Internet Freedom is Not About Regime Change

Via the USC twitter feed this link to a video interview with Alec J. Ross of the  State Department which contains this exchange

RFE/RL: Iran accuses the U.S. of providing soft help to activists to bring down the Iranian regime. Is regime change in repressive countries such as Iran, which are considered hostile to the U.S., one of the unstated goals of the U.S.’s Internet-freedom push?

Ross: Absolutely not. Internet freedom is about helping people exercise their universal rights: the freedom of expression, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of the press. It is not a regime-change agenda.

If you look at the video he seems to having difficulty restraining himself from bursting out laughing.  Also you can’t see his hands so I bet his fingers are crossed.

Of course there is a slight possibility he really believes what he says.  That would be really worrying.

21st Century Statecraft at Work

The Zimbabwe government is reported to be mounting a crackdown on social media

The acting foreign minister is quoted as saying

The Internet and things like Twitter and Facebook are being used to destroy…We from the older generation do not know anything about these things. They are used for regime change and to make our youths revolt against their leaders

Sounds like he’s been reading up on 21st century statecraft.

PD2.0: How Much Effort Do You Need?

Via Cat Tully’s blog I came across some discussion on the Socialbakers social media measurement site about corporate use of Facebook.  They argue that posting too much can undermine user engagement just as much as too little.  Looking at brands versus media companies thei view is that brands should post 5-10 times a week while media companies should aim for a multiple of this – somewhere up to a maximum of 100.  It woudl then follow that MFAs/Embassies should clarify what the objective of their FB presence.

In a later post they take up the issue of when does managing a Facebook page become a full time job.  Although posting 5-10 posts a week wouldn’t require anything like this they you also need to look at the number of fans and the level of interaction required.  Increasing numbers of fans means more comments and a greater requirement to respond.  Socialbakers point to cases where companies have a team of three people to manage their Facebook presence.  This comes back to the issue of how much resource social media requires if it is to attain its full potential.  The problem is one of relationship management- building a set of social media relationships requires constant attention.  The issue then becomes one of trading off the contribution of a particular level of FB engagement versus other public diplomacy activities.

More on Web Video as Public Diplomacy Tool

Looking at my Twitter feed this morning @edipatstate has retweeted a link from @usembassyta – the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to a video of Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg responding to questions from Facebook users.  Aha I thought -  this is the PD push to manage the fallout from Obama’s speech on Thursday.  Steinberg has been in Israel the for the last couple of days and this is the second video that the Embassy has posted.

But what strikes me is the lack of interest that either of these video has triggered.  The first of these has had 20 views (21 including my view of it) and the other has had 25.  Neither has had any comments.  In looking at English language Israeli news websites over the years  I’ve always been impressed by the speed with which stories attract comments so given the reaction to Obama’s speech particularly on the Israeli right the absence of feedback is surprising.

Now it might be that the Embassy is running other media related activities but we come back to the problem of how Embassies can actually generate traffic to their social media platforms.

Anglo-American Youtube Diplomacy: Work in Progress

Thanks to the wonders of Twitter I keep finding links to new MFA videos clicking on them and wondering  what the point is…

Partly my reaction is driven by the view that web video is an incredibly inefficient way of communication mostly you could describe the content in a paragraph that could be read in a fraction of the time that it takes to watch the video.  Also public diplomacy researchers are not the key audience for PD video so what I think is not that important.

Anyway here are a couple of examples that I found in the inbox in the last few hours.  First Up the US-European Media Hub in Brussels.  Its Facebook page describes it thus

The U.S.- European Media Hub connects journalists in and around Europe with access to U.S. policymakers and perspectives. The Hub is part of the International Media Engagement Office of the U.S. Department of State.

Their Youtube channel is here.    This has a lot of very serious talking head  videos about issues such as the role of the American Chambers of Commerce – some of which have accumulated as much as 45 views in a month.   This triggers a few thoughts.

1. Who are you trying to communicate with?  The people that are interested in some of these issues are not going to learn anything from these videos and there’s nothing to draw in people who aren’t interested.
2. How much does it cost to produce this material?  It maybe that it’s so cheap that the opportunity cost of production is so low that you might as well make them as not..but if there is a resource implication is this the best use of resources?
3. The usual constraint of web activity applies how do you attract attention? I happen to follow the US Embassy in London on Twitter and so got the link but what if you don’t.

Over at the Foreign Office they are busy with their Olympics Campaign and Jimmy Leach the head of Digital Engagement tweeted a link to this Celebrating Britain video yesterday if you looked at the Olympics PD plan you will see some of the themes about connection coming out – also see the words that flash on the screen – ideas that you are supposed to take away.

Three  thoughts about this one.

1) Firstly, the video could be shorter and sharper (it’s actually a compilation of other films) – it’s not as if we don’t make lots of pop videos.

2) it faces the usual problem of UK branding, the tension between well established perceptions of the UK as a conservative country with a long history and the desire of government to make it look modern, cosmopolitan, connected, creative and high tech.

3) This is very much outward facing communication – one of the rules of nation branding is that you need to get buy in from the population and  its probably best that this doesn’t get too many views from the UK so that the comments don’t fill up with sarcastic comments.

The FCO produces quite a lot videos of various types -  their channel is here

Report on Australian E-diplomacy

I’ve just got around to reading the report that the Lowy Institute put out last November on e-diplomacy at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). The basic thrust is that DFAT has fallen behind other MFAs; the report benchmarks against the UK Foreign Office,  the US State Department and the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and Internationl Trade. Public Diplomcy is only part of the story, there is some interesting discussion of the use of social media platforms for internal communication and interaction with partner organizations.

The Lowy Institute also put out a more comprehensive report on Australia’s Diplomatic Deficit in March 2009.

US Embassy Social Media Report

Amongst everything else I’m trying to finish off my paper for ISA so not too much time for the blog at the moment…but via the PD2.0 twitter feed a link to a new report on US embassy use of social media by the State Department Office of the Inspector General.  Only time for a quick skim but some of the issues identified are an absence of coordination between different platforms and the level of resource required to generate an effective social media presence.

More generally if you have any interest at all in the operation of foreign ministries and embassies the OIG Reports are a very useful resource.  Even more useful if you are actually interested in State and US embassies.