Richard Arndt argues in his article "The Hush-Hush Debate: The Cultural Foundations of US Public Diplomacy" that cultural diplomacy is the "base" US public diplomacy stands on and the "deep substance" of soft power. He says that as the US has largely neglected cultural diplomacy since the USIA was absorbed into the State Department in 1999, the US image and soft power throughout the world has been seriously damaged.
While I do agree with his points, that cultural diplomacy is vital to public diplomacy and that the US has done a very poor job of engaging in cultural diplomacy, I worry about some of the methods he advocates to remedy the situation. Arndt suggests expanding the Peace Corps, Fulbright exchanges, extending Teach for America overseas and creating new outreach programs in public health, infrastructional development and/or global language acquisition programs for hard-learn languages to not only increase American cultural diplomacy, but also to provide "tens of thousands of low-cost jobs for unemployed university graduates." No doubt some of these programs would create collaborative projects between the US and other societies and strengthen our soft power, it seems as though they could also easily be seen as just another form of US cultural imperialism.
Although the US government may have ignored the potential power of US cultural exports for at least the past decade, the US private sector has done all it can to take advantage of the demand for US cultural exports abroad (I believe when Arndt speaks of the "US private world" he means only universities and cultural institutions, not the private economic sector"). This has lead a number of countries and regions, such as the EU, to take action to protect their own cultural products from US intrusion. The foreign community has also had serious concerns about America's military involvement in other countries, worried that although it professes altruistic intentions it may actually have more neo-colonial goals.
From the rest of the article it seems that Arndt is advocating for cultural exchange and collaboration, which could be a viable and constructive option for strengthening relationships and US public diplomacy. However, extending programs which involve having the US educate other populations (especially if it relates to culture) could be viewed suspiciously by foreign societies as American attempts at imperialism, which would only serve to further damage the United States' reputation abroad, exactly the opposite of what Arndt hopes they will do.
Showing posts with label public diplomacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public diplomacy. Show all posts
Monday, March 21, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
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)?
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)?
Monday, February 14, 2011
American Cultural Dreams
As John Brown discussed in class last week, America does a very poor job of promoting its cultural highlights abroad. The US is very good at exporting heaps of its cultural goods, like movies, TV, music and the like. However, much of this is, as we all know, not very good and not representative of American culture and life (I know my time in high school wasn't anything like The OC or even Dawson's Creek). This tends to give the rest of the world a (very) negatively skewed idea of American culture, even if the rest of the world feeds demand for these poor exports (I'm looking at you Germany and your inexplicable love of David Hasslehoff's music).
The main reason that America is bad at promoting it's cultural affairs, is that it largely ignores them. So why is a country that is such an avid advertiser of its ideals of freedom and democracy, so lacking in cultural promotion? I think a large part of it comes from the ingrained, but false, belief that America doesn't have a culture, general or high culture. While the US may not have the same long-standing traditions as many other countries, as Kristin points out in her latest blog post, this is largely because the US is much younger than most other countries and was founded to break from many of the practices of Europe. However, every society and group has a culture. The US culture (as I'm sure many of us have learned in Cross-Cultural Communication) is low-context, monochronic and stresses individualism. These characteristics in and of themselves lead to a less cohesive and more fragmented view of the "American culture," which is furthered by the mix of other traditions and beliefs brought to the US by immigrants over the past 200+ years. So not only do we not have a clear concept of our own culture, but we tend to think much more individually than Russia, which values the common bond of a single Russian cultural identity, according to Brown.
I also agree with Krisitn that the US does have a "high culture" as evidenced by well-respected American literature, music (not pop, but classical and jazz artists and composers), theater and sometimes, even movies, if you look beyond the typical Hollywood garbage. However, I don't believe these arts are valued enough, at home or abroad. Americans' general emphasis on economic achievement tends to devalue the arts, which are usually more economically precarious. Although the conscious decision to not establish a ministry or department of culture in the US may have been to prevent government involvement in cultural creation and assessment (which is a fair concern), it has meant that the country only has business to promote its cultural products. Unfortunately these companies tend to think of profits over the American image (of itself or abroad). This means that we have hundreds of iterations of reality shows (I can't even keep track of how many versions of The Real Housewives of... there are), which are cheap to make and draw big audiences.
Therefore, in order to better promote American cultural achievement, I think we need to start at home by cultivating a better appreciation and understanding of American culture. This would mean better arts education in schools, more emphasis on the practices of and influences on American culture in history classes and more government funding for arts and culture projects. Not only would this give Americans a better understanding of themselves and their society, it would also promote critical evaluations of that culture and society, something I feel is sorely lacking here. In turn, a better understanding of these concepts and increase in the belief of the value of American culture would help us realize what good cultural products we do have to offer the world. This knowledge can then be included in the State Departments' diplomatic functions to spread this message (not to "Americanize" countries, but simply to share it). However, it seems that there need to be some major changes to society, education and the government before any of these things happen, so right now, we're stuck with Baywatch and the Jersey Shore as the spokespeople for American culture. If that's not an incentive to change, I don't know what is.
The main reason that America is bad at promoting it's cultural affairs, is that it largely ignores them. So why is a country that is such an avid advertiser of its ideals of freedom and democracy, so lacking in cultural promotion? I think a large part of it comes from the ingrained, but false, belief that America doesn't have a culture, general or high culture. While the US may not have the same long-standing traditions as many other countries, as Kristin points out in her latest blog post, this is largely because the US is much younger than most other countries and was founded to break from many of the practices of Europe. However, every society and group has a culture. The US culture (as I'm sure many of us have learned in Cross-Cultural Communication) is low-context, monochronic and stresses individualism. These characteristics in and of themselves lead to a less cohesive and more fragmented view of the "American culture," which is furthered by the mix of other traditions and beliefs brought to the US by immigrants over the past 200+ years. So not only do we not have a clear concept of our own culture, but we tend to think much more individually than Russia, which values the common bond of a single Russian cultural identity, according to Brown.
I also agree with Krisitn that the US does have a "high culture" as evidenced by well-respected American literature, music (not pop, but classical and jazz artists and composers), theater and sometimes, even movies, if you look beyond the typical Hollywood garbage. However, I don't believe these arts are valued enough, at home or abroad. Americans' general emphasis on economic achievement tends to devalue the arts, which are usually more economically precarious. Although the conscious decision to not establish a ministry or department of culture in the US may have been to prevent government involvement in cultural creation and assessment (which is a fair concern), it has meant that the country only has business to promote its cultural products. Unfortunately these companies tend to think of profits over the American image (of itself or abroad). This means that we have hundreds of iterations of reality shows (I can't even keep track of how many versions of The Real Housewives of... there are), which are cheap to make and draw big audiences.
Therefore, in order to better promote American cultural achievement, I think we need to start at home by cultivating a better appreciation and understanding of American culture. This would mean better arts education in schools, more emphasis on the practices of and influences on American culture in history classes and more government funding for arts and culture projects. Not only would this give Americans a better understanding of themselves and their society, it would also promote critical evaluations of that culture and society, something I feel is sorely lacking here. In turn, a better understanding of these concepts and increase in the belief of the value of American culture would help us realize what good cultural products we do have to offer the world. This knowledge can then be included in the State Departments' diplomatic functions to spread this message (not to "Americanize" countries, but simply to share it). However, it seems that there need to be some major changes to society, education and the government before any of these things happen, so right now, we're stuck with Baywatch and the Jersey Shore as the spokespeople for American culture. If that's not an incentive to change, I don't know what is.
Monday, February 7, 2011
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.
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.
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