Last week our class had an AWESOME guest speaker, Christopher Dufour, who discussed the role of social media in PD. Du4 explained that social media on its own will not be the saving grace for U.S. PD or PD run by any other nation. It was interesting to hear him speak honestly about social media because often I feel that people say that if the program uses Facebook or Twitter it will be an automatic success, which in reality is not the case. Du4 said that Facebook and Twitter are just tools, which can help facilitate PD, but alone do not suffice. Social media will not change the world on its own but it depends on what the people do who are behind those platforms. These electronic mediums will not and cannot replace the human element that is necessary to make PD a success.
Currently, the U.S. is utilizing all forms of social media, but according to some we are coming up short on our PD efforts in comparison to China’s aggressive PD programs. I found an intriguing article on the Huffington Post, which discussed how the U.S. is not prepared to compete with China and according to Senator Lugar, "our nation is not doing all it can to prepare for the increasingly prominent role China will play in our economic and foreign policy." The article discussed the coordinated Chinese PD strategy and how they are convinced to do all they can to get to their goal, which could be frightening or remarkable according to how you view China. So what does this mean for the U.S.? Do we need to focus on building more American centers and spaces like the Chinese are doing with their Confucius Centers, which are dramatically growing in number. Do we need to use social media more aggressively to show the world our message and positively promote our culture? Personally, I agree with Du4 and I do not think that social media is a panacea. Gladwell brings up this point in his article, “Small Change.” Gladwell discusses that social media alone cannot foster the same amount of change that a protest can cause, it can help organize those activities but the social media itself cannot cause the desired change to occur. So what does this mean for U.S. PD?
The U.S. needs to amp up its PD to be able to compete with China because according to some we are falling behind. But what do we need to do? I think we need to devote more people and resources to PD in order to stay competitive, but with this year’s budget still hanging in the balance, I am not sure what we will be able to do.
Article Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-seib/lugar-report-offers-neede_b_825436.html
Continuing the topic of social media on public diplomacy and our last class, I also want to say that our guest speaker was a very interesting persona. He presented to us the real world of social media and insides of public diplomacy in the United Stated. He honestly introduced his own opinion and showed us that Public Diplomacy is not always fun and not always as easy as it can seem to be. However, even though Du4 estimate social media as a tool for public diplomacy, we know that this tool can have great influence on the world when people are engaging in it. Well last couple months showed us a perfect example of that engagement and social relations that had a huge impact on public diplomacy. In those cases communication and future public diplomacy more often is created by the public diplomacy ambassadors, individuals that send the message to the rest of the world about their country. Government’s public diplomacy works the most effectively in those situations when they send the response to the people. As Du4 emphasized the engagement is the part that creates social media and effective tool. Nevertheless, to seen as effective there is also needed some sort of improvement or change basing on the knowledge gained by the sent messages.
ReplyDeleteSupporting the Du4 statement, Elliot Schrage the VP of Global Communications, emphasize the use of social media:
Q; I assume that from a public diplomacy standpoint, the premium on authenticity means that you can't really just be out there posting stuff on Facebook that seems like straightforward spin.
A: Exactly. That's exactly right. In all seriousness, you're asking the right questions, and the interesting thing is that the State Department in this country and the foreign offices around the world are asking the exact same questions. And we're about to see an explosion, truly, an explosion of creative uses. Just like this last election was really--again it's presumptuous to call it the Facebook election--but it was really an Internet election in many, many ways, whether it's YouTube or Facebook or Google. You're going to see the same tools and techniques that transformed the political process in the elections in the United States over the past year, transform diplomatic relationships in the way our country and other countries speak with citizens around the world.
To read more go to: http://www.cfr.org/public-diplomacy/new-media-tools-public-diplomacy/p19300