Dictator Media Fail

In this week's Social Power reading, "Media and Globalization," van Ham says media can be used to create social power in two ways. The first is governments attempting to manage their own information space and the second is the media's ability to shape policy discussions and affect other actors' media space.

We have seen this occur quite often in the past few weeks. In the uprisings in Egypt, Bahrain, Iran and Libya, the governments attempted to shut off communication with the outside world by turning off the internet, television and cell phone services. They also attempted to reshape the discussion in their favor through state broadcasts reasserting their power and/or blaming outside actors for the uprisings. In the past this may have been successful as the avenues for communication were much fewer than they are now, radio, land line phones and television. However with the telecommunications explosion it has been nearly impossible to do this. In the case of Egypt and Bahrain foreign journalists were able to broadcast from those countries and therefore provided a counter voice to the governments' messages. These sources, such as CNN, the BBC and others were particularly influential as they have established credibility, which van Ham says is vital for building social power. In countries journalists have had a difficult time gaining entry into, people have still managed to find ways to get to the dissenters. Al Jazeera has been calling protesters in Libya on their land lines and asking them to give reports of what is happening around them. These reports are posted online and shared by millions around the world.

In addition, the governments themselves, or rather the autocratic rulers in particular, did themselves no favors with their messages. Mubarak's much anticipated speech on February 10, was deemed "The Worst Speech Ever," by Foreign Policy's Marc Lynch (aka abu aardvark). Mubarak had been expected to announce his resignation and when he did not, offering only self-praise and vague promises of change, it further ignited protesters' anger and led to his eventual ouster.

Unfortunately, it seems Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, may have staked a new claim on "worst speech ever," when on Monday he warned that his father's government would "fight to the last minute, until the last bullet," and said that if protests did not stop the country would descend into civil war and "rivers of blood will run through Libya." Gaddafi himself, appeared on state TV for a whole 24 seconds to refute claims that he had fled for Venezuela, insisting he was still in Tripoli, but could not address the protesters in person due to rain (right....).

While these leaders have been trying to shape the international discussion regarding the protests, their efforts have clearly failed. They have lost all credibility, in part due to years of reports of their brutal rules and now strengthened by the serious conflicting stories told by the protesters. Egypt and Libya's dictators have not kept up with the technological revolution and public diplomacy practices, which could have (before the abuses, torture and massacres of their own people) reshaped the public discourse in their favor.

China on the other hand, seems to be doing a great job in its technological and public diplomacy campaigns. It has managed to block potentially "dangerous" sites like Facebook and YouTube, shut down dissenters' networks and re-frame it self in a more favorable light. How this is, I'm not sure, as they prevented Liu Xiaobo from receiving his Nobel Peace Prize in person, continue to forcefully occupy Tibet, still won't acknowledge the massacre of possibly thousands of protesters in Tiananmen Square and abuse human rights in general. Of course there are many who are openly critical of China throughout the world, however, China's leadership scarcely seems to come under they same kind of scrutiny in the public eye as similar regimes elsewhere in the world. So what is the secret to China's success and what can other autocratic governments learn from them (this sentence sounds much more sarcastic in my head)?

Battle Hymn of Tiger...Diplomacy?

In continuation of our conversation on Chinese public diplomacy efforts, there is another recent example I think is worth mentioning. It's one I'm sure most of our net savvy class has probably already seen, but brings some interesting public diplomacy concerns. On January 23 CCTV (China's state broadcaster) showed a clip of a Chinese air force training drill, in which a Chinese fighter plane destroys an enemy plane with a missile. Unfortunately for China, internet viewers realized the footage looked suspiciously familiar and accused the government of misappropriating footage from that 80's classic Top Gun.

You can see it broken down in this video from the Wall Street Journal:



The author of the accompanying article, Josh Chin, writes that China has, ironically, been trying to clamp down on journalists who doctor their stories.

While it seems as though this story was meant to boost Chinese national pride in its military capabilities (although I'm sure it wouldn't have bothered them if the rest of the world saw the "might" of the Chinese air force), it became something of a public diplomacy scandal. As we discussed in class, trust is an important factor in gaining social power and an end of creating social power in and of itself. Plagiarizing a (very) well-known American movie, only hurts China's credibility in the international arena. It first reinforces the belief that China cannot be trusted to comply with intellectual property laws and that countries and companies should be wary of allowing China access to and IP material. It could also cause other countries to doubt any information that comes from the Chinese government (although many of them may already do this). If they are fabricating this type of story, what else are they lying about?

Another public diplomacy issue China dealt with recently was its refusal to allow jailed democracy advocate Liu Xiaobao, or any of his relatives, to attend the ceremony for the Nobel Peace Prize, which the committee awarded to Liu late last year. Liu was represented by an empty chair at the ceremony. This was the first time since 1936 that the award was not conferred in person to either the recipient or a representative.* In 1936 winner, Carl von Ossietzky, was also prevented from attending by the government he campaigned against, the Nazis. While China likely did this to protest what it believes as a slight against its sovereignty and international reputation, it seems to have unwittingly done so at the expense having its own state controls likened to Nazi oppression. Obviously a damning and unwanted comparison. In addition China used its hard power to coerce other countries to boycott the ceremony as well. China warned of diplomatic "consequences" for countries that sent representatives to the ceremony (46 countries did send representatives and so far no outward consequences have occurred). The country was successful in convincing 15 countries, including the oppressive regime du jour, Egypt, not to attend. In addition China also cut off trade negotiations with Norway as punishment.

Unfortunately for China, its recent attempts at damage control and self-promotion have ended in dismal failures. Even its intended positive ad campaign in Time Square, which we discussed in class, seems to have had little effect on improving Americans' image of the country. For a while China seemed to be riding high on the public diplomacy and social power boost it received from the 2008 Olympics, but now it appears the shine has worn off of that spectacle and China may need to address real issues, like intellectual property rights, trade agreements, militarization and human rights, in order to improve its international image in the long-run.

* According to the Washington Post, in 1991 Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, was not allowed to attend the ceremony by the ruling junta. However, her children accepted the prize in person for her.