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Cull, N. J. (2013). The Long Road to Public Diplomacy 2.

0: The Internet in US
Public Diplomacy. International Studies Review. Vol. 15(2013): 123-139.

The United States has a long history of deploying new technology as a mechanism for
public diplomacy (the conduct of foreign policy by engagement with foreign publics)
but it was relatively slow to make full use of the on-line technologies known as Web 2.0.
This essay reviews the early work of the US Information Agency (1953–1999) in the
field of computer and on-line communications, noting the compatibility of a networking
approach to USIA’s institutional culture. The essay then traces the story forward into the
work of the units within the US Department of State, which took over public diplomacy
functions in 1999. The article argues that this transition deserves a large part of the blame
for the difficulty, which the risk-averse State Department displayed in embracing first the
web and then the full range of qualities associated with Web 2.0. The State Department
has emphasized one-way broadcast media rather than two-way relational media and
functions connected with listening and exchange diplomacy were subordinated to
advocacy. The essay also notes the challenge of a non-diplomatic agency—the
Department of Defense—playing a dominant role in digital and other forms of outreach
at some points in the process. The essay ends by noting the recent evolution of the State
Department’s approach to digital media and the emergence of a non-governmental model
for American digital outreach (known by the acronym SAGE) which may overcome
many of the institutional limits experienced thus far and provide a way to bring together
the relational priorities of the New Public Diplomacy with the relational capacities of
Web 2.0 technology.

Although like Web 2.0, the term Public Diplomacy 2.0 has never been used with
particular precision, and three key characteristics emerge: The first characteristic is the
capacity of the technology to facilitate the creation of relationships around social
networks and online communities. The second characteristic is the related dependence of
Public Diplomacy 2.0 on user-generated content from feedback and blog comments to
complex user-generated items such as videos or mash-ups. The third characteristic is the
underlying sense of the technology as being fundamentally about horizontally arranged
networks of exchange rather than the vertically arranged networks of distribution down
which information cascaded in the 1.0 era.

The term public diplomacy—the conduct of foreign policy by engagement with a foreign
public—is relatively new, acquiring this meaning only in 1965. The activity is, in
contrast, as old as statecraft. The principal areas of public diplomacy work have been:
listening (engaging a foreign public by listening to it and channeling what is learned into
policy formation); advocacy (engaging a foreign public by explaining one’s policies
and/or point of view); cultural diplomacy (engaging a foreign public by facilitating the
export of one’s culture such as arts or language); exchange diplomacy (engaging a
foreign public by facilitating direct contact between one’s own people and a foreign
population); and international broadcasting (engaging a foreign public through the
provision of news according to the accepted mores of international journalism)

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