillips agrees with Erekat that the key documents represent the Israeli position not the PA position; Channel 4 news in the UK take the Guardian position. And what is noticeably absent? Once again, no statement from the Israeli government either denying or clarifying any of this. So much for Public Diplomacy." Image from

Public Diplomacy and Social Media - Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence: "I’ve just got back from a week in India where one of the things that I was doing was talking about social media and public diplomacy so I was interested to see that Giles Scott-Smith has posted a summary of a talk that Alec Ross, Senior Advisor for Innovation at the State Department gave in the Netherlands. On my travels I was reading Evgeny Morozov’s The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World and the new paper from Linda Khatib, William Dutton and Michael Thelwall on State Department Digital Outreach Team so it’s probably not too surprising that I’m sceptical about the Alec Ross world view.


Broadly speaking there are two sets of issues here. Firstly the institutional ones of how you integrate social media into diplomacy. What priority should you give to it and what resources should you allocate? One of the lessons that I see in many of these initiatives like the Digital Outreach Team is the simple inadequacy of the resources relative to the size of the problem. The second set of issues are more fundamental – what is the impact and potential impact of PD2.o initiatives. This in turn feeds back into the resource problem. Some effects might be feasible in theory but not with any likely level of resourcing." Image from

Public Diplomacy as an Umbrella Concept - Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence: "Over Christmas I was reading J.M Mitchell’s, International Cultural Relations. He focuses on the development of cultural relations work in France, Germany, Italy and the UK going back to the origins of these activities in the late 19th century. For France and Germany in particular the starting point is schools for their diasporas. Schooling served as a way of preserving the identity of expatriates but also as a way of spreading cultural influence. From Mitchell’s account it is clear that for European countries there were very strong continuities in their practices throughout the century that he covers. This underlines the danger of approaching the development of ‘public diplomacy’ simply through the story of American public diplomacy. I’ve commented before on the problem for scholars of using official or quasi-official definitions to define their field of study. The thought that occurs to me is in an academic context we should see public diplomacy as an


umbrella term that covers a range of activities concerned with the external promotion of a country and its interests (eg branding, broadcasting, cultural relations, policy advocacy, media relations etc). The important point here are that there is not a single model for how to do this and that countries will often pursue several different activities at the same time." Image from

Optimizing social media for business - Ted Nguyen, tednguyenusa.com: "Simon Mainwaring is a branding consultant, author, blogger and speaker. ... He is a member of the GMI Digital Advisory Board, AdAge Power150, TED and the Advisory Board of the Center for Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School."

Personal Narrative Questions, Part 1 - Ren's Micro Diplomacy: "The round of the Foreign Service Officer testing process I did not pass includes the submission of essay questions that demonstrate one’s strengths in certain areas. In under 200 words, one must not only address the prompt, but, ideally, use an example that also shows suitability for one’s choice of career track (public diplomacy, for me)."

The basic hoops for a foreign service candidacy - Me Missy, misheru.com: "I am currently a) taking Chinese, and b) retaking the FSOT on February 10th. I decided to go whole hog* on my second candidacy — what have I got to lose? — so I applied for public diplomacy as my specialty rather than management. It’s hard to know what specialty to choose; the job is technically a ‘generalist’ position, but there is some specialization that happens mid-career. I don’t have much management experience outside of my master’s-level courses, but Aaron claims that ‘shy’ people like me are better in management. Public diplomacy sounds


pretty cool to me, but it sounds cool to lots other people, too, so there is stiffer competition in that specialty. Hard to say what I’d be better at, but since I’m covering my bases, I figured I would broaden my possibilities and apply to another specialty." Image from

RELATED ITEMS

The Trials of Gitmo: Where's the outrage? - Review & Outlook, Wall Street Journal: "Earlier this month several media sources reported that the Obama Administration will soon resume trying Guantanamo detainees in military tribunals, almost a year to the day after the prison was supposed to have been closed for good. We welcome evidence of liberal maturity in the war on terror, and in the last two years the Administration has been growing up faster than expected. The decision to resume the tribunals was forced by the Democratic Congress's decision in December to forbid the Pentagon from spending money to transfer Gitmo's remaining detainees to the U.S. mainland."

Tunisia's revolution isn't a product of Twitter or WikiLeaks. But they do helpThe internet alone won't set anyone free. Between north Africa and Belarus, we are learning just what it can and can't do - Timothy Garton Ash guardian.co.uk: The US government as a whole is also deeply inconsistent in its approach to internet freedom. It berates China and Iran for covert monitoring of opponents while doing the same itself against those it defines as threats to national security. It lauds global information freedom while denouncing WikiLeaks as, in Clinton's extraordinary words, "a threat to the international community."

The Dark Side of Internet Freedom [audio] - The Leonard Lopate Show: Evgeny Morozov argues that the Internet and social media are not as liberating and democratizing as some have claimed, and he shows how authoritarian governments are effectively using the Internet to suppress free speech, hone their surveillance techniques, and disseminate propaganda. In The Net Delusion:


The Dark Side of Internet Freedom Morozov shows how the Internet entrenches dictators, threatens dissidents, and how it can make it harder to promote democracy. Image from

Azerbaijani ruling party condemns propaganda on Iranian television - "The ruling New Azerbaijan Party condemned anti-Azerbaijani propaganda made by the First Iranian TV Channel. Media representatives in Iran must not act against the official position of their country repeatedly voiced by the Iranian leadership, Deputy Chairman of the party Ali Akhmedov


told Trend. The negative statements towards Azerbaijan were made at the first Iranian TV channel. Nagorno-Karabakh was represented as an independent state. Azerbaijan does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries and urges other countries to do the same." Akhmedov image from article

Azerbaijani Embassy in Egypt calls on fellow citizens not to leave homes during rallies in country - en.trend.az: "The Azerbaijani Embassy in Egypt called on Azerbaijani citizens temporarily residing in the country to be careful and not to leave their homes during mass demonstrations in the country as far as possible. The embassy carried out propaganda work among the Azerbaijani diaspora members and fellow citizens temporarily residing and staying in Egypt by warning them about the danger, the Azerbaijani Embassy in Cairo told Trend."