Areas of PDC activity, including academic study, professional practice and advocacy
This link includes a 40-page guide – quotes and links to articles, essays, opinion pieces, and reports — on North Korea’s information environment. Intended for strategic communication and Public Diplomacy practitioners, it focuses on information, broadcasting, cyber, internet access, propaganda, the activities of defectors, policy debates, and related topics. This is a special number in…
A few years ago, Walter Russell Mead, professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and editor at large of the American Interest, proposed a “strategy to counter democracy’s global retreat.” “Produce inexpensive, good translations of Burke, Locke and other thinkers, and spread the texts widely,” he urged. His call to action should be…
“A lie can travel halfway around the world,” Mark Twain once wrote, “while the truth is putting its shoes on.” In this new media age, one wonders what the famed author might have thought about the truth’s instantaneous global, multimedia reach during the recent ten-day eruption of anti-government protests in Iran. The latest…
As a consequence of President Eisenhower’s historic 1953 UN General Assembly speech, “Atomic Power for Peace’” the world-wide promotion of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy became the young U.S. Information Agency’s first major mission. I had been managing a U.S. Mission-sponsored Atoms-for-Peace exhibition at the Berlin Industrial Fair. It included a huge replica of…
“The last three feet,” according to the late famed journalist and USIA Director Edward R. Murrow, is a classic catchword in public diplomacy statecraft. A common misperception is that U.S.-funded international broadcasters transmit signals from thousands of miles away and are largely removed from their listeners, viewers and online users. Virtually unknown: the extraordinary reach…
How is informational power that states employ in today’s turbulent world making an impression on increasing billions of people in this multimedia age? DEFINITIONS OF POWER AND HOW IT IS USED Hard power, or sheer military might: applied internationally in times of crisis. Soft power, or public diplomacy: designed to persuade and listen to those…
Did public diplomacy just get a new job? Sharp power is the latest buzzword in international affairs. Last week The Economist magazine featured a study by the National Endowment for Democracy by that name. The new National Security Strategy dwells on how China and Russia are using traditional “soft power” instruments in new ways to advance their…
Imagine spending 12 percent of the entire U.S. budget to help displaced and mostly impoverished Middle East, African and Afghan refugees to rebuild their lives? The Marshall Plan of 1947 did just that for war-torn postwar Europe. It was an indispensable helping hand for an entire generation recovering from devastation and dislocation after World War II. The…
This week’s Lunch and Learn session for public diplomacy staffers presented a panel of public affairs experts from the world of politics and corporate crisis communications. Public diplomacy and public relations are cousins, but with clear differences — nowhere more pronounced than in the area of crisis and political communication. This sparked a fascinating compare-and-contrast…
Every so often, a topic for commentary comes along that focuses the writer more intently than the average. Of course, if there is a personal backstory or connection with the topic, that surely helps. Today that topic has found its writer — or vice versa. You see, the topic before me today is the state…