There have been many attempts to pin down what Public Diplomacy is about, and as I’m currently finishing editing The Trials of Public Diplomacy, this has been at the forefront of my mind. Rather than seeking another definition to encapsulate (or exclude) certain actors, methodologies, or bureaucracies, I’ve been seeking to think about what PD is it at its core.

To me it is attempting to influence behaviour to change the odds of certain outcomes occurring.   

In thinking about this I’ve revisited Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, in it he writes about how the management of the Oakland A’s broke down the entirety of a match into an encounter of each hitter facing a pitcher which became;

a miniature game in itself, in which the odds shift constantly. The odds depend on who is pitching and who is hitting, of course, but they also depend on the minute events within the event. Every plate appearance was like a hand of blackjack; the tone of it changed with each card dealt.

Moneyball p. 147

This analogy was based on the analysis of expected outcomes for a hitter, depending on where they were in the count. Paul DePodesta, working for the Oakland A’s, highlighted the shifting odds in achieving a favourable outcome, not just as a result of a ball or strike on the first pitch but importantly on every pitch.

“The difference between 1-2 and 2-1 in terms of expected outcome is just enormous” says Paul. “It’s the largest variance of expected outcomes of any one pitch. On 2-1 most average major league hitters become all-stars, yet on 1-2 they become anemic nine-hole hitters.”

Moneyball p. 147

Public diplomacy organisations should think similarly when considering the networks with which they engage. The networks are not static; each network exists as an ongoing cultural and structural negotiation where every action influences (positively or negatively) the likelihood of certain outcomes occurring in the future. To be clear; the odds of any specific outcome occurring will change with each and every interaction between the members of the network.

This is good news! A positive result can increase the chances of further positive outcomes in future. However, it is equally a cautionary note; an organisation cannot on one day have a negative impact, either due to Foreign Policy or specific personal interaction, and hope to return to a blank canvass the next.

A hitter that swings wildly and ends up 0-2 can not just ask nicely for the count to be put back to 0-0. The hitter is in a deep hole and will have to work very hard to get out of it. Likewise those conducting PD who realise their country, organisation or policy are unpopular cannot just change tack and hope that returns them to 0-0; they will have to conduct programmes which re-engage with the communities before they can then move on to attempting to achieve current policy goals through PD. This re-engagement stage cannot be missed out, by Barack Obama or anyone else.   

While much emphasis is placed on measurement and concrete outcomes, the reality is that Public Diplomacy can offer no more than influence, to change the odds of events happening. Public Diplomacy does not control people’s thoughts; it works to influence in systems with many complex and unpredictable inputs, it works with vast audiences that even with the best message testing and focus groups may interpret a PD programme in a way other than it was intended.

To return to the analogy, Public Diplomacy is about influencing a community in the attempt to make a desired behaviour more likely to occur. It is about finding ways of making it more likely the behaviour will be 2-1 and an all star idea, rather than an anemic 1-2.

Like a marathon runner turning on to the Mall in London, the US election campaign has nearly reached the finish. As in 2004 , this election cycle has demonstrated the growing importance of online engagement and highlights the potential for PD organisations seeking to target the US, as more key influencers emerge and engage on the internet. 

This engagement will require a shift in mindset to greater openness and dialogue in both planning and practise. Unfortunately, as Tommi Laitio highlighted this week Coping with the World, those that do conduct themselves with greater openness can be attacked for exactly that;

Senior foreign policy experts including some former foreign ministers are currently criticising the current minister Alexander Stubb for too much openness. Stubb allowed the daily Helsingin Sanomat to publish assesments of Finnish ambassadors on the status of world politics.

The Canadian E-discussions while not really discursive are at least an attempt at openness. They have a way to go to be considered genuine dialogue but it’s a start.

Why target the US online?

The ability of PD organisations to engage online - particularly those targetting America - matters because, recent Pew survey results and the accreditation of bloggers at the conventions, for example, have demonstrated the level of political engagement online.

The headline from; The internet and the 2008 election by Aaron Smith and Lee Rainie was that by June;

46% of Americans have used the internet to get political news and share their thoughts about the campaign. Online video and social networking sites have taken off…

Other key stats include;

• 39% of online Americans have used the internet to gain access to primary political documents and observe campaign events.

• 35% of Americans have watched online videos related to the campaign,

• 11% of Americans have contributed to the political conversation by forwarding or posting someone else’s commentary about the race.

• 10% have used social networking sites to engage in political activity (which is 40% of those who have created profiles on such sites. Two-thirds of internet users under the age of 30 have a social networking profile, and half of these use social networking sites to get or share information about politics or the campaigns).

• 8% of internet users (representing 6% of all adults) have donated money to a candidate online.

The report demonstrates, unsurprisingly, that political engagement online has increased both since 2004 election campaign and the earlier Pew survey in 2006.

This presents two interesting options -

1) what can PD organisations learn from the way these campaigns are run, what is the relationship between the integrated official elements of the campaign and the dispersed elements which enrich the campaign at a local level but are beyond centralised authority?

2) Should PD organisations (particularly those with limited financial resources) be shifting emphasis from physical world to virtual when targeting the US?

The first I fear is too large a point for this post, and I’m not really the person to provide the answer - so I’ll leave it as a question should anyone wish to venture perspectives from the campaign.

The second question however, highlights an important point I can address - the US is wide open for online engagement, both for the purpose of domestic politics and PD initiatives launched from outside the US. As the Pew report demonstrates the numbers of people who use online platforms for political activity is growing. The question is how long will it take for PD initiatives to aggressively follow suit. There are of course, those early adopters that are already busy, but for the rest, the potential for mass engagement in an online environment is still one of untapped potential. The engagement of blogger networks for example, might provide means to deliver a dispersed strategy if a PD organisation had something with which to engage them. Ultimately will they be able to find a means of engagement?

Understanding coordination games and having individuals within a PD organisation empowered to engage in the online environments would be a start. These will require greater openness, a willingness to engage, and mindset that seeks out ideas originating outside the organisation.

With Americans increasingly engaging online, those seeking to engage may value the potential which could be gained from creating PD programmes that match this trend. This will likely require a breaking down of the formal hierarchies through which MFA, and related organisations tend to operate. On a practical level individuals will also need to be able to engage at work, so social spaces, online video, skype etc. will all need to work on the computers of PD organisations. The active discouragement of this engagement at work, through blocking sites and limiting access to technology shuts off a potential (and rapidly growing) area of engagement with the American population which for most PD organisations is high on the priority list.

With the report this week that operations in Afghanistan are playing catch-up with their opponents, in the use of video on mobile phones, this gap in adoption cannot be allowed to grow in any environment. For those, for example Europeans, seeking to influence the US public The internet and the 2008 election presents clear evidence that there is potential to conduct PD with large scale audiences online. The challenge, for many, will be whether the PD organisations can adapt fast enough to empower their representatives to engage effectively in these environments?

John Worne’s International Relations Positioning Spectrum (IRPS), and Nick Cull’s response provide interesting perspectives on the Cultural Relations / Public Diplomacy ‘divide’ and how work in the field is to be articulated. The IRPS appears a useful tool at the national level to help mediate in interdepartmental turf wars. However, the IRPS contains national peculiarities, specifically the difficulty the British Council faces in articulating its position, making it unlikely to become transferable internationally. This is best divided into two sections, first discussing the spectrum itself and second how this reflects the difficulty of articulating the position of the British Council. 

Read more on USC PD blog

Today when funds in many countries are being restricted or greater impact demanded from the same level of funding, partnerships are seen as one way of responding to the escalating demands on Public Diplomacy. However, how far can a partnership go, and what is the ultimate demonstration of success?

The example of the British Council continuing to work in the aftermath of the 1956 Suez Crisis is often sighted in anecdote. It is used as example of the British Council continuing to work through a time of crisis. This, while a nice story, overlooks that the appointment of sequestrators, including Abdel Rehim Rashwan, who was the chief inspector of English at the Ministry of Education in Egypt. As a result of sequestration, the work was not being run under British authority but by the authority of another national government.

This reality is, however, much better than the original anecdote and demonstrates possibly the ultimate success in building relationships with a host country:

The work and relationships which the British Council had developed before the Suez crisis were considered so valuable that the sequestrators “embarked on a policy for the Council which followed to the letter its previous activities under the British“. As a result, English language classes continued and a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream drew a large crowd.

In continuing the programme in this form, the sequestrators ensured that opportunities, for example language training, were still available to the local community. As a result, the British Council continued to achieve impact despite having to withdraw national staff and hand over authority for running their programmes.

Today with increasing focus on impact and growing emphasis on partnerships, how many Public Diplomacy organisations could rely on the target audience or local community to continue their work without the PD organisation being involved?

Many current approaches are unlikely to receive this kind of support.

Some ‘pump-priming’ grants or programmes set up specifically to be sustainable will be able to continue once the original Public Diplomacy funding is removed. However, these are specific initiatives. The Egyptian example demonstrates an entire national programme continuing after national representatives were forced to withdraw; the host government took on the responsibility of running the same programme as had originally been in place.

Many current programmes are developed to be heavily centralised, focusing authority on the PD organisation, causing the programme to be reliant on it for coordination and financial support. Inevitably, when funding or official support ceases the initiatives grind to a halt. This in many instances means the impact is limited to the time frame of the funding.

Engaging with decentralised or dispersed networks would have the potential to extending the impact, by passing responsibility for the initiative on to others. This has the potential to increase longevity but reduces control, a trade off that would have to be addressed on a case by case basis.

Today, whatever the approach, sequestration resulting in another country running an organisation’s Public Diplomacy programme is unlikely at best. The example of post-Suez Egypt is an ongoing example of the potential of a relationship, well beyond the usual hopes for partnership in the 21^st century.

James Glassman has been in the UK for the last couple of days, and along with marking 9/11 he has been celebrating the 60^th Anniversary of the Fulbright Programme at Downing Street, speaking at Chatham House and appearing on the Today Programme.

Whilst his view of the rhetoric in the years immediately after 9/11 is interesting, and acknowledges the early failures in language, what is of greater concern is the approach which he has to facing violent extremism.

As in his first speech on Public Diplomacy at CFR he confuses the national interest with the Global. On the Today Programme, Glassman reiterated this position and made it clear that defeating violent extremist groups was in the national interest (and there’s no problem with a country wishing to mount an effective defence.)

The issue here is that the thrust of Glassman’s argument is;

“The standing of the United States in the world is important because it makes it easier for us to achieve our national interest which in the case of violent extremism is really a global interest. However, improving our image in the world is not an end in itself…we are working very quietly to help build networks to give young people alternatives so they do not pursue a path to violent extremism“.

By claiming a national interest as global, rather than national policy being part of a collective, this evokes the same reaction as to his speech at CFR;

While it is useful to claim that everyone works for you, there are times when “they” will only work for you if you can subsume the national into the collective, rather than branding the collective as ‘American’.

Emphasising the need for a collective narrative rather than a focus on national interest, and subsequently claiming that ‘national’ as a ‘global’ interest, Channel 4 News yesterday ran story about the UK’s domestic programme of combating violent extremism. Whilst much of the piece is about whether some of the projects were value for money, some of the interviews also highlight that being seen as working for America may actually hamper progress - a situation made worse when American Public Diplomacy claims to be a self appointed leader - or worse ‘supreme allied commander in the war of ideas‘.

The coming 60^th Anniversary of 22^nd September highlights the issue at heart of Public Diplomacy.

“The Fulbright Commission aims to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship.”

Is Fulbright, and US PD more broadly, only about bringing a little more ‘America’ into the world affairs? Or is it about exchanging knowledge and understanding?

In 1936 William Tyrrell (quoted by Philip Taylor) recognised “Modern defence consists not only in arms but in removing misunderstanding and promoting understanding”. In many instances this is still true, but is not solely a process of telling others they have misunderstood. If only they understood then they wouldn’t oppose us cannot become a common refrain for US Public Diplomacy.

Misunderstanding is also a problem for the construction of US Public Diplomacy. The failure to nuance rhetoric so that it supports and is part of a collective effort, rather than constructing a national narrative and claiming it as a global public good, demonstrates a misunderstanding what is useful to local communities that go toe to toe with groups seeking to target civilians.

Empowering dispersed networks is about taking the action most likely support the desired outcome. It is about taking a back seat when that is most helpful. It is, as Nick Cull put it, “(s)ometimes the most credible voice in public diplomacy is not one’s own“.

Empowering and engaging with dispersed networks are a powerful option worth careful consideration in Public Diplomacy practise. Indeed both in the UK and in the CFR speech Glassman has highlighted the need to work with networks. However, both times he has undermined the power of those networks by using a narrative which rhetorically claims ownership over the end goal or over the network itself for the US.

While advocating a particular national policy is a role for Public Diplomacy, James Glassman, and practitioners more broadly, should keep a keen eye on the end goal. If the end goal is communities empowered to face a common challenge, using rhetoric which damages that goal should be avoided, however tempting it is to promote the ‘national’.

Glassman is right that information operations are not enough and his emphasis on persuasion and inspiration has some merit. Yet if the US is to truly engage with the power of networks and dispersed networks specifically, he will have to add empowerment to the tools of ‘persuasion and inspiration‘ as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates described them. Doing so has the power to deliver results, but only if ‘persuasion and inspiration‘ are done in a way that maintains the space (and credibility) for members of the network to act unimpeded by centralised US narratives about leadership in a war of ideas.

(Posted before the speech at Chatham House, if anything significant changes an update will follow)

John Brown’s Public Diplomacy press and blog review is back. Version 1 was a valuable resource and so far version 2 looks even better.

One of the obvious divisions within international actors (but particularly countries) conducting public diplomacy is between those that employ staff from the local community and those that ‘import’ staff from their home country. Each approach presents particular opportunities and challenges worth considering.

For those that use local staff, one advantage is the ability to communicate with the audience through members of the target community. This is an advantage, because if encourages a networked approach to communication and helps alleviate the extensive problems which can occur when projecting across cultural barriers, as discussed by RS Zaharna. Local employees present a version of your voice, but one that may be received in a different way to your own due to their peer position in the local community; particularly in situations when a national representative might be seen as an ‘outsider’. This ‘local’ advantage may be accentuated by the likely greater understanding of local cultural norms.  Those adopting a messaging approach will still need to be refined and tested for an audience but the use of staff from within that audience can provide the message with an advantage over one projected merely by outsiders.

Engagement over specific issues, similar to some NGO methodologies, requires the ability to engage a with the community rather than the presentation of a national image. As such, the national / local decision is one based as much on the best engagement with the audience rather than the best representation of home. This perspective is reinforced by Nick Cull who recently highlighted one of the lessons from past public diplomacy experience, “(s)ometimes the most credible voice in public diplomacy is not one’s own”.

Conversely, the ‘experience’ may be an important part, particularly of national public diplomacy. This is particularly the case for organisations which seek to ‘represent’ their country overseas, particularly through cultural centres, providing an image of that country similar to the original Amerika Haus offering a “window to America“. This often leads organisations to emphasise national rather than local staff, as a visitor will be meeting an inhabitant of the country being represented, rather than a member of the local community. These questions of representation, even an emphasis on soft power, rather than issue based engagement tend to influence the decision.

To be fair the above is hardly a revelation, but there are a couple of issues which tend to receive less attention. First, cost; can a local individual be paid less? If so, how much of a saving can be made in switching from national to local staff? Second, in times of crisis, ‘national’ staff tends to be withdrawn, but what happens to local staff?

1) During lean times many organisations will be tempted to make the calculation to see if they can lower staff cost by using ‘local’ staff. Interestingly the switch from national to local staff, resulting in cutting costs, will demonstrate to the local community that despite emphasis on equality or reciprocity the value of two people doing the same job is different based on nationality. Some organisations may not consider this a problem, others may find this causes difficulty when trying to engage with that same local community. This tension may come into sharp focus if there’s a mixture of local and national staff doing similar jobs. The relationship with staff may be considered largely an HR or legal issue, but it contains considerable risk for the relationship with the local community.

2) The first issue has the potential to be an ongoing tension that it can be tempting to ignore until unless it causes a serious problem within the work-place. This overlooks the wider implications of this problem. Similarly the second problem can also be easily overlooked. This is because the second consideration only exists at times of crisis; particularly when an organisation is forced to stop working, or reduce representation in a country or area. Faced with this situation many organisations withdraw their ‘national’ staff, however, the ‘local’ staff are not always given the same option.

AJS White’s personal history of the British Council highlights one of these examples. The Suez Crisis, “ended for the time being the Council’s work in Egypt and the Council’s London appointed staff had to evacuate Syria and for a brief period Jordan”. White also notes “the local staff in Jordan carried on the work”. In the case of Jordan the local staff were able to continue, and in fact in Egypt sequestrators were appointed. This happened because the tension did not extend to targeting those working for foreign organisations; when that targettting does happen local staff become trapped in an ambiguous space between their employer and the local authorities (whether that authority originates from legal position or force of arms).

This problem was perhaps best demonstrated through the situation of native translators working in Iraq. Claims were made in 2007 that Iraqi translators and been ‘Abandoned’ because, according to the Times Online, “the Government ignored personal appeals from senior army officers in Basra to relax asylum regulations and make special arrangements for Iraqis whose loyal services have put their lives at risk.”

The story highlighted the personal experience of these local staff; “One interpreter, who has worked with the Army since 2004 … was told by Downing Street that he would receive no special favours and to read a government website.”

A year later stories surfaced of the conditions in which translators who had managed to claim asylum had been housed. These stories highlighted the specific difficulties of working with translators in Iraq, but in a wider sense the local staff are often considered harder to protect than national staff.  This presents the clear pressure for public diplomacy organisations to consider what is likely to happen to the local staff should they be forced to withdraw (and many do).

However, there are some questions that are rarely discussed and experience is not often shared; If a showdown is likely, are local staff given a choice to leave or resign first? Local staff are often employed in the more junior grades, the least likely to be told in advance and even less likely to be consulted on strategy. Would those that do resign be reinstated after if the tension passes should they wish? Or is the desire to protect their family to be counted against them? Conversely, does letting large numbers of staff resign give away the plans to defy the authorities in the host country?

The answers to these questions, and the way the organisation acts toward the ‘local’ staff will be not only influence the relationship with the employees but will also demonstrate to the local community the ‘true’ opinion the PD organisation has about members of the local community.

If an organisation goes for a showdown and during the resulting fallout leaves any of the local staff to suffer the consequences (when national staff go home) the community are likely to make judgements about that decision. They may even decide that the organisation sees their community as disposable; only to be engaged with when it suits their ends. To this end, the question is both, what are the responsibilities of an organisation to local staff and what if the organisation cannot live up to the expectations of the local community?

While a national PR organisation naturally focuses on national goals, this sort of judgement is likely not only to make recruitment of staff in future difficult, but is likely to impact negatively on any attempt to re-engage with the community. With numerous areas of geopolitical tension currently create the potential for a forced withdrawal; these issues are likely to surface for a number of PD organisations around the world. Many will, very likely, cover their legal duty of care, but will they all mitigate the risks, both PD and personal, relating to their local staff?

It is rarely a good idea to mix up an image of your home town with another one of the same name… yet that’s exactly what Birmingham in the UK did… getting an image of Birmingham, Alabama, instead.

BBC News covered the Story

The many different approaches to communication can both compete with and enrich other areas of communication. The combination of communication and development work, as organisations such as PANOS have done, demonstrates much from which others can learn. Equally the experience of health promotion over the years provides useful insight.

To reiterate, while many may practitioners and theorists have emphasized perceptions, asserting identity or understanding, it is the action which the target audience takes that has an impact on the international environment.

Discussions of understanding, even mutual understanding, provide convenient ways of engaging with a ‘two way’ narrative on Public Diplomacy, yet even those genuinely engaged in dialogue, collaboration or open source approaches do so for a purpose. The question is what behaviour is the practitioner trying to encourage? That behaviour may be the sharing of ideas, the development of habits of engagement, acting in a less hostile manner or taking action on climate change. In any case, it is the behaviour on which the practitioner should be focused and anything else is part of the journey to get there.

The Future Embassy Report argued that “(t)he truest test of the value to our nation of the U.S. diplomatic presence abroad is whether the people we ask to represent us effectively promote American values and interests” (p. iv). However, in many instances the PD approach does not stretch further than policy advocacy, the justification of certain actions or the rebuttal of inaccurate or unfavourable comment.

The engagement with KAP Gap, with much of the development in the field of health including HIV / AIDS, provides a useful way of breaking down PD into different component parts while focusing on an end goal. Recognising the journey and the causes for the gap between Knowledge and Practise, as highlighted in the HIV / AIDS study, can inform the refinement of an approach focused on behaviour. The overlap here with Everett Rogers work on the Diffusion of Innovations, and the importance of diffusion curves is also worth noting.

This however, begins to focus on a pressing question – how much of PD, particularly politically focused advocacy gets beyond the K of Knowledge? While attempts to ‘explain’ or ‘promote’ through advocacy are popular, PD must constantly seek more broad approaches to creating positive attitudes to certain behaviour. This means taking the impact on the environment in which you seek to communicate into account, not merely the message.

I’ll merely note at this time the tonnage of material produced on refining messages, creating message chains, brand, memes, audience analysis to test phrases, constructing echo chambers, running focus groups etc. with the comparatively small focus given to non-assertive methods of engagement. It is currently comparatively rare to find work which focuses on promoting an environment in which people can adopt certain behaviour, rather than advocating the behaviour itself. Equally, consider how often political leaders ‘Call on’ someone to do something (admittedly often they are playing to a domestic audience) when the very act of that call creates an environment in which it is harder for the individuals concerned to adopt the behaviour which that politician is trying to promote. This is particularly problematic when the ‘call’ actually strengthens the opposition’s counter-narrative by painting an individual as doing the bidding of foreign masters. For example, James Glassman’s CFR speech can be seen as creating this problem, for the dispersed networks who seek to challenge violent groups.

PD is about behaviour and a broad range of approaches should be in play. KAP Gap, diffusion curves and derivations of this type of thinking should be more frequently deployed within many of the international communications organisations which are currently focused on ‘K’ without fully understanding the blocks which are preventing movement to ‘A’ or ’P’.

A useful discussion and explanation of KAP Gap and the way information flows through an audience or network was presented by Thomas Valente in his article The Diffusion Network Game. (p. 30).

As a footnote for another day, The Diffusion Network Game also highlights the way a relatively basic network mapping exercise could be conducted to demonstrate the impact that a PD initiative which was intended to develop links between participants. This might provide a start point for engaging with data maps and dispersed networks.

Picking up on the last discussion of power and the articulation of power in relation to ‘allies’, it is also worth considering the power relationship with the potential target community when planning PD activities.

In Options for Influence, we discussed the options which exist between telling and listening. At the ‘telling’ or message orientated end of the spectrum the audience is viewed by the PD organisation as a classic recipient of a crafted point. The programme is designed to advocate / assert that point (which is hopefully based on strong audience analysis). The research in this case is not a negotiation; it is working out how best to articulate a point in a way that it will have the highest chance of acceptance by the audience.

(Image source; Ali Fisher and Aurelie Brockerhoff, Options for Influence, p. 25)

Deliberate and genuine Listening exercises, as I have written before, sit at the other end of the spectrum. They focus on building habits of engagement by inverting the power relationship to be on the terms defined by the ‘audience’ or target community. This is not to say the listening exercise as having no point; it merely communicates that point through a shifted power relationship, where such a shift is useful to long-term engagement.

This won’t work if the listening is merely an opening for an intensified assertive campaign, as the power relationship immediately reverts to that of teller and the told. However, by building habits of engagement it can create an opportunity for greater openness, on both sides, for negotiation or exchange. It can equally allow for the identification of areas for a PD organisation to engage in facilitation or through which to engage with the target communities in collective action to achieve common goals.

Nothing here should be taken to indicate messaging is irrelevant, it isn’t. However, we need to consider not only what we wish to communicate by the power relationship through which that will be communicated. At times an assertive and dominant stance will create an image of authority and aid transmission of the message. At others an engagement which inverts that power relationship will provide the community with the ability to engage (rather than be the target of engagement).

Power and influence are not only those things which are claimed to valorise projects to political masters; they are also evident to the audience. We need to consider that power relationship alongside the goals for any PD initiative; after all it is one of the key elements which will influence the success of that initiative.