Simon: a day in the life of a Foreign Office apprentice

• DIPLO Blog, Public diplomacy
• 5th February 2020

Skip to content Simon
Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) Apprentice Graduate
Guest blogger for FCO Careers
Part of FCO Apprenticeship Schemes
5th February 2020 United Kingdom
Simon: a day in the life of a Foreign Office apprentice Simon is a Level 3 Business Administration Apprentice graduate. After completing his apprenticeship, he now works in a geographical team at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO).
My typical day at the Foreign OfficeI work in a geographical department that is responsible for managing the UK’s relationships with 3 European countries. My role is split into 3 parts:
Acting as a Personal Assistant to the head of departmentProviding business administration support for the departmentAlso, providing some policy support across the departmentThis makes my work really varied and allows me to focus my development on areas I find particularly stimulating. I’ve worked on some really interesting projects, for example I now lead on liaising with our overseas posts and co..

America’s Cold Warriors Hold the Key to Handling China

• John Brown's Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review
• 14th January 2019

Hal Brands, bloomberg.com
The West needs a plan like it had against the Soviet Union.
Image from article, with caption: fully armed
Excerpt:
The U.S. will not be able to contain a globally connected China in the same way it contained a relatively autarkic Soviet Union. Yet the U.S. will need to limit China’s malign influence just as it limited destabilizing Soviet activities during the Cold War. Here the history of that conflict does provide some helpful ideas.
First, the Cold War analogy shows that multidimensional challenges require multidimensional responses. What made the Soviet menace so potent was that it combined a military threat to areas that were critical to the global balance of power with an ideological threat to the supremacy — perhaps even the survival — of liberal ideas. As a result, the U.S. and its allies responded not just with military and geopolitical containment of Soviet power, but with policies — from the Marshall Plan to public diplomacy [JB emphasis] initiative..

Kashmir issue: Indian media follows Israel’s Hasbara model

• John Brown's Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, Public diplomacy
• 7th March 2019

Muhammad Mueen Ahmad, globalvillagespace.com
uncaptioned image from articleExcerpt:
A Survey from Microsoft shows that India is a hotbed of fake news compared to any other country of the world. The survey shows around 64% of Indians are confronted by fake news via mainstream media with a comparison of the worldwide average of 57 percent. Microsoft further reveals that a big chunk of Indian population around 54% encounters internet hoaxes as compared to the global average of 50%. In recent past, fake news circulated on and inculcated in social media in general and Whatsapp, in particular, has taken lives of 40 compatriots by Indian themselves.
Hasbara’s Indian Version
“Hasbara” is derived from Hebrew which means “explanation” −explanation of wrongdoing in the cover of specious arguments and noble persona. History of “Hasbara” goes back to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 when Israel took up the gauntlet of the massacre of Lebanese with great gusto. This bloodshed drew the attenti..

Some thoughts on public diplomacy, social media, and data

• " Just Oppinion ", Public diplomacy
• 23rd June 2019

As someone who has worked in public diplomacy since 2011, I do not remember a time when public diplomacy did not also mean digital diplomacy and, consequently, some manner of data diplomacy. From the beginning, the data we gleaned from social media was heavily dependent on what the social media platforms were willing to provide us with. In terms of data storage and data analytics, institutions need to put a great deal of trust in the data that social media platforms provide. Here are three issues which are crucial for institutions when working with social media and data sets:
Ursula Wyss

Navigating the Web of Public Diplomacy

• Public diplomacy
• 9th July 2019

Navigating the Web of Public Diplomacy

Oct 2, 2018

Public diplomacy is the focus of the latest edition of The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, a leading research journal on diplomatic studies. The plethora of topics covered includes PD in the military, PD's impact on food regulations in Mexico and on the crisis in Ukraine, the significance of reputation to diplomatic practice and more.

One article by Andreas Pacher, “Strategic Publics in Public Diplomacy: A Typology and a Heuristic Device for Multiple Publics,” addresses an important pillar of PD: publics, and the strategies for engaging with them. By defining the range of strategic publics targeted by diplomats, Pacher proposes terminology for six ideal types. Additionally, Pacher provides a device to guide analyses of PD strategy, emphasizing relationships between public diplomats and governments, immediate strategic publics and mass publics.

Explaining the rationale behind his proposed six types of publics, Pacher notes, “the..