Public diplomacy in contemporary world politics.

Public Diplomacy in a contrast to “traditional” diplomacy is about communication with citizens. Public Diplomacy includes dialogue between individuals and various institutions including non-governmental as is often referred as a “two-way street” for credentials of the dialogue.

‘The basic premise of public diplomacy is that by engaging in a country’s political and social debates, you can create the intellectual and political climate in which your specific policies can flourish.’ (Riordan, S. (2004) The New Diplomacy: 122) Those engagements can be cultural and educational programs, seminars engaged to certain theme, TV documentaries, interviews and articles. Public diplomacy aims to create a positive image of the advocate country within the target community or country; however this is not always in positive manner, but could be with the aim to create a negative image as well. This blog would argue that there is a fine line between public policy and targeted propaganda and is often somehow fused together.


There is an interesting video showing how Israel is using new technologies to improve the image of the Israel. Technologies that Israeli diplomats are using are i.e. Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. It is interesting how by using the internet can help to change the perspective of the one country in the globalised, interconnected world with help of advanced technology and can reach the targeted group of people within seconds.
Please watch this video on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujYb0dCWVDc

This blog would argue that the most profound example of the public diplomacy in the use of public diplomacy in the time of Vietnam war, when Americans did realize the importance of the support of the Vietnamese citizens and more recently the same situations occurred in Iraq. There is interesting interview led by a Yemeni-born British television news reporter and interviewer Riz Khan on subject of the public diplomacy of the USA in Iraq. Watch at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fHn97YoQ14