Engaging foreign publics in the age of Trump and Putin: Three implications of 2016 for public diplomacy

Nicholas J. Cull, "Engaging foreign publics in the age of Trump and Putin: Three implications of 2016 for public diplomacy," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, November 2016, Volume 12, Issue 4, pp 243–246; via NJC on Facebook

Cull image from Facebook 

A non-Facebook image of Professor Cull (JB: who has an admirable self-deprecating sense of humor)

Abstract:

What in the world just hit us? As the hurricane that was 2016 disappears over our collective horizon, it leaves a toxic trail of death, disaster and dramatic political developments. The deaths were of both ordinary people and celebrities; the disasters were both man made and ‘natural,’ which are increasingly blending in any case, and the political developments would have been thought unbelievable even by their proponents as the year began. Britain’s Brexit vote to leave the European Union in June 2016 and the victory of Donald J. Trump in the US presidential election in November were the two most obvious shocks, but the underlying currents of resurgent nationalism and intolerance seen in so many places were hardly less worrying. What then are the implications of the past year for the practice of public diplomacy? Three lessons loom large: people matter; facts matter; and places matter.