Theories of Influence

I’ve been thinking about the range of theories of influence at work in the Public Diplomacy field so I was interested to see that Organizational Research Services, a Washington state evaluation consultancy, have put out a briefing note Pathways to Change:  6 Theories of Policy Change.    They identify three theories of the policy change ( punctuated equilibrium, advocacy coalition and policy windows) and three theories about advocacy  (messaging and framing, power politics and community organizing).   This is part of the movement to improve advocacy and its evaluation by making the underpinning theory of change explicit.

It wouldn’t take long to come up with a much longer list of theories. The thought occurs though that one useful exercise for public diplomacy research would be to catalogue the theories of influence at work in the field.  We’ve got ideas from academic communications research, applied communication – PR and marketing, international relations, political psychology etc the point is not just to list them but to look at the assumptions about the world and the extent to which these theories are simply expressing the same ideas in different ways.   This would help to bridge the gap between comms and IR and manage the incoherence of soft power arguments.

Branding Canada

I’ve just finished reading Evan Potter’s Branding Canada and I’d highly recommend it.  It’s one of the few book length studies of a  country’s public diplomacy and it’s particularly valuable because that country isn’t the US.  The scope is comprehensive.  It looks at the history of Canadian PD back to efforts to promote immigration a over a century ago – silent films did not include images of the Canadian winter.  It looks at the full range of external promotional activities including trade and tourism promotion and it looks at PD both as national level activity and something that happens at embassy levels – there are interesting case studies of local campaigns.  There is particular attention to the role of PD in Canada’s relationship with the US.

Potter’s basic diagnosis of Canada’s PD problem is positive opinion based on low visibility.  This means that long established images of Canada shape the way that others engage with it lack of attention makes it difficult to change that image.  The position of Quebec both assists and hampers Canadian efforts.  One hand it builds connections with the Francophone world  and contributes to images of multiculturalism and federalism – it makes Canada more interesting but it sometimes cuts across efforts to promote an image of Canada.

Public Diplomacy activities are fragmented and lack resources. Potter’s recommendations will be familiar – the development of a comprehensive public diplomacy strategy and organizations that can coordinate the full range of activities.

Potter, E.H. (2009) Branding Canada: Projecting Canada’s Soft Power Through Public Diplomacy. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Li Zhang on the Media and EU China-Relations

The latest volume  in Palgrave’s excellent International Political Communication series edited by Phil Seib has just hit the shops it’s News Media and EU China Relations by Li Zhang, who’s now at the University of Nottingham. The book is based on her PhD supervised by yours truly so it definitely deserves some promotion.

This is a really ambitious piece of work that deserves attention beyond the people working on EU-China relations (of whom there are a surprising number because the EU funds them to work on it!).  The book traces the evolution of Chinese media coverage of the EU and the evolution of coverage of China in The International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times and The Economist over the period since 1989.   Previous studies have shown that these are outlets that are widely read in the EU policy community. The content analysis shows how the coverage of China has expanded and transformed over the intervening period.  In 1989 China was a political story by the middle of the last decade it was an economic story.  This is not to say that political and human rights stories disappeared they just lost their salience.   This is an interesting story in itself but the study ties the evolution of the media coverage to the development of EU policy towards China.  Interviews with policy makers testify to the importance of  the media as an input into the policy process while interviews with UK, US and Chinese journalists provide insight into the factors that have shaped coverage. (There’s some interesting material on evolution of Xinhua news agency).  The evidence provided here suggests that the causal direction runs from the media coverage to policy rather than the other way round.

If you are interested in China’s image or media impact on foreign policy there is a lot to get your teeth into here.

The Practice of Diplomacy

I’ve commented before on the need for the field of public diplomacy studies to engage with the concept  and practice of diplomacy.

I’ve been reading the second of edition of Hamilton and Langhorne’s The Practice of Diplomacy which has just come out. This covers the development of diplomacy from ancient times with an emphasis on the organization and administration of diplomacy.  In the context of their narrative  the growing centrality of PD is the consequence of successive  revolutions in diplomatic affairs or new diplomacies.  The development of modern societies and modern systems of governments changes the nature of diplomacy.  Although the world of twitter empowered NGOs is new in historical perspective it is simply the latest stage in the expansion of the diplomatic field that dates back centuries.  One example that seemed particularly contemporary was the efforts of Russian diplomats in late 19th century France to use the media to improve public and market sentiment towards French loans to Russia.

The history of PD is normally written as a direct evolution from the propaganda of the World Wars through the Cold War psychological warfare to the present.  The danger is that this perspective ignores the way that diplomacy has expanded and evolved.  For many countries PD emerges from this expansion of diplomacy rather than from an idea of PD as a separate communications activity.

Hamilton, K., and R. Langhorne (2010) The Practice of Diplomacy: Its Evolution, Theory and Administration. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

Public Diplomacy ’65

I’ve been reading W. Phillips Davison’s 1965 Council on Foreign Relations volume International Political Communication (New York: Praeger) – the dust jacket is here  img007 and the  contents pages are here.

A few quick thoughts

1. The emphasis on the limits of communication – Davison was part of a generation of scholars who were both familiar with the realities of psychological warfare and had were involved in the development of academic studies of communications.

2. The link between communication and organization.  Davison is sceptical of the capacity of communication to persuade the opposed but argues that it plays useful role in organizing friends.

3. Duplication, lack of focus, limited resources, failure to integrate policy and communication in US public diplomacy.  It’s all here.

New Issue of Journal of International Communication

Voume 16: 1, 2010 of Journal of International Communication, edited by Naren Chitty at MacQuarrie University has just turned up in my mail box there are several pieces that might interest readers of this blog

Li Xiguang and Wang Jing, ‘Web Based Public Diplomacy: The Role of Social Media in the Iranian and Xinjiang Riots’  (7-22)  this concludes by arguing that China should develop its own social media PD strategy.

There is a lecture by Mark Scott, managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on ‘A Global ABC: Soft Diplomacy and the World of International Broadcasting’  that discusses the international strategy of ABC (75-85).

And for those of you who sometimes wonder what the field of of International Communication is (this includes me even though IC is part of my job title) there is a a report on the field based on interviews with ‘experts’ .  I’m looking forward to reading this to find out what I do.

Unfortunately Journal of International Communication does not have much of a web presence so no links.

Too Much (Political) Excitement

Sorry about the lack of posts in the last few days.  The current post electoral excitement in the UK is a bit distracting. ..I’ve got stacks of material that I will get around to finishing off and publishing in the next few days.

I’m currently working through R.S Zaharna’s, Battles to Bridges: US Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy after 9/11 which I’m really enjoying (not least because there are some W. Philips Davison references that I haven’t seen before) .  I’ll be picking up a few of the issues raised in future posts.