Digital Diplomacy

The Economist this week  (22-28 September) includes a brief discussion of what it calls 'virtual relations' and 'digital diplomacy'. The article reviews how 'Foreign ministries are getting the hang of social media.' We are told that the US State Department has 'spawned 194 Twitter accounts and 200 Facebook pages':

About 20 British ambassadors are now on Twitter. Russia's foreign ministry is said to have more that 40 Twitter accounts. Israel has announced it will make more use of e-diplomacy. Even China, which heavily censors social media at home, is interested in using them as a diplomatic tool abroad.
       [Barack Obama's Twitter audience] of nearly 20m followers dwarfs the one of Venezuela's autocratic Hugo Chavez (3.4m) and Russia's prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev (1.5m).

I remain an e-agnostic. For one thing, these statistics tell us nothing about content: in public diplomacy does size really matter? I understand the motivation for wishing to participate in an already overcrowded information landscape, and I do not agree with critics who claim social media are another 'Trojan horse' for cultural or political imperialism. This is a naive argument that gives the social media too much power. Besides, audiences will always interpret messages in ways that may surprise the source and contradict the original motivation for the communication. In soft power, the power is rarely in the hands of the source and almost always resides with the audience.

When it comes to diplomatic activity and communications, I believe that we must be cautious in advocating the use of social media. Mere presence in the virtual sphere is meaningless without substantive content. Just as public diplomacy is not a panacea for bad policies, e-diplomacy is not a solution for poor presentation and communication. Governments looking to participate in the world of the social media must identify first the reasons for doing so, and second the expected outcomes.  Mere presence in an overcrowded information environment is an insufficient reason. As Joseph Nye wrote in The Future of Power (2011: 103): 'Plentiful information leads to scarcity of attention. When people are overwhelmed with the volume of information confronting them, they have difficulty knowing what to focus on. Attention, rather than information, becomes the scarce resource, and those who can distinguish valuable information from background clutter gain power.'

Sifting the 'background clutter' is not easy when we are faced with both information overload and time scarcity. Gone are the days when we could casually 'surf' the internet in response to Microsoft's question, 'Where do you want to go today?' Authority, trust and credibility of information is far more important than ever before and training users of the internet - especially diplomats - to think critically about the authenticity of both the source and the message is more urgent than at any time in the past. Most of us access very few websites every day and tend to rely on established print and television media - even if we no longer buy a newspaper from a vendor but instead access it online - for our news and information. We will still depend on 'old' media to guide us: Wikileaks was most valuable when its cables were republished in the Guardian, the New York Times, El Pais, Le Monde and Der Spiegel. The second tranche of cables which were not published in the press met a more muted response: the newspapers were able to contextualise the information for its readers, analyse it and explain its importance. We had time and space to digest what we read. Without this process of mediation, the relevance of such information is lost.

Hence, it pays to be cautious and not be too optimistic about the contribution of the social media to the gathering of intelligence, especially about public opinion. Reading China's Weibo may offer a far more raw, accurate and thorough insight into how its users think and feel about certain topics than any of the official mainstream media. The Economist article calls this 'diplomatic preparedness.' While it will remain difficult to predict events, despite what the article thinks, monitoring seriously the social media does provide the extra information that can supplement the intelligence diplomats should be gathering from elsewhere. However, there is still a need to contextualise the information and understand its source: how representative is Weibo if the majority of its users are young, University educated Chinese living on the eastern seaboard? Diplomats will never find a perfect substitute for leg-work, for getting out into the streets and talking to people face to face. It sounds simple and easy: I wonder how many diplomats actually still do it?

A thorough discussion of how American diplomats use the social media as a source of information, and to facilitate public diplomacy activities, is provided in William Kiehl's edited volume, The Last Three Feet. See my blog http://wwwpdic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-last-three-feet-ed-william-kiehl.html.
    

The US connecting in Thailand

The personification of 'new' and interactive public diplomacy is Kristie Kenney, the US ambassador to Thailand. A google search reveals her presence all over the new and old media: Twitter; Facebook; blogs; ABC-CBS.com reported how she 'moonwalked' on television before she said goodbye to the Philippines, while on Youtube you can see her dance the 'Papaya' (http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/01/21/10/kristie-kenney-moonwalks-farewell-interview). She has even been pictured in Thai newspapers in a parachute jump, while just three days after Thailand's recent election she featured on both the front of the English-language Nation newpaper (with the incoming premier, Yingluck Shinawatra) and the back page (with outgoing leader Abhisit Vejjajiva). The Ambassador has nearly 20,000 followers on Twitter which, she says, is a way for her to connect with people 'and it allows people to feel that they can reach out to the ambassador who is not just a figure hidden in a big building.' She is anxious to make clear that herTwitter feed is purely personal and has nothing to do with the State Department, but arriving in Thailand only months after Wikileaks revealed her predecessor had made unflattering comments about the Thai monarchy, it is not difficult to assume that her outreach has greater strategic value.  Tulsathit Taptim, a columnist Nation newspaper described Kenney as 'undiplomatically pleasant and gracious.' Perhaps the social networking is the future of public diplomacy and will allow more diplomats to be 'undiplomatically pleasant and gracious.' 

Old Media, New Media

I was drawn to two articles in the Guardian today. The first is an excellent interview by Polly Toynbee with Aung San Suu Kyi (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/16/interview-aung-san-suu-kyi-polly-toynbee). Toynbee describes how Aung San 'has just learned of mutinies in army bases [in Burma] from the BBC World Service, a lifeline when information is so hard to come by. She is relieved the BBC's Burma service has been saved from British government cuts, "puzzled" at the decision to cut the Chinese service. After 70 years, the BBC's last Mandarin programmes for China have just been broadcast.'

Aung San Suu Kyi is not the only one who is 'puzzled' by this decision as China scholars and activists will testify. The British government claims that fewer Chinese are listening to the BBC and are preferring to access news and information from the internet. However, it is far too naive to base decisions that affect 1.4 billion people, many of whom live in poverty, are uneducated and reside in areas where internet access is difficult (not to mention the problem that users who are not technologically sophisticated face in breaching the 'Great Firewall') on such a questionable assumption. Besides, what happens when the Chinese decide to limit or completely stop access to the internet in areas or situations experiencing serious unrest? To whom will people turn for information and news if the BBC and VoA have ceased broadcasting in Mandarin?

One can begin to appreciate the force of the arguments proposed by Evgeny Morozov in his provocative book, The Net Delusion in which he suggests not only the folly of Net optimists who believe that the internet will liberate mankind, but also the way that governments, like Star Trek's Borg, adapt to new communications environments and technologies - assimilate them, if you will - for their own advantage.

This is demonstrated in another Guardian article which reports the activities of 'cyber activists' in Syria (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/15/syria-activists-protests-in-view). One activist who spreads news and information on social media 'receives regular death threats on his Facebook and Twitter accounts from what he believes are Syrian security agents'. After his sister was arrested, Syrian security posted a message on his wall: "You have until midnight tonight to announce your withdrawal from the Syrian revolution or we will get her." And yet the cyber-activists in Syria remain committed to the cause and to the importance of using the social media (incuding Youtube) to share information.

This leads me to a conclusion that is neither original nor surprising, but perhaps too simple for some governments in this age of austerity to understand: isn't there room and need for both old and new media? The new media represents a new-style of activism, mobilisation and method of P2P communication; but old broadcasting media are also required. The BBC Mandarin Service has built over decades a reputation among its audience for accuracy and credibility, and there is a clear relationship based on trust between broadcaster and audience (public diplomacy is all about relationships, after all). To abandon such relationships in the mistaken belief that they are antiquated and no longer required in order to save money is a mistake. Both the Foreign Office and USIA throughout their histories have believed they could turn language services on and off like a tap, only to find that when they are needed again, it is not that easy to rebuild audiences and reputations.

Perhaps when Aung San Suu Kyi speaks on such issues, the British and American governments would do well to listen.