I am not quite sure what to make of this. According to this recent AFP article, Secretary Clinton is rapidly engaging the State Department in popular internet technologies, including a blog, a Flickr photostream, a YouTube channel, a Twitter feed, and a Facebook page. Of these, the Flickr photos make the most sense to me as they are excellent professional photographs of interesting locations.
It is tempting to write this off as popular propaganda until one considers that public diplomacy is, in fact, part of the mission of the State Department. The Secretary herself is quoted on the blog as saying, "There is no doubt in my mind that we have barely scratched the surface as to what we can use to communicate with people around the world." However, a brief perusal of these sites seem to me like their audience is less like that of Radio Free Europe and more targeted at the American public. This is fine, as President Obama promised greater transparency in his administration than President Bush. But it seems to me that this is public diplomacy for Americans, not for the world.
What would Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty "2.0" look like? In other words, what would a CIA-funded strategic propaganda campaign look like in the age of the Dirty Kuffar video? I recently read "Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence," by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, which might provide a clue. One of their main premises is that stable, liberal democracies arise from a combination of physical security through high levels of economic development and a social inclination towards values which support human autonomy and liberty. Although it is not discussed in the book, one can imagine that some of RFE/RL's success arose because it was broadcasting into a country of people who were in fact experiencing high (enough) levels of economic development under the Soviet Union. If Inglehart and Welzel's premise is correct, then a strategic cyber campaign to promote the values of liberty might make sense - those with access to the internet and computers are at some subsistence level where they might be persuadable.
Given the possibility of a strategic cyber campaign to influence world values, what specific technologies could be adopted? With established senior scholars such as Gary Becker and Stephen Walt blogging, this medium is considered positively staid by some. But what of the hot new technologies - YouTube, Twitter and Facebook - specifically? In fact, the US Army recently released a rather alarmist report on Twitter, theorizing as to how it could be used by terrorists (and, oddly, vegetarians) as an operational tool. Despite reading the Army report, I am still trying to understand how Twitter can be used in a productive fashion for my profession. I started a Twitter feed (which you can follow here), but the difficulty in finding the people I would like to hear from (academics and gradaute students in my field, international affairs reporters and the like) limits its usefulness at this point. YouTube is more or less a one-way communication medium much like RFE, so the technology would not seem to affect the content of the message. The interactive and clustering nature of Facebook makes it one place to find others who share the same interests, but it appears to be very interpersonal in nature, linking specific individuals to each other instead of to ideas.
In sum, it seems that the message remains of primary importance over the medium. Nonetheless, the constant development of new types of social media invite novel approaches to public diplomacy. Here are a few new technologies that I am watching, even if I am not actually using them professionally:
BlogTV - Allows users to create their own live streaming webcams
BitBomb - A text message reminder service that sends reminders to your cell phone
Sendible - Allows users to schedule email and text messages (such as for birthdays)
Doodle - An extremely simple scheduling/coordination program that requires no signup (I did use this to schedule my first year review with two busy professors - I was able to schedule and confirm in about two days, which I think is quite good)
It is tempting to write this off as popular propaganda until one considers that public diplomacy is, in fact, part of the mission of the State Department. The Secretary herself is quoted on the blog as saying, "There is no doubt in my mind that we have barely scratched the surface as to what we can use to communicate with people around the world." However, a brief perusal of these sites seem to me like their audience is less like that of Radio Free Europe and more targeted at the American public. This is fine, as President Obama promised greater transparency in his administration than President Bush. But it seems to me that this is public diplomacy for Americans, not for the world.
What would Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty "2.0" look like? In other words, what would a CIA-funded strategic propaganda campaign look like in the age of the Dirty Kuffar video? I recently read "Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence," by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, which might provide a clue. One of their main premises is that stable, liberal democracies arise from a combination of physical security through high levels of economic development and a social inclination towards values which support human autonomy and liberty. Although it is not discussed in the book, one can imagine that some of RFE/RL's success arose because it was broadcasting into a country of people who were in fact experiencing high (enough) levels of economic development under the Soviet Union. If Inglehart and Welzel's premise is correct, then a strategic cyber campaign to promote the values of liberty might make sense - those with access to the internet and computers are at some subsistence level where they might be persuadable.
Given the possibility of a strategic cyber campaign to influence world values, what specific technologies could be adopted? With established senior scholars such as Gary Becker and Stephen Walt blogging, this medium is considered positively staid by some. But what of the hot new technologies - YouTube, Twitter and Facebook - specifically? In fact, the US Army recently released a rather alarmist report on Twitter, theorizing as to how it could be used by terrorists (and, oddly, vegetarians) as an operational tool. Despite reading the Army report, I am still trying to understand how Twitter can be used in a productive fashion for my profession. I started a Twitter feed (which you can follow here), but the difficulty in finding the people I would like to hear from (academics and gradaute students in my field, international affairs reporters and the like) limits its usefulness at this point. YouTube is more or less a one-way communication medium much like RFE, so the technology would not seem to affect the content of the message. The interactive and clustering nature of Facebook makes it one place to find others who share the same interests, but it appears to be very interpersonal in nature, linking specific individuals to each other instead of to ideas.
In sum, it seems that the message remains of primary importance over the medium. Nonetheless, the constant development of new types of social media invite novel approaches to public diplomacy. Here are a few new technologies that I am watching, even if I am not actually using them professionally:
BlogTV - Allows users to create their own live streaming webcams
BitBomb - A text message reminder service that sends reminders to your cell phone
Sendible - Allows users to schedule email and text messages (such as for birthdays)
Doodle - An extremely simple scheduling/coordination program that requires no signup (I did use this to schedule my first year review with two busy professors - I was able to schedule and confirm in about two days, which I think is quite good)
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