Dennis Rodman is bound to grab headlines with his third trip to North Korea, scheduled for later this week. But his message to President Barack Obama that he just needs to pick up the phone and talk to the erratic Kim Jong Un (who only last week had his uncle executed on the grounds that he was a traitor and “despicable human scum”), suggests that the former NBA star and self-proclaimed ambassador might be overstating his influence.
Sports diplomacy is real and effective – but probably not in the form we are about to see.Last year, President Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Burma, a country that has recently undergone a degree of democratic change that seemed unimaginable just a few years ago. During the trip, Obama pledged U.S. economic assistance to the country, and authorized the dispatch of the first U.S. ambassador to Burma, also known as Myanmar, in decades.But while the high-profile summits between the countries’ elites showcased warming official ties, some low-key sports exchanges earlier this year will also have played their part in boosting trust and understanding following the president’s trip.In January, the U.S. State Department committed to a sports exchange program in which a delegation of Burmese youth came to the United States for a week of basketball activities. On their first night in Washington, D.C., the delegation met members of the Washington Wizards NBA team, before visiting a local high school in Maryland where they shot hoops with the varsity team. The Burmese visitors then traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, where they met with Rich Cho, general manager of the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats, a Burmese immigrant and one of the organizers of the program.One can only imagine what it was like for a Burmese boy to step onto the Verizon Center court and shoot baskets with NBA star John Wall. And although these types of exchanges don’t grab international headlines, they are the sort of activities that can do much to improve relations between long-estranged countries by creating positive memories, friendships and deep bonds between Americans and others through the universal language of sports.And the value of these programs is apparently recognized by the U.S. government itself. SportsUnited, a division of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) that is devoted to sports diplomacy, has been increasingly active over the past decade, bringing over 1,400 athletes from 65 countries to the U.S to participate in sport visitor programs since 2002. In 2005, it also created the Sports Envoy program under then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, sending 250 U.S. athletes, including high-profile stars such as the Baltimore Orioles’ Cal Ripken and U.S. Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwon, as goodwill ambassadors to nearly 60 countries.
More recently, I participated in a SportsUnited program this past summer, which hosted a delegation of wheelchair basketball athletes from Turkey. The team of national champions was taken to a practice session with the WNBA Washington Mystics, and to the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, D.C. to meet with doctors to hear about injury prevention, rehabilitation and prosthetic options. In between the official appointments, the team did some sightseeing, shopping, and practiced for what turned out to be a nail biter of a game against NRH’s wheelchair basketball squad.
The kind of goodwill that is generated at the micro level with these kinds of visits can truly underpin the progress made at the government level, especially as such programs are not just about sports – they also offer an opportunity for visitors to learn about U.S. society. Through the Turkey basketball exchange, for example, Turkish players gained an appreciation of the opportunities for handicapped athletes to thrive in the United States. This spirit is contagious, and past participants in sports programs have returned to their home countries to start similar initiatives.
This isn’t to say that high profile sports diplomacy doesn’t have a place – “ping-pong” diplomacy back in the early 1970s famously helped kickstart relations between the United States and China. “You have opened a new chapter in the relations of the American and Chinese people,” Premier Chou En-lai reportedly told the visiting Americans at a banquet back then. “I am confident that this beginning again of our friendship will certainly meet with majority support of our two peoples.” The rest, as they say, is history.
But such events are the exceptions rather than the rule. Effective sports diplomacy usually happens beneath the headlines, facilitated by those who believe that sports are a unique form of international interaction, where language is not a barrier. Indeed, just playing together on a court or a pitch can help young people build the kind of trust and understanding that regular politics can’t impose – fun, effective and without fanfare.
By Patrick Cha, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Patrick Ellis Cha is the founder of NetBenefitUSA, a Maryland-based non-governmental organization dedicated to socially conscious sports projects. You can follow them @NetBenefitUSA. The views expressed are the writer’s own.
We connoisseurs of the diplomatic public speaking art are fortunate to have one example of a high-profile public speaking occasion where everything that could possibly go wrong did indeed go wrong. If you are working at an Embassy or in a Foreign Minister’s office and are looking for a model for how not do it, seek no further.
We are in Sarajevo in late 1997, two years after the Dayton Peace Accords, at the Holiday Inn. During the Bosnian war this hotel had been an iconic object of attack for the Bosnian Serbs besieging the city. It had been built for the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympic games, a splendid example of high communist kitsch with a bright yellow facade and gruesome purple furnishings. By late 1997 those aesthetic glories of Yugoslav socialist self-management are being meticulously restored.
Several hundred senior Bosnian figures are gathered in the main hotel reception room, waiting for the two guest speakers. France’s Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine and Germany’s Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel are paying a joint visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina. They want to use this occasion publicly to urge Bosnian leaders to set aside their vexing political differences and unite to rebuild the country, using generous support provided by the European Union. Forsooth, the very fact of their visit together symbolises reconciliation and partnership in modern Europe. If France and Germany can settle their historic differences, so can the Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats of Bosnia.
What can go wrong? Everything.
The audience assembles in good time for the arrival. Everyone is standing up. Drinks are served. Noisy, good-humoured conversation gathers pace.
The two speakers arrive. A more or less respectful silence descends. Minister Védrine is introduced and starts to speak in French. He has a microphone, but if there is a podium it is not especially pronounced. It is a large bland room, difficult for the speaker to dominate.
Védrine and his team have given no proper thought to how best to deliver his speech to such a big audience that is standing up and mainly does not understand French. He delivers his speech in dull and wordy long paragraphs, leaving the interpreter a tricky job in remembering and conveying in Bosnian everything he has said in equally dull and wordy long paragraphs.
His speech meanders on. After a while people at the back of the room not unreasonably conclude that Védrine and the interpreter are saying nothing to interest them, and they start chatting quietly among themselves. This creates a disconcerting effect across the audience as a whole. Those standing immediately in front of the two speakers have no choice but to pretend to listen politely. More and more people at the back of the room decide to ignore the speaker completely and start talking. Those in the middle start to feel uncomfortable. As does Herr Kinkel, watching in dismay as the proud European message of his distinguished colleague is ignored by a small but steadily growing part of the audience.
After about 20 minutes of platitudes Védrine’s speech ends, to fitful applause. Herr Kinkel takes over. Unfortunately for him, his speech too has been written to be delivered in lengthy passages in German followed by lengthy passages in Bosnian spoken by the interpreter. This way of handling consecutive translation for a speech dooms from the start any hope of creating a sense of conversation between speaker and audience.
By now the massed Bosnians at the back of the room have given up on the occasion and are talking openly among themselves. Herr Kinkel gets visibly angry at this open Balkan disrespect for Modern Europe. He raises his voice to try to bring everyone to listen to him.
Bosnians are made of stern stuff and have long memories of Nazi atrocities in World War Two. They tend to be unimpressed when Germans talk loudly at them. The louder Herr Kinkel talks, the louder the Bosnians talk.
A ghastly sonic arms race ensues. Herr Kinkel is determined to drown out the insolent Bosnians. The bored Bosnians are no less keen to drown out that German man at the other end of the room spoiling the reception by making such an annoying noise.
My subsequent reporting telegram to London recorded this amazing scene:
“It also is striking how diplomatically ineffective our main European partners seem here. The Védrine/Kinkel visit here last week seemed to sum things up, in presentational terms at least. At the large Holiday Inn reception for the visitors with a top-level turnout of Bosnian, Serb, and Croat leaders, Védrine’s tame speech was the normal Dayton platitudes. Kinkel delivered an energetic address on the general lines of ‘We have done a lot for you! You shall be grateful! And cooperate!’ Stirring stuff, but not enough to enthuse the Bosnian audience, many of whom rudely carried on talking among themselves while it was delivered.”
All in all, a grimly instructive diplomatic fiasco.
Where the two countries’ diplomats organizing this event get things wrong? Basically, neither the Ministers’ respective offices nor their Embassies in Sarajevo had devised a formula to make sure the event would work as an event. I suspect that most of the clever effort before their visit had been devoted to crafting the words of the speech, ignoring the fact that what makes a speech successful is (of course) the words themselves but also the way in which they are delivered to the audience. Thus an audience that (perhaps for good practical reasons) is standing up needs a short, punchy speech; an audience sitting down is more comfortable and can cope with something longer and more thoughtful.
This applies all the more so if consecutive interpreting has to be used for a standing audience. A ten-minute speech by the Minister becomes a twenty-minute speech when delivered through an interpreter. This is a long time for people to stand and listen and try to absorb the words, when for precisely half the time they do not know what is being said. It is much better to format the speech so that the speaker’s words are translated sentence by sentence by the interpreter. This creates a direct sense of conversation with the audience. It keeps their minds engaged on the speaker, not on the discomfort of standing to listen.
If (as on this occasion) the politics of the event require two speakers, both using consecutive interpreting, a way has to be found to coordinate the two speeches to keep them short, sharp and accessible. Perhaps in fact only one speech is needed, with the two speakers taking it in turns to deliver different sections of it. Something like this will have novelty value, and in itself will symbolise political cooperation and high-level mutual trust. Plus the very way the speech is delivered is more likely to keep the audience interested and alert.
However, that sort of thing requires a lot of extra work, plus a sophistication and self-awareness that typically escape the high chancelleries of today’s Europe.
In all public speaking, it is not what you say—it is what they hear. In war-weary Sarajevo in 1997 many of the leading personalities in post-conflict Bosnia did not hear from these two prominent European politicians an inspiring message of unity and shared purpose. They heard disjointedness, tedium, and perhaps even irrelevance. An expensive missed opportunity.
Charles Crawford was British Ambassador in Sarajevo, Belgrade and Warsaw. He is now a private presentation skills consultant and founding partner of The Ambassador Partnership, a global corporate diplomacy panel. He tweets at @charlescrawford.
This article was originally published in the Diplomatic Courier’s January/February 2014 print edition.
EU Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes announced yesterday on her Facebook page that her office is launching 2 competitions for developers, innovators and start-ups, with significant financials rewards. To enter, you must create apps which respond, support and improve society, in fields like education, health or social inclusion. We are talking about prizes worth over 300,000 Euros, so our advise is to get ready and put your knowledge to good use. The apps are not geographically bound and Romania could use some related to its healthcare or education systems, for example. More details are available here and here. Good luck!
Because Romania is struggling these days with heavy snowfalls and blizzards, we have a useful recommendation for you: the Waze Romania app created a list of all closed roads and alternative detours. All data will be updated in real time as the roads open for traffic. Let us know if you find it useful!
The European Parliament organized between 24-26 January 2014 in Brussels its Europarl Hackathon for the European Elections 2014, a 2 day event aimed to reunite coders, activists, graphists and journalists and come up with solutions, apps, portals or other types of social or online tools to enhance access and understanding around European Parliamentarians and their job s and roles. Here are some selected results:
EU Topics, by Chiara Girardelli, Michael Thomas, Marie Jamet, Sven Wauters: “This website allows you to see what subjects have mainly be tackled by the EU parliament over the last legislature”
Scoring EP (user interface [alpha version], and GitHub repository), by Michal Škop and others: An application for analyzing voting on issues by Members of the European Parliament; currently covers climate change only
La Quadrature du Net made enhancements to the “Voting Score” function of its Political Memory transparency and e-participation system for the European Parliament [HT @pudo]
2 very important social media events to take place in Bucharest in February. Check our friend Cristian China Birta’s blog for details about the conferences and reasons you should attend. See you there!
Mistakes in social media are easy to spot, can get overblown quite quickly and can cause serious concequences. But they can also be avoided quite easily. Check the article to find out some useful tips.
For those working in NGOs, you should kow that social networks can be very useful in terms of promoting your work and the causes you fight for. Check the following article to find out social media tips for nonprofits but also how to specifically use Snapchat to support your work.
The bilateral relationship between the United States and Cuba has come a long way since April 6, 1960 when it was deemed that “every possible means should be taken to weaken the Cuban economic life.” Back then, U.S. policy toward Cuba was categorized by non-recognition of the Cuban government’s legitimacy; diplomatic isolation in the hemisphere and beyond; and economic, financial, and commercial blockade. Cuba’s strategy has always been resistance, especially when it came to U.S.-backed democracy promotion initiatives such as Radio and TV Marti – a broadcasting operation created to serve as “consistently reliable and authoritative sources of accurate, objective, and comprehensive news for people in Cuba.” Since its inception, the Cuban government has made regular attempts to block Radio and TV Marti’s signal – an operation believed by the Cubans to be disseminating propaganda against the revolution. Moreover, when Cubans get limited access to information, despite the government’s censorship, they prefer alternative media sources with less friction and political rhetoric. The outcome of Radio and TV Marti is a failed U.S. public diplomacy initiative and an increasingly unpopular image for the U.S. in Latin America and the Caribbean.
While there is no existing model for how Cubans can build a new socialist state, effective public diplomacy initiatives have the potential to become invaluable tools for the future of U.S. engagement with the island nation, especially since Cuba is already in the process of transition. Fidel is no longer in power and, with the exception of one ‘young’ new heir; the rest of the Cuban leadership is beyond retirement age. Change is simply inevitable. Cuba’s political system will need to become more flexible in order to be compatible with the globalized world we live in. For the U.S., the role of democratic promotion in human empowerment for the future generations of young Cubans will be key.
Cuba has historically been very successful at adapting to exogenous shocks that threatened its survival. This reality reveals a space for an effective communication strategy that speaks to the aspirations and resourcefulness of the Cuban people. However, in order to reach them, outreach need not be designed through the same Cold War lens of previous U.S.-backed public diplomacy initiatives and failed foreign policies. Now more than ever, with Obama’s ‘new beginning with Cuba’ strategy, the U.S. Department of State has a real chance for meaningful outreach to the island. With the latest travel ban lifted in January 2011 for people-to-people travel, the U.S. Department of State has a window of opportunity to exercise its soft power in the form of effective public diplomacy strategies, namely in the areas of educational exchange and cultural diplomacy.
With that in mind, here are three things to recognize about Cuba today:
1. Cuba has a private sector.
In April of 2011, the 6th Congress reaffirmed the path of transition to socialism with a new economic model. The evolution began 15 years ago as a way to legalize the black market and profit on it. It is an attempt to recover fallen sectors of the economy such as oil, nickel, and iron, and expand the non-state sector through new projects designed to push growth including a new airport, a new harbor in Mariel Bay, and 20,000 four and five start hotel rooms. The most significant shift to liberalizing elements of the economy takes the form of legal permission to become a ‘cuentapropista’ or a private business owner. With the firing of 1.2 million people (roughly 20% of the Cuban economy’s workforce), an expansion of 181 service jobs was designed to alleviate the government’s paycheck. However, the approved activities do not seem to produce meaningful economic development and may only aggravate Cuba’s inefficiency in production capabilities. For example, while the experiment with free-market in the agricultural sector is a vivid sign of how the country has changed, Cuban food imports have increased indicating the political and practical limitations that hold it back. Regardless of the success rate, however, such economic ‘updates,’ generate unintended consequences that could have larger socio-political and economic implications for the island. For Cuba, however, it is not about how you want to be, but how to do it when you have no reference at all.
A state employee looks on to the empty shelves at the local bodega (convenience store) where Cuban families once relied upon for their food intake, regardless of the their social and economical status.
The Libreta de Abastecimiento (supplies booklet), created on March 12, 1962 to keep track of the rations each person is allowed to buy at subsidized prices and the frequency of supplies from the distribution system
2. Cuba has a highly educated population.
One of the most notable achievements of the 53-year-old Cuban revolution is free education. In Cuba, primary, secondary and tertiary school, as well as higher education, is equal opportunity and until last year, completely free of charge. In terms of gender equality, contrary to most developed countries, women make up 65% of university students in areas of science and high technology. While this revolutionary accomplishment has created a high quality of human capital, it has also generated a real threat of migration for the state. Each year, 38,000 Cubans immigrate, 35% of which are highly qualified professionals. Immigration in most cases is due to the lack of professional growth, economic incentive, and high aspirations for highly qualified human capital in Cuba. The result is a highly educated and unfulfilled population. So far, the Cuban government has only taken preventative measures to solve inequality amongst its most qualified workers. By cutting back enrollment in humanities by 40%, it hopes to avoid mass unemployment in the areas of social sciences. It remains to be seen how the government will treat its current case of diminishing human condition.
One of many soviet-style school buses still operating in downtown Havana
3. Change must come from within Cuba.
Cuban national hero, Jose Marti, once said “con todos, y para el bien de todos” (with all, and for the good of all) in reference to the sacrifice, dedication, and collective needed for the best ideas to be born and the most difficult goals for the sake of human welfare to be reached. This is the common theme of the Cuban Revolution’s social service component. The service requirements are merged into the socialist model of education. They began in high school, or pre-universitario, three-year period where coursework is merged with voluntary projects that teach students to participate in common duties, shared values, and learn to become independent. For men, there is a one-year military service mandate (two years for those who do not plan to study). After graduation, there is another two-three year compulsory service requirement that must be completed before young graduates can begin work. The social service mandates not only bond Cubans to each other, they bond individuals to the land and bring the ideals of the revolution – such as nationalism, socialism, and participation – alive.
A revolutionary billboard outside the airport says “We see you every day…” referring to Che Guevara, an important figure in the Cuban Revolution, which serves to remind Cuban society that the revolution is still very much alive.
A photo of a town hall meeting where state officials come to hear the concerns of individual community members regarding the ongoing government ‘updates’
Effective Public Diplomacy Must Back Effective Foreign Policy
While the above primarily serves to inform an effective public diplomacy strategy for Cuba, the obvious constraints of the U.S. embargo impede the potential success of such strategic communication initiatives. We have seen that increasing trade ties doesn’t only serve for economic development, it also increases communication, transportation, and people-to-people interaction. Lifting the embargo would break the isolation of information in Cuba and the information society would pressure the Cuban government into a 21st century model of socialism that can exist in harmony with the globalized economy and international political system of today. For a hopeful future of mutual respect, cooperation, open dialogue, and effective engagement with the island, the U.S. embargo must be lifted.
All images are courtesy of the author.
Below is a selected collection of recent news articles on Cuba and public diplomacy aggregated by the PDiN news team. To full a full list of PDiN articles on Cuba, visit #cuba:
Classic Journeys Introduces People-To-People Cultural Exchange to Cuba
PR Web (press release)
California Chefs Encourage Fresh Dining in Cuba
Huffington Post
U.S. Bottleneck Snags Florida Orchestra’s Cuba Exchange
Tampa Bay Times
Aleksandra Ristovic currently serves as the International Broadcasting intern for CPD’s 2013 Research Initiative. She has also helped conduct research on a number of strategic topics for CPD and updates the CPD research database with relevant and new resources in the growing field of public diplomacy. She graduates from USC’s Masters of Public Diplomacy program in May of 2013 and plans to join the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer. Aleks’ focus is on diasporas as important tools of public diplomacy and the domestic dimensions of PD. She is especially interested in the role of digital diplomacy, exchange diplomacy, and the process of socialization in creating narratives and cultivating relationships between states and other actors. Aleks is proficient in Serbian, Spanish, and Portuguese with a working knowledge of French.
In its first issue of 2014, Monocle dedicated a slice of the magazine to its Soft Power Survey, a run-down of countries and their ability to create and sustain influence in positive ways. For the first time in its four year history, Monocle accorded sport its own category in the metrics of the survey. Football took centre stage as perhaps the most pervasive and global of all sports. As such, Monocle stated:
“Footballers playing abroad in the top leagues, major events screened around the globe, the competitors and teams that stand out from the crowd — all these have an impact on the way a country is viewed”
Taking first place in the survey, Germany can boast a significant number of players contracted to clubs in the world’s top leagues (though what those leagues are, and the presumed Euro-centric definition of ‘top’ leave this metric open to debate), and four clubs in the ‘global rich list’. Other significant sporting achievements are also recognised, such as Olympic medals, but my focus here is football.
What is ‘soft power’? I would suggest that Monocle’s own definition, revolving around “attraction rather than coercion”, neatly summarises the concept. This, of course, includes deliberate attempts to flex such power as well as the benefits which derive coincidentally from being basically decent. This is why nations vie for the chance to host the Olympics or the World Cup; it is as much for the ‘feel-good factor’ as any tangible economic benefit or demonstration of infrastructure or clout. It is a ‘soft’ way of showing that a nation has not only arrived as a serious player on the global stage, but also that it has sufficient traction to persuade others to get behind its bid; it shows that a nation has friends as well as influence.
Is football really key to this demonstration of soft power then? And, if it is, is that a whole story? Arguably, the answer to the first question is pretty straightforward, and it is yes. Football at its best is vibrant, exciting, emotional, as much as it is a generator of capital and a means of exposure for a nation. It creates a sense of shared experience, of happiness, and, when it goes well, success. The image of a nation’s or a club’s fans dancing in the streets to celebrate a victory is not hard to summon. Collective experience is very powerful. The manner and style of victory are also crucial. The beauty of Spain’s first two international tournament victories lay more in the aesthetics of their football than any narrative of previous heroic failure. The arrival of Chile in the Monocle survey’s top thirty coincides with their team playing a swash-buckling, adventurous style of play based on Bielsa-influenced principles which stirs most impartial observers.
Football clubs can also embody values which are conducive to the growth of ‘soft power’. The ownership principles of Bundesliga clubs, which ensure that fans retain a controlling interest in the club, or the socis principle by which Barcelona, among other Spanish clubs, are run, speaks to a sense of egalitarianism and being rooted in the local. In an age of globalisation and aggressive capitalism, these models seem to stand for something fairer, more decent, and more located in the actual identity of the club than, say, the franchise system of many US sports. This is soft economic power, the engendering of positive values by association.
Footballers have also become brands in themselves, which can have soft power benefits for the nations they represent. Monocle cites the mercurial Zlatan Ibrahimovic as Sweden’s ‘soft-power superstar’, a poster boy for integration and achievement despite his self-professed humble origins. It is Zlatan’s unquestioned talent and drive that have elevated him to world-wide acclaim and financial success, and football is full of such rags-to-riches tales, often involving individuals from backgrounds whose overwhelming narrative, imposed externally by the traditional seats of power, is of social exclusion or failure. This is an attractive story, aspirational and inclusive.
However, to see football as an indicator of soft power without caveats is to engage in a certain amount of myopia. Football is a global business and dominated by brands. For every soci-run club there are countless others run by outside investors and it is hard to ignore the sense that clubs are increasingly vehicles for debt servicing or profit maximisation, run by businesspeople eager to exploit the positive associations of the sport. Government support for stadium development, or the taking-over of stadia constructed for other purposes, also allows investors to exploit a desire for soft power, benefiting from projects paid for by the nation and seeing their assets grow on the back of it.
Football also has a potential for corruption which many are quick to exploit. Whether it is scandals involving FIFA, match-fixing, or forms of exploitation of aspirant footballers such as fraudulent promises of trials or contracts, there is a very murky side to the beautiful game that speaks less of soft power than its more brutal, at times criminal, cousin.
Even the hosting of major sporting events is no guarantee of soft power. Russia, Qatar, and Poland and the Ukraine all suffered from substantiated or alleged accusations of corruption, racism, homophobia, and political violence or instability. It must be argued that shining a light on these issues is positive. However, it cannot be ignored that, in spite of these problems, the governing bodies of football saw fit to efface or downplay such negatives in order to sustain their decisions to host tournaments in those countries. Soft power gained despite such issues is merely a balm, or smoke and mirrors to hide what is really going on.
Perhaps, then, like anything, Monocle’s recognition of the soft power potential of sports such as football needs to be read against a wider narrative. There is no doubt that football does confer soft power and for many, very good reasons. To take that as a total and transparent reflection of the global game is, however, denying a very obvious reality.
Join us over the week of 17-21 February and share Vines to showcase your culture.
During Social Media Week, the Digital Diplomacy Coalition (DDC) invites you to take part in a global digital event — a Cultural Diplomacy Vine-A-Thon.
A Vine-A-Thon is where people all over the world share Vines on a common topic during a specified time-frame using a common hashtag.
How can you participate? It’s easy! During the week of 17-21 February share a Vine which highlights your culture using the hashtag #DiploVine. We’ll retweet and revine our favorites!
What are we looking for? Creativity! We want you to use your 6 second videos to highlight your culture – Film, Fashion, Heritage, Art, Music, Food, Sport — use your imagination.
The only limit is your imagination. Show us your culture in 6 seconds on Vine!
Share a quick video featuring music from your country highlighting photos of bands
Create an animation highlighting your country’s cultural heritage
Film your friends performing a dance or quickly modeling local fashion
Remember to use the hashtag #DiploVine and have fun!
The Foreign Secretary, in his speech on Diplomatic Tradecraft, said that diplomats should be, “well-versed in modern communication including social media”.
The FCO encourages all staff to make full use of the opportunities offered by social media to help deliver FCO objectives. Social media:
Allows diplomats to monitor events, harvest information and identify key influencers.
Can assist in the consultation process and the formulation of policy by helping us crowd source ideas.
Provide real time channels to deliver our messages directly and influence beyond traditional audiences.
Improve the delivery of our services through closer engagement with our customers and allow us to better manage a crisis.
Make us more accountable and transparent through open dialogue.
The importance of embedding digital tools in policy making and service delivery is set out in more detail in the FCO Digital Strategy.
Social media activity in the FCO
We do not expect our staff to all use social media in the same way but we do expect social media to be a core part of the toolkit of a modern diplomat.
FCO staff should feel empowered to use social media in three main ways:
All staff should use social media for listening: monitoring conversations, keeping track of news and building networks as part of their day to day work. a) This means setting up an account with a monitoring tool. You should also consider digital tools that aggregate real time news trends from social and mainstream media. b) You do not need your own personal social media accounts to use monitoring tools.
Policy/desk officers may use, or set up, personal social media accounts for low-key work related activity such as the building of networks, following influencers in your policy area and engaging with those groups in non-controversial areas. a) If you are taking up this flexibility, you may wish your profile to say you work for the FCO or Civil Service. However your profile should state your views are personal and do not necessarily represent the views of your organisation. b) You do not need permission to use social media accounts for work related activity but you should inform your Head of Department that you are doing so. Staff will need to take FCO security considerations into account. c) Examples of this engagement could include the highlighting of public information, lines or reports or relevant FCO or external events. It might also include asking non-controversial questions. d) Personal accounts should not be used for making policy announcements, engaging in controversy, or breaking news – that is the job of official accounts.
Staff for whom active engagement and communication will be essential in the delivery of objectives should use an official FCO branded channel. This could be personal (e.g. HMA) or on a policy theme (e.g. FCOHumanRights). a) This can be in addition to 1 and 2 and will require sign off from line management and digital team – channels should have a clear purpose and ongoing commitment to effective staffing. b) Official accounts will be registered and monitored and reviewed to ensure effectiveness. c) All official accounts should be clearly and consistently branded and listed on the FCO website.
See FCO Facebook Guidance and FCO Twitter Guidance (only available through FCO intranet). These guides provide information on setting up official channels, branding and best practice.
What are the rules?
We should not say anything on social media that we would not say on any other public channel; this means contradict HMG policy or be politically partial or breach the Civil Service Code in any other way, bring the office into disrepute or divulge classified information.
Official accounts allow us to target key audiences, deliver our messages and information directly, engage and be open to challenge, opening up access to our officials and Ministers.
Official social media channels should provide relevant, useful information on UK Government activity; promote the FCO, HMG and relevant partner content in line with FCO objectives.
More specifically official accounts should have a clear purpose and audience and be evaluated against those criteria.
Below is a framework on when to seek clearance before publishing content on official channels:
Go ahead
Established policy & press lines within your area of expertise.
Seek guidance from head of team and/or Press Office & Digital Department.
Breaking news where there is press no line.
The interpretation of a change of policy where the line is being agreed.
Ministerial movements.
Rebuttal.
Don’t do it
Subjects not in your area of expertise or direct responsibility or any classified data.
You should update social media channels regularly or it is not worth doing at all – tailor frequency, length and type of updates to audience needs and expectations.
You are encouraged to share interesting third party content eg media articles, NGO blogs, foreign government information but only if you are sure of it is appropriate and it is politically impartial.
Take into account cultural sensitivities and avoid posting anything that could be considered offensive by anyone who may see the page (including audiences from other countries).
Debate is good, a protracted online argument is not. Take discussion best dealt with in private offline.
Do not post or share anything which breaches Copyright or that could be construed as advertising or promoting a commercial company.
Do not disclose information that is classified or privileged, or that may put you or your colleagues at risk, whether from crime, terrorism, or espionage.
How to apply for an official social media account (only available through FCO intranet).
Personal use of social media
We have no bar on staff using social media channels but there are some rules.
Where your social media accounts are personal, you do not need to say you work for the FCO or Civil Service.
It is important to remember that when posting in a personal capacity you may still easily be identified by others as working for the FCO even if you don’t state it.
Stating that your views are personal is no insurance against negative media or other publicity. On personal social networks – even closed ones like facebook – you should be aware that posts can be shared outside your network.
Overseas, what you say will likely be seen as representing FCO/HMG views.
You should avoid taking part in any political or public activity which compromises, or might be seen to compromise, your impartial service to the government. The precise restrictions are specific to different staff (e.g. politically restricted grades) and you should know them already as they apply to you offline too.
See also guidance on staying safe online (only available through FCO intranet).
Dealing with mistakes
In making full use of social media, mistakes will occasionally happen.
How the FCO deals with a particular mistake will depend on the nature of the error. Your online conduct is subject to the same disciplinary rules as your offline conduct.
There are a few steps you should take if you make a mistake:
1.
Delete the post and apologise for the mistake, explaining that the material was posted by mistake and is not an official view.
2.
Post the correct the information if the mistake was factual, making clear what you’ve corrected.
3.
Inform your line manager and the Press and Digital Department for advice on further handling.
When Ambassador Ritva Koukku-Ronde of Finland finally took the dive into Twitter in December 2012, she was in the company of another famous diplomat who joined the same day. Her first tweet? “Dear friends of Finland, if the Pope can do it I can do it, too.”
Barring cheeky references to Pope Benedict XVI (who started @Pontifex, which now has 3.5 million followers), conversations about digital diplomacy usually contain the same corporate jargon-laden catchphrases. Social media platforms are ways to “engage the public,” “promote cultural understanding,” and “encourage informed debate.”
Social media does do all of that, but more to the point, it is a way to communicate with the masses — whether it’s Kosovo striving for global legitimacy, or France sharing its famed “Map of Kisses,” or Greece posting photos of Byzantine art to promote its exhibit at the National Gallery.
However, diplomats who use social media solely to push out their message have quickly found their accounts unheeded by the very people they’re trying to reach. Instead, a range of creative and, more important, focused campaigns have proven effective at gaining ground in a digital space that grows more overcrowded each day.
Photo: Anatoliy / iStock
A blooming array of resources, from organizations devoted to digital diplomacy to consultants and conferences, can help cut through the clutter. And, of course, embassy staffers who have figured out how to promote their nations are key to successful digital campaigns.
Social Media Becomes Standard Practice
Maintaining a Facebook and Twitter site has become de rigueur for the city’s embassies and ambassadors (also see “Tweet This: Embassies Embrace Digital Diplomacy” in the April 2013 issue of The Washington Diplomat) — to say nothing of the many other platforms diplomats are also learning to navigate, from Flickr and Tumblr to Instagram and Pinterest.
Ambassador Nathalie Cely Suárez of Ecuador joined Koukku-Ronde on the digital diplomacy panel at The Diplomat’s second annual Country Promotion Strategies Conference (#CPS2013) last November. Stuart Holliday, head of the Meridian International Center and conference moderator, called Cely — who has more than 50,000 Twitter followers — an “early adapter and trailblazer” in the digital realm.
Cely said her first rule of social media is that you need to like it. “If you’re doing it professionally, you need to take it seriously,” she told the more than 200 diplomats gathered at the Ritz-Carlton in D.C. for the event. “I tweet about things I care about the most.”
And the information has to be useful. She noted that the embassy developed an application — downloaded by more than 15,000 people — that helps Ecuadorians in the United States (and Americans who’ve retired in Ecuador) locate consulates to obtain visas.
The ambassador also said she balances political posts with personal observations and opinions to ensure authenticity and build a fan base that can relate to her — an aspect of social media that can be difficult for professional diplomats whose job, after all, is to be diplomatic.
“Sometimes I’ll share something very personal if it’s relevant…. You have to develop a persona,” she said. “People need to know it’s you. People are very smart. They’ll know if it’s not.”
Katie Harbath, policy manager at Facebook, who also spoke at the CPS Conference, agreed that being authentic will attract more fans. For instance, she suggested postings that chronicle a “day in the life of an ambassador” to give fans an inside look at what goes on at an embassy.
James Barbour, press secretary and head of communications for the British Embassy, said social media has upended traditional diplomacy — and journalism for that matter. “It’s absolutely a paradigm shift, like the invention of the newspaper.”
Barbour said that Twitter, Facebook and other platforms have changed the way communications professionals engage with journalists. “Social media can be so fantastically visual,” he said. “You do more if you tweet it than send it out as a press release.”
While the official British Embassy Twitter feed (UKinUSA) primarily shares policy and hard news updates, the embassy’s Facebook page has more of a mix, with a focus on cultural events, study abroad information and theater reviews, including a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the classic British television series “Doctor Who.”
But perhaps the most notable change in the U.K.’s social media policy is the emergence of the Northern Ireland Bureau (NIB) as a separate presence. “The rising influence of social media could not have come soon enough for Northern Ireland,” said Bronagh Finnegan, administration and public affairs officer for the NIB. “As a region that constantly finds itself trying to overcome negative and anachronistic coverage in the traditional press, our digital diplomacy campaign has allowed us to convey a more accurate picture of Northern Ireland through a prism that better reflects the reality on the ground.
“The impact of this shift is staggering as a new generation in the U.S. has a greater understanding of a region with important historic, economic and ancestral ties to America,” Finnegan said.
Social media can indeed amplify the voices of smaller groups. For example, despite its small size, Kosovo has leveraged its substantial online presence (it was recently ranked fourth in the world for its digital diplomacy efforts by the Turkish diplomatic publication Yeni Diplomasi) to push for greater recognition on the world stage since it unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia in 2008. That includes getting Internet giants like Google and Amazon to recognize Kosovo’s independence on their sites.
“We had a 17-year-old kid who managed to convince Twitter to recognize Kosovo as a country,” Petrit Selimi, Kosovo’s deputy foreign affairs minister, said at a discussion last September at Johns Hopkins University in D.C. “LinkedIn just recognized Kosovo. Our big aim is Facebook. And we’re in dialogue with Google as well.”
Two-Way Street
While social media has given nations an unprecedented avenue to quickly disseminate information to the public and press, for a digital campaign to succeed, it has to be a two-way street.
Finding strategies — and the time — to genuinely engage with people online is a challenge not only for ambassadors, but for world leaders as well.
A global study called “Twiplomacy” released last summer by the PR firm Burson-Marsteller found that more than three-quarters of world leaders have a Twitter account.
But the same study found that a Twitter presence did not necessarily translate into connectivity. For example, while President Obama is the world’s most followed leader on Twitter, he is not the best-connected leader. @BarackObama only mutually follows two other world leaders: Norway’s Jens Stoltenberg and Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev. Likewise, @WhiteHouse and @StateDept are followed by 132 and 99 peers, respectively, but they barely follow any other world leaders. On the flip side, Uganda’s prime minister (@AmamaMbabazi) is the most conversational world leader, with 96 percent of his tweets being @replies to other users.
“This study illustrates how Twitter and social media in general have become part and parcel of any integrated government communications,” said Jeremy Galbraith, CEO of Burson-Marsteller Europe, Middle East and Africa. “While Twitter is certainly not the only channel of communication and will not replace face-to-face meetings, it allows for direct peer-to-peer interaction.”
And that interaction is crucial. “You’re using it the wrong way around if it’s only one way,” Ilse van Overveld, counselor for public diplomacy, press and culture at the Netherlands Embassy, said of social media at the CPS Conference. She recommended question-and-answer sessions with ambassadors and diplomats to start a dialogue with online users. She also noted that in addition to public diplomacy officers, the Dutch Embassy is working to have diplomats who specialize in other areas, such as defense and economics, share their expertise online as well.
Fellow panelist Marc Johnson of APCO Worldwide said embassies should avoid a “push and pray model” — push a message out and pray that it sticks. Rather, he advised diplomats to genuinely engage with their audience and “find the conversations where you want to be relevant.”
For instance, experts point out that Twitter hashtags are an easy way for embassies to hone in on conversations involving their respective nations. Other social media monitoring and marketing tools such as Radian6 can help organizations keep track of what’s being said across the digital spectrum.
Overveld’s embassy uses Storify to collect its various online media postings into a coherent story. She stressed that the Dutch Embassy also works with its consulates throughout the country to build a unified communications strategy.
Lior Livak also embraces an integrated approach. He’s director of digital initiatives at the Embassy of Israel, where Twitter and Facebook are used in conjunction with a newsletter and website to ensure consistent messaging across a broad range of political and cultural topics. “We use Facebook as a political tool to complement our diplomats’ messages, and to get our point of view across,” Livak said. “But we also try to have fun with it.”
Facebook’s Harbath said postings should run the gamut, from emergency response updates during a national disaster to more lighthearted features. For example, she cited the Movember campaign, an annual initiative in November when men grow mustaches to raise awareness of men’s health issues. The Canadian, British and other embassies regularly post updates on how their diplomats’ mustaches are growing as part of Movember. “It gets people talking so the next time you post something, you have their attention.”
Beneficial Back and Forth
With so many platforms to choose from, and so many distinct, but often overlapping audiences, it can be difficult to know how to engage. Andreas Sandre, press and public affairs officer at the Embassy of Italy and author of “Twitter for Diplomats,” points to the embassy’s social media hub as a way to reach users in their preferred method, and discover why they’re coming to Italy — online.
“People think of Italy as Michelangelo, Leonardo [da Vinci], pizza and pasta, but we’re much more than that. People are looking at us for how to build a pair of shoes, or the engineering in the Maserati. We are our history, but we’re much more than what Italy was. Social media helps us tell the story of what we’re becoming. It lets us ask, ‘What are you expecting from us? Are we doing a good job? How are people looking at Italy?’”
Direct engagement can also lead to surprising results. For Maria Galanou, press officer at the Embassy of Greece, a chance letter to the ambassador turned into one of the embassy’s most successful outreach campaigns.
“Megan, an American student studying abroad in Greece, sent a letter to the ambassador called ‘Battling Preconceptions with Reality in Greece,’” Galanou said. “In this letter, she stated how amazing her experience in Greece has been thus far, and that what she sees is nothing like what the media portrays.”
So the embassy created a “Study Abroad in Greece” social media campaign, using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as well as the hashtag #studyabroadgreece. More than 25,000 social media users were exposed to the campaign.
“Our social media strategy consists of creating a relationship with our friends and followers. That is why we make sure to interact with them online,” said Galanou. “We choose our content so as to highlight the connections between the American and Greek people, and we welcome content that our friends and followers have to share.”
Although negative comments can be an unwelcome part of an embassy’s social media presence, Galanou hasn’t shied away from them. When a troll began spamming the embassy’s Twitter feed with tales of animal abuse in Greece, Galanou and the press team contacted him directly. “We reached out to him, talked to him, asked him questions, shared positive content. He responded positively but then again started the same, because he’s a troll. We also followed all the people who retweeted him, and this way we made them follow us — so our positive animal stories reached them as well, plus we got more followers!”
Innovative Collaboration
Galanou, Sandre, Barbour and Overveld all participate in the Digital Diplomacy Coalition (DDC), a rapidly growing, volunteer-based group that hosts local lectures, panels, happy hours and, most recently, an open house at the Embassy of Canada to showcase the various social media programs of Washington’s diplomatic corps. “DDC is a brilliant initiative and a great source of information, knowledge and networking among digital strategists and communication professionals of the diplomatic community in D.C.,” said Galanou.
Time and again, diplomats point to social media as a networking and promotional tool. Many embassies use social media to encourage their followers to attend a sporting match, celebrate holiday festivities, or simply connect in person.
The Embassy of Canada has capitalized on its prime real estate and digital savvy to take its branding campaign to the next level, so much so that since the 2013 presidential inauguration, the embassy building has had its own Twitter hashtag: #viewfrom501.
“The viewfrom501 hashtag came about through lively debate pre-inauguration festivities,” said Alexandra Vachon White, a deputy spokesperson for the embassy. “We wanted a hashtag that would highlight our unique vantage point at 501 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, and at the same time be short, easy to remember, and applicable for any future event at the embassy. It allows us, and visitors, to include more content in our tweets when referencing the embassy. Space is at a premium in the Twittersphere, and #viewfrom501 saves those valuable characters.”
And it’s extremely effective. White points to the presidential inauguration as one of the embassy’s most successful campaigns. “The 2013 Inauguration Tailgate event campaign was very well received. Our [Connect2Canada] followers on Twitter and Facebook who were not in attendance appreciated access to such a special day, and we were able to engage guests on site during the event by displaying their photos and tweets live on the Jumbotron in real time.”
Such engagement wasn’t a fluke. At the Digital Diplomacy Open House, attendees tweeted photos, links and updates using #viewfrom501, which provided a real-time experience from inside the embassy to those unable to attend, whether in Washington or around the world.
The Digital Diplomacy Coalition offers a forum for diplomats to share these kinds of tips with one another. Some embassies have the luxury of digitally dedicated staffs, while others rely on everyone to chip in online.
But given the rapid evolution of social media, there’s a constant learning curve for almost everyone involved. Finnish Ambassador Koukku-Ronde said her Ministry of Foreign Affairs is encouraging its diplomats to embrace social media, although she is still navigating this newfound terrain.
She said she tweets occasionally and tries to limit the number of people she’s following so as not to get overwhelmed. But she’s learned one old-fashioned trick that seems to get people’s attention. Taking a cue from BuzzFeed’s viral videos of cute animals, Koukku-Ronde joked that when all else fails, “use pictures of cats.”
About the Author
Molly McCluskey (@MollyEMcCluskey) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.
Online reputation management: the practice of monitoring the Internet reputation of a person, brand or business, with the goal of suppressing negative mentions entirely, or pushing them lower on search engine results pages to decrease their visibility (Varinder Taprial, Priya Kanwar, 2012).
According to media commentary, the flourishing business of online reputation management (ORM) straddles an ethical divide between protecting against falsifications and perpetrating them. Its techniques inhabit several ethical shades of gray, from reputation monitoring, defamation clean-up and positive content promotion to SEO manipulation, negative review removal and astroturfing practices. But if ORM poses ethical concerns in relation to its use by private businesses and individuals, how then should its use by governments be regarded?
As a new industry, ORM is as yet unbound by codes of ethics. It’s an ‘anything goes’ area where the virtual freedoms of the internet meet with the paranoia of businesses and the profit seeking of reputation firms. According to communications consultant Charlie Pownall, “ORM can too easily appear to be a dark art practiced by shady search/SEO specialists and underhand PR types for organizations with dodgy practices experiencing crises or social media campaigns running amok”. It is no wonder then that the ORM industry is itself increasingly suffering from reputation issues of its own.
In some jurisdictions at least, it appears that the long arm of the law is catching up with the more questionable ORM practices. Last September, the New York Attorney General concluded a year-long undercover investigation into the reputation management industry and false endorsements. In a press release, AG Eric T Schneiderman put the cat among the pigeons, stating that “astroturfing is the 21st century’s version of false advertising, and prosecutors have many tools at their disposal to put an end to it.” As a result of the investigation, 19 companies agreed to cease writing fake online reviews for businesses and to pay more than $350,000 in fines.
ORM, dictators and the end of dissent
The incorporation of internet and social media into national foreign affairs, tourism, trade and foreign investment strategies is widely acknowledged. Most – if not all – governments are engaged at some level in the practice of utilizing the internet to enhance and protect their nation’s brand. The Canadian Tourism Commission, for example, claims to have been a pioneer in using user developed video content in online broadcasts, and terms such as ‘twitter diplomacy’ and ‘e-diplomacy’ are now firmly entrenched in the lexicon of international relations.
With the increasing importance of their online presence, many governments have also turned to ORM companies to protect their brands online. In doing so, they too have entered the ethical no-man’s land that is online reputation management. According to Virtual Social Media, an online marketing services company, “there are several professional government ORM agencies with the required experience and expertise with creative strategies to protect the fair image of the government. Their proactive approach will enable government to contain all damaging reports well in advance and quite often even before they appear online.” It’s a claim that many – including advocates of open and accountable government – might find disturbing.
On the one side of this divide are ORM professionals who point to the positive national outcomes that their work for governments can achieve. Eric Schiffer, chairman of ReputationManagementConsultants.com, writes, “for our corporate clients, success is measured based on their ROI and the impact on their bottom line”, yet for his firm’s campaign for a west African government, “success is measured by the impact on their nation’s gross domestic product (GDP).”
On the other side, Thor Halvorssen, president of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, argues that ‘reputation management’ can be a euphemism of the worst sort. “In many cases across Africa, it often means whitewashing the human rights violations of despotic regimes with fluff journalism and, just as easily, serving as personal PR agents for rulers and their corrupt family members”. It can also work to drown out criticism, branding dissidents and critics as criminals, terrorists or extremists.
In each case, the divide is characterized by several questions, such as whether ORM is being utilized by government in the interest of the nation (the common good) or in the interest of the government of the day (the ruling party). It would appear that in any number of cases, it is the interests of the ruling party that are winning out.
The scale and complexity of this is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the case of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – a political organization boasting one of the world’s most complex in-house online reputation management machineries.
[Propaganda poster in Beijing reinforcing the CCP’s official ‘harmonious society’ narrative. From the Line 21 Project collection]
Protecting the domestic reputation of the one-party Chinese state is a vast panopticon of monitoring, surveillance, content production, opinion guidance and firewall infrastructure with a reach that would surely be the envy of any ORM company. Network traffic from mobile data text messages (Tencent’s WeChat/微信) to microblogs (such as Sina Weibo/新浪微博) are monitored. Search engine results are curated, with sensitive keywords censored, and whole tracts of the internet blocked.
Government authorities employ a ‘water army’/水军 of internet commentators known unofficially as the ‘50 Cent Party’/五毛党 to post comments favorable towards party policies in order to shape public opinion (CNY 0.5 is the purported payment for each post that steers discussion away from anti-party comment). It has been estimated that up to 300,000 such commentators astroturf for various levels of government aimed at audiences both within and outside of China. On the flipside, ‘Big V’ microbloggers (those with big followings) who post views that upset the state are routinely shut down and forced to confess their ‘irresponsible’ actions in misguiding public sentiment. A country-wide crackdown on ‘toxic’ internet rumors has led to many arrests in the name of correctly guiding public opinion.
Managing reputations: less speaks louder than more
While the issues and debates surrounding Beijing’s internet controls are complex, considering the CCP’s grip on cyberspace through the prism of ORM does shine a strong light on the industry’s darker arts.
The end of dissent is perhaps the shared dream of dictators, authoritarian regimes and many of the businesses that engage ORM help. The dystopian obverse of this dream is the skewing of online speech and the attempted systematic removal of truth. Many ORM principles might read comfortably within the pages of a dictator’s guide to online statecraft, but as any good reputation specialist will argue, nothing protects a brand’s reputation more than a great brand.
Conversely, nothing compromises the reputation of a brand more effectively than obvious cover-up and misrepresentation.
As Greg Klassen, recently appointed interim President and CEO of the Canadian Tourism Commission, has remarked, “when there are “sniper shots” to our country’s reputation largely through social media… we have this brand firewall that tends to protect our reputation.” The ‘brand firewall’ to which Klassen refers is not some cutting-edge cyber barrier designed to shut down detractors but rather the innate value and resilience of brand Canada itself.
In its first issue of 2014, Monocle dedicated a slice of the magazine to its Soft Power Survey, a run-down of countries and their ability to create and sustain influence in positive ways. For the first time in its four year history, Monocle accorded sport its own category in the metrics of the survey. Football took centre stage as perhaps the most pervasive and global of all sports. As such, Monocle stated:
