"Assortativity is a useful principle in epidemiology."
--Cultural diplomacy scholar Robert Albro; image from
MAGAZINE
Current Issue Summer 2012: INNOVATIONS IN PUBLIC DIPLOMACY, PD Magazine, University of Southern California
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
Public Diplomacy as Apology - Helle Dale, blog.heritage.org: "Judging by President Obama’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly yesterday,
In the first hours of the crisis on September 11, the embassy Twitter feed defended the statement against incredulous comments from other tweeters. Those tweets were later deleted. The stated policy of the U.S. government is 'Internet freedom.' Yet, when it came to the YouTube video, the White House asked Google to 'review' it, and it was subsequently taken down in several Muslim countries. There is a clear double standard at work, which countries engaging in Internet censorship will not have failed to notice. ... The after-action review of U.S. public diplomacy in the aftermath of the current crisis will be a copious exercise. Learning the lessons of what has gone wrong is the critical first step.” Image from
Social Media Uber Alles: Embassy Baghdad Gets Its Head Around Twitter - Peter Van Buren, We Meant Well: "Taxpayers, a robust group huzzah please! The US Embassy in Baghdad has taken a bold, innovative step towards resolving all problems in Iraq, large and small:
The Embassy is now paying someone with your tax dollars to Tweet! ... But really, this is just sad. With State Department Director of PT Barnum Affairs Alec Ross popping up worldwide to announce how innovative the State Department is, you’d think the world’s largest embassy staff could come up with something, anything better than generic propaganda Tweets and links to CNN articles. Maybe something unique to
Facilitating and Delegating the New Public Diplomacy - ckilbyus, publicdiplomats.wordpress.com: "The inflexibility in the State Department’s use of twitter and blogs shows that there is an increased need for flexible engagement with foreign publics. Since it is unlikely that the State Department can achieve this on its own, there is a clear need for programs that can engage in an alternative conversation with foreign publics. This is a space where civil society can be delegated to through grants to produce programs of social media outreach in foreign languages, and pursue an alternative dialogue in regions where moderate voices are generally silent. Organizationally, a shift from direct PD programming to facilitation and delegating to civil society has a need for more standardized measurement and evaluation techniques."
Freedom of expression [video] - Paul Rockower, Levantine: "Obama and Clinton conducting a lil PD to explain American freedom of expression in the wake of the Innocence of Muslims incident. TY TS."
"A new and more dynamic Svoboda" (RFERL Russian) thanks 40 employees, and lets them go - Kim Andrew Elliott reporting on International Broadcasting.
'Public diplomacy may help fix China-Japan crisis' - twocircles.net: "China and Japan should give public diplomacy a chance rather than rely only on the official channels to help resolve their conflict over the ownership of Diaoyu Islands, Chinese scholars say. 'In the face of the damage wrought by radical Japanese politicians, we can only resort to the power of friendship to eliminate difficulties,' Feng Zhaokui, a Japanese studies expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said. 'Even in this bleak situation, goodwill can make a difference,' China Daily Friday quoted him as saying. This year should have been a great opportunity to deepen links, said Jia Qinglin, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
On Sunday, Jia met with the heads of major Japan-China friendship groups and Japanese politicians who want to improve ties. The meeting was seen as a positive gesture to improve sharply deteriorating ties. China has meanwhile informed Japan it will delay a reception scheduled next Thursday to mark the 40th anniversary of normalized ties. Japan's 'nationalization' of part of the islands, regardless of China's repeated representations, have 'pushed China-Japan ties to the grim situation', Jia said. 'Japan should fully recognize the seriousness of the situation, face up to the problems over the islands and correct their errors as soon as possible to avoid causing greater damage to relations,' he added.'" Image from
Urbanizing China-EU Relations? - Michele Acuto, PD News–CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy: "[The] tentative urbanization of EU-China relations holds some interesting promises for city leadership which, after all, might be a key component in producing truly innovative transnational responses to global challenges."
Fools: Netanyahu’s ‘Red Line’ Cardboard Mocked on Twitter - "TYahoo News Reports: 'Okay, it’s official,' The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg wrote. 'Netanyahu has no idea what he’s doing. He has just turned a serious issue into a joke. Goldberg continued: 'Netanyahu’s bomb cartoon is the Middle East equivalent of Clint Eastwood’s chair.' 'Apparently Netanyahu took a chart-making course from Paul Ryan,' the comedian Rob Delaney tweeted. 'I didn’t realize nuclear bombs looked like the bombs from Super Mario,' Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski quipped. 'Netanyahu has reduced nuclear war diplomacy to cartoons and markers,' Sam Stein tweeted. Many Twitter users questioned the wisdom of bringing clip art to the U.N., while some referenced a Roadrunner comparison.
'Excuse me, Prime Minister Netanyahu?' Rex Huppke wrote. 'Wile E. Coyote called. He wants his bomb back.' [Comment by] Raphael Judas Kaufmann • 2 hours ago − That's the state of Israeli public diplomacy... not even ready to invest in a serious infographic.
M***F*** Morsi and Abbas took off the gloves and we show a 1$ cartoon..." Above Iimage from entry; below image from
Let them call me crazy - israelhayom.com: "Mudar Zahran, a lecturer, publicist and Palestinian blogger attends international seminar on new media and public diplomacy given by the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry at Ariel University Center in Samaria, speaks to Israel Hayom about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Image from article, with caption: Mudar Zahran, Palestinian lecturer, publicist and blogger spoke with Israel Hayom about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Hedley Bullshit - Paul Rockower, Levantine: "How the English School has fallen! What began whimsically over kimchi quesadillas and tikka tacos is turning into a real field of study. Yes, gastrodiplomacy is going legit. I found out that a piece I authored on gastrodiplomacy is being published in the academic journal Public Diplomacy and Place Branding. Meanwhile, my culinary diplomacy colleague Sam Chapple-Sokol is having his own work on culinary diplomacy published in the Hague Journal of Diplomacy. Yes, I am the father of a school of public diplomacy practice. As the Muse once told me, if you can find what you are searching for in this world, make it up."
Mahogany Jones, Sandy Koufax, Applied PD and Me - Paul Rockower, Levantine: "I had to be on my horse because I was slated to give a lecture at Prof Craig Hayden’s class on Applied PD on just that. I spoke for about 40 minutes or so about pushing boundaries of public diplomacy, about the Bernays-Barnum School of Public Diplomacy (PD Bread and Circus to make an oblique yet tangible connection), American Voices’ Guerrilla Cultural Diplomacy and Gastrodiplomacy. After I was done, we had a nice period of talking PD shop. The irony was rich in this case as well. Just a year prior, I was at High Holiday services staring across the street at AU thinking I might be attending as a PhD student. Well, things didn’t work out as planned but a year later I was busy lecturing on PD in the same environs. I then had to duck out and walk across the street to go atone for my propaganda sins."
Cultural Mediation - Molly Sisson, Public Diplomacy and Student Exchanges: "If you can understand Disneyland, you're on your way to understanding American culture."
The Hard and Soft of Cultural Diplomacy: Networks and Stories in Global Affairs - Robert Albro, PD News–CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy: "More attention has been given to identifying people, their behavior, their connections, and network nodes than has been given to how information is distributed across networks or what these symbols, values or stories mean to network participants."
Panelists discuss role of the Olympics in diplomacy - Kyron Richard, Daily Trojan: "USC Olympians, stakeholders and experts reflected on the London Olympic Games’ impact on participants and diplomacy during the panel discussion 'Sports Diplomacy and the 2012 London Olympics' Thursday afternoon. The event was hosted by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy and the British Consulate-General in Los Angeles at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism."
RELATED ITEMS
Calling U.S. Drone Strikes 'Surgical' Is Orwellian Propaganda - Conor Friedersdorf, theatlantic.com: Drone strikes aren't like surgery at all. The phrase "surgical drone strike" is handy for naming U.S. actions without calling
up images of dead, limb-torn innocents with flesh scorched from the missile that destroyed the home where they slept or burned up the car in which they rode. Image from article
Abderrahim Foukara, Al Jazeera's U.S. translator - Patt Morrison Asks, latimes.com: [Q:] Is it frustrating for the foreign press corps that U.S. foreign policy plays such a small role in U.S. elections? [A:] The U.S. is seen as a superpower. It controls land, it controls sea, it controls space; it has so many military bases around the world, particularly in the Mideast. People in the Middle East and North Africa think of foreign policy constantly, of U.S. foreign policy, and they find it baffling that the people who actually wield that influence are not so interested in foreign policy. American insularity is partly a function of geography — size and isolation. The United States is absolutely
huge, and I can understand how some Americans can live all their lives without thinking of going overseas. Moving from one state to another is in some ways like moving from one country to another. Isolation was part of the security this country had; 9/11 shattered that. The Middle East has for thousands of years been the crossroads of empires and powers and civilizations. There's obviously a much more heightened sense of history and geography; it's been one empire after another. Partly because of geography, people in the Middle East they feel they're almost constantly under attack, and have almost never had a fair shake at determining their own fates — there's always [something] coming from the outside; whether you agree with that, that's how they feel. Image from
Iran Propaganda Outlet Bases News Story on Onion Article - Lee Smith, weeklystandard.com: Still basking in the glory of his latest appearance at the U.N., Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now heads back to Tehran with his head held high after winning yet more American hearts and minds. As the Islamic Republic's official news agency, Fars, reports this morning, according to a new Gallup poll released Monday "the overwhelming majority of rural white Americans said they would rather vote for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than US President Barack Obama." "I like him better," said West Virginia resident Dale Swiderski, who, along with 77 percent of rural Caucasian voters, confirmed he would much rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Ahmadinejad than spend time with Obama. "He takes national defense seriously, and he'd never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does." According to the same Gallup poll, 60 percent of rural whites said they at least respected that Ahmadinejad doesn't try to hide the fact that he's Muslim. Unfortunately for Ahmadinejad, and perhaps worse for the Fars employee who republished the item, it's a gag. The story was originally posted earlier this week in The Onion. It seems unlikely that the Iranian president will enjoy the joke at his expense. Instead, expect to see the satirical website included on the IRI's next blacklist of American media organizations, policymakers and think-tanks involved in a high-level conspiracy against the regime.
Exhibit shows how some Romanian artists resisted being used as communist propaganda tool - Alison Mutler, newser.com: "One painting shows a peasant crucified above a hole in the shape of Romania. Another of a man holding a book is painted in the style of Pablo Picasso. Neither work would have been displayed in public during the communist era, when censorship was rife and art was used as a propaganda tool to glorify late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
A new exhibit of some 650 paintings that opened this week at the National Library seeks to show how some artists subverted the regime, creating works that criticized communism or painting in styles like cubism that were out of favor. Image from article, with caption: A picture taken Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012, shows a woman visiting an exhibition of visual art created by Romanian artists during the Communist period, between 1950 and 1990, in Bucharest, Romania
Power of propaganda, from Nazi era to now - Ryan Torok, jewishjournal.com: “One man’s propaganda is another man’s fact,” writer Eli Attie told an audience of approximately 100 students and other guests gathered at the University of Southern California’s Doheny Memorial Library. They were gathered for the panel discussion “Mind Over Media: Politics, Propaganda and the Digital Age,” on Sept. 20. Organized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the panel explored how propaganda can be used as a force for political gain, taking the example of Nazi-ruled Germany, but continuing through the current United States presidential elections. The panel was an outgrowth of “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda,” an exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Early writings, love letters of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels fail to sell in Conn. - startribune.com: A Connecticut auction house says the love letters and other pre-war writings of Adolf Hitler propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels
have failed to sell. Alexander Historical Auctions says it offered the letters, school papers and dramatic works of Goebbels on Thursday. The collection spans the period from Goebbels' childhood to shortly before he joined the Nazi party in 1924. Auction officials had hoped it would sell for more than $200,000. Auction house president Bill Panagopulos says an overseas phone bidder made an offer that was too low and he's disappointed. He says the collection will remain for sale, possibly at a lower price once he talks to the owner. The thousands of pages include Goebbels' college dissertation, report cards, poems, school essays and letters from relatives, friends and girlfriends. Image from Google search
AMERICANA
"At a press conference Thursday, LAPD Commander Andrew Smith said that 'nobody else was in the house.' but a dead cat was found in the house."
--USA Today (with its punctuation), article by Ann Oldenburg, "Sons of Anarchy' actor, 28, found dead in Los Angeles"; image from
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