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WikiLeaks, public diplomacy 2.0 and the state of digital public diplomacy, Nicholas J. Cull - an extract

We are all diplomats now - Nicholas J. Cull explores the all-embracing potential for digital public diplomacy in his article for Place Branding and Public Diplomacy journal.

It happened in November. The world was weary of war and crisis when he stole the headlines. He was charismatic. He was radical. He had a point to prove. He defied years of diplomatic convention and laid the secrets of great power diplomacy before the world. His revelations captured the headlines and shocked the establishment. In laying bare these secrets he proclaimed a new approach to international affairs and - implicitly - the arrival of a new power. Julian Assange? November 2010? No. That vignette describes events in the now distant autumn of 1917 and the actions of Leon Trotsky, then the newly appointed People's Commissar for International Affairs for the Bolshevik government of Russia.

In November 1917 Trotsky published a number of secret treaties which had been found in the archives of the Tsar in the aftermath of the Russian revolution. In a statement of 22 November 1917 Trotsky argued that: 'The abolition of secret diplomacy is the primary condition for an honest, popular, truly democratic foreign policy. The Soviet Government regards it as its duty to carry out such a policy.' The documents that Trotsky published revealed a sorry tale of the backroom deals in which belligerent powers of the entente (Russia, France and Great Britain) promised various concessions of territory to the neutral nations that they sought to draw into the Great War.

Diplomacy swiftly adjusted to compensate for Trotsky's gambit. On 8 January 1918 the US president Woodrow Wilson replied in kind. His 'fourteen points' on which he claimed an equitable peace could be based included 'open covenants openly arrived at'. Others tried to give the new regime a taste of its own medicine with revelations of collusion between the Bolsheviks and the Kaiser's Germany. In time the Soviet state learnt the value of secrecy in diplomacy and reinstated the traditional approach, reaching new heights of double dealing in the pact with Hitler of August 1939, but for a season it enjoyed the fruits of its defiance of convention. Trotsky's revelation was a symbol that the Bolshevik state represented something new in world affairs. It was public diplomacy by leak.

The analogy with 1917 is not wholly academic. The coming (or is it a springing?) of WikiLeaks is just as indicative of a 'game change' as Trotsky's gambit was ninety-six years ago. As then, while the information itself is important what is crucial is the context. In 1917 the leak required an earth-shattering revolution. In 2010 all it took to challenge the diplomatic order of the day was a single individual with a well-placed accomplice and a little technical know-how.

Now, technical know-how is at the heart of the revolution in communications technology. WikiLeaks not only required a flash drive and surreptitious data dump to acquire its trove of material, but also needed the facilities of an easily accessible worldwide web to make it instantaneously available. Technology has given one individual the communication power that was the monopoly of the nation state in the previous century.

In the wake of the Trotsky leak the great powers faced a prolonged struggle to reassert their legitimacy and did so in part by shifting to greater openness with institutions such as the League of Nations.

In the wake of WikiLeaks the powers of our own time will have to consider again the dangers of double dealing, and work to ensure that there is a minimal gap between what is claimed in public and what is practised in private. For all its regrettable corrosion of the principles of confidentiality on which so much diplomacy rests, the shadow of WikiLeaks may play the classic role once memorably claimed for an Australian opposition party and thereafter embraced by the investigative press: 'keep the bastards honest'.

THE FOUNDATION: PUBLIC DIPLOMACY 1.0

The web-based revolution in public diplomacy has been a long time coming. As far back as the late 1960s some public diplomats had been anticipating a golden age of communication made possible by a network of computers. In February 1968 America's chief public diplomat, the director of the United States Information Agency, Leonard Marks, predicted that a world information grid of linked computers would be 'a fundamental step toward lasting world peace... The culture of all lands must be circulated through the houses of nations as our technology permits.'

The dawn didn't really break until the mid 1990s when the Mosaic browser system made it possible for the personal computers which had spread in the 1980s to access data platforms in the rapidly growing worldwide web.

For public diplomats the implications of this were slow to sink in. Web technology where it was used was a platform for press releases and one-way top-down communication. The pride of US public diplomacy was its system for making Voice of America available online, initially in script form but eventually as an audio stream. Journals became available online (cheaper than print) and the so-called 'wireless file' anthology of 'useful' American news and views which had been sent to embassies since the early 1930s became a website.

Amazing as it sounds now, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 found a number of US embassies still without websites. Other players around the world were more canny, realizing the value of a well-managed online identity. Cyber-image and, by extension, cyber-diplomacy became a tool in the public diplomacy toolbox. What seems to have been largely missed was the shift of power inherent in the new technology. Governments focused on how swiftly they could do what they had always done. Militaries looked to occupy cyber-space as if it were simply the modern equivalent of the prized high ground of old. Treasuries looked to save money by going 'paperless'. But the new technology meant more than that. It was empowering the individual in a new way.

While the great powers continued (and continue) to broadcast their speeches, press releases and so forth into the ether and across the web, the audience was no longer as likely to listen. Part of the change was rooted in the sheer number of voices suddenly speaking online and the range of choices available. But as the number of websites proliferated it became possible to seek out a source closely matching one's own sense of identity, and even to develop an identity based on an online connection. Many different imagined communities emerged online built from shared interests. Some had the potential to supplant national identity. Online communities based around radical Islamism were a case in point.

This proliferation of communities had one massive implication for public diplomacy and that was in the area of credibility. Public diplomacy relies on being credible to an audience but in this new environment polls revealed that credibility now rested not with the traditional generators of information - governments and news organizations - but with whoever seemed to be 'someone like me'.

THE COMING OF WEB 2.0

By 2004 it became clear that the internet was changing and that a new term was needed to describe the quantum leap from the old world of web-pages and email to that of social media and sites based on user-generated content. The English-speaking internet community seized on a term first coined in the specialized literature in 1999 which drew an analogy to the release of the new version of a program: a version 2.0 (two-point-oh). The term Web 2.0 was used fairly loosely to discuss the explosion of user-generated content online including blogs, the crowd-sourced encyclopaedia site Wikipedia (founded 2001) and social media sites including Facebook (launched 2004), file-sharing sites like Flikr (launched 2004) and YouTube (launched 2005). By the end of 2006 the new trend was sufficiently established for Time magazine to perceptively name 'YOU' as the person of the year - an honour whose previous recipients include a parade of American presidents and world statesmen.

As the web became a domain for user-generated content a variety of sectors coined varieties of the Web 2.0 formulation for their own use including Library 2.0, Medicine 2.0, Government 2.0 and even Porn 2.0. Public Diplomacy 2.0 - a sub-set of Government 2.0 - was a late entrant in the field and owed its genesis to James K. Glassman, an American journalist and commentator who served as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy for the final half of 2008. Although Glassman had a relatively short tenure in Washington DC he was a great enthusiast for the new media. He spoke of a unique opportunity to engage world opinion as never before and challenged the US Department of State to embrace the new technology.

Other ministries around the world underwent similar awakenings. Some were early adopters. In the spring of 2007 the Maldives and Sweden opened the first 'embassies' (or cultural centres) in the 'virtual world' of Second Life (launched in 2003). Many more people read about it in the old newspapers than actually visited online but that hardly dimmed the public diplomacy objective. An energetic Israeli diplomat posted to New York City named David Saranga dealt with the unenviable task of selling his nation's offensive against Gaza in late 2008 by organizing a press conference on the social networking site Twitter (then just two years old). The herd thundered in behind them, but to what effect is still not clear.

THE FACE OF PUBLIC DIPLOMACY 2.0

The essential challenge of the Web 2.0 world is that it enabled the preferred source of 'someone like me' to become the principal point of contact for all information. In this regard it is a return to a village environment where one's key interlocutors and sources were the hundred or so 'like you' who made up the village. Now each person could gather their personal 'village' of friends in cyberspace without regard for the limitations of geography.

This poses a problem for the public diplomacy agency seeking to utilize new media channels. As each individual's cyber domain becomes more tailored to their own tastes and settled into a comfortable niche, the intervention of an outsider will seem increasingly incongruous. Both the US Department of State and Department of Defense have digital engagement teams participating in online discussions and 'correcting' misunderstandings of their interlocutors. This may be counterproductive if the intervention is judged to be at odds with the identity of the site.

The scale of successes is difficult to gauge. The number of friends on an organization's Facebook page became the immediate measure rather than any consideration of whether real engagement was taking place as a result of the link.

More interesting was the use of YouTube. The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has launched a number of competitions for user-generated films including a contest for the best short film on the theme of 'Democracy is'. Young filmmakers from around the world took part and their films were seen and circulated online. Winners of the first year's competition included filmmakers from Iran and Nepal. The strategy was empowering voices who could be 'someone like me' and hence credible to the audiences that the US really needed to influence.

In a similar vein James Glassman launched a project to assist young international activists. He drew together a remarkable range of young people, the most famous being Oscar Morales who in the spring of 2008 had used Facebook to initiate what became an international wave of protests against the FARC guerrillas in Colombia. Their conference resulted in the creation of the Alliance of Youth Movements: a support structure for those seeking to use new technology to transform their world. Its activities include a website with clear instruction on how to set up a blog or social media campaign.

The most elaborate use of the new media was the creation of full blown joint projects in cyberspace. The State Department funded a remarkable collaboration between a school of architecture in California and one in Cairo during which the students worked together on joint projects. When they eventually met they already knew and trusted each other. It was an indication of what was possible. Yet there have been problems. They are clearest in the US official use of Twitter.

TWITTER

Twitter swept to prominence in 2008. The micro-blogging site seemed to offer an ideal technology for engaging foreign audiences. Its 140 character format required the discipline of brevity but was - by design - short enough to be read on the sort of handheld devices that much of the developing world used to access the internet. The United States and many other public diplomacy actors hurried to be part of the Twitter-revolution.

The first problem that the US ran into was the question of exactly how its personnel would conduct themselves online. Would they establish a feed in a formal capacity and use it as a platform to post the links for press releases and statements or would they seek to use the site to present themselves to the world, as a way to humanize US foreign policy.

A notable public diplomat who took the second course was Colleen Graffey, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State with responsibility for US public diplomacy in Europe, a political appointee with a reputation for stridency in such issues as defence of conditions at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Her Tweets, however, seemed trivial when set against the events happening in the world. An infelicitous message in which she mentioned purchasing a bathing suit in the midst of a meltdown in the Middle East drew particular scorn.

The new-media experts who joined the Obama administration's foreign policy operation ran into similar problems. Jared Cohen was criticized after he memorably Tweet-ed about a wonderful Frappachino in Syria in June 2010. The real problem with the explosion of State Department Twitter sites was not their personalization but their neglect of a key dimension of the platform.

The essence of Twitter is that it opens a space not only to speak in 140 character bursts but to listen in the same way also. The State Department has paid lots of attention to how many people are following its postings, but generally forgets to think about following anyone themselves. Those who were 'following' others - the new technology superstars Jared Cohen, Alec Ross and Katie Stanton - turn out to have been following each other, which is to say other people tweeting in the US new media community, rather than the wider world that they were supposed to be engaging online.

The fixation with 'broadcast mode' in US online diplomacy is a major faux pas. It is the equivalent of going into a party and shouting about one's self and leaving: a behaviour which is intolerable even if one is buying all the drinks, which the United States no longer is.

The first duty of a public diplomat is to listen and the new media have an amazing ability to make that listening both easier and visible. Suppose one of the US embassy Twitter sites were to begin to survey the online environment and click to follow selected writers and sites in their assigned country. Each of those writers might then receive an email saying 'Ambassador X or US embassy Y is now following you on Twitter'. This could encourage writers to reciprocate and follow, raising the possibility that they would re-tweet an embassy message or two and pass them further along their network with the added boost of their local credibility. It would certainly create a lineup of go-to feeds to help the embassy understand its country, which would be easily taken up by others in the embassy and beyond. Their Twitter-roll could be passed on to anyone else who cared to scroll down and right click. Fortunately, there are some embassies which have realized the potential of Twitter as a tool of listening. The US embassy in New Delhi, for example, is actively following feeds in its region.

A Tweet - like any other piece of information - is welcome to the extent that it is actually of interest to its recipient. There is a great danger that a Twitter feed will become 'spam' if it has too much to say on subjects beyond the precise interest of the reader. It is a mistake to insist on one-size-fits-all in a made to measure world. Twitter offers the potential for an unlimited variety of feeds and rather than expecting various diplomats to become providers of wisdom on every subject under the sun, it makes more sense to use discreet feeds to distribute information on discreet issues which will be of relevance to an audience. 'Tweet the issue' should be the mantra of public diplomats.

As already noted the great strength of Web 2.0 is its ability to connect people to others like themselves. With this in mind it is not wholly surprising that the greatest strides in Web 2.0 at the State Department have been internal to the department. Closed sites provide a platform for tasks as diverse as accumulating and disseminating best practice, the construction of a 'diplopedia' wiki with background and policy discussion on particular countries, a mechanism called 'communities@state' to bring diplomats together around shared interests and online sounding boards to feedback to management on ways to improve conditions within the department. Richard Boly, director of the Department's office of e.diplomacy proudly revealed how online suggestions had yielded the brilliant insight that more people would cycle to work if there were showers located adjacent to the bike storage.

THE ILLUSIONS OF PUBLIC DIPLOMACY 2.0

The world of communications technology continues to evolve at an exponential rate. Science fact outstrips the science fiction of just a few years ago. At the edge of this vortex of innovation we find the practitioners of Public Diplomacy 2.0 in the foreign ministries of the world typically struggling to pull their risk-averse and information-protective agencies into the new era.

The achievements of Public Diplomacy 2.0 are notable and worthy of scrutiny but they must not be mistaken for offering some mechanism for mastery of the new environment. To think such would be to confuse a surfer with the wave he rides and to ignore the impact of the wave as it reshapes the shore.

The traditional diplomatic actors are attempting to get their message out and to engage with the world, but their competitors are doing precisely the same - often with the advantage of a local affinity - and the world is in flux, fragmenting and regrouping into new networks.

Secretary of State Clinton has argued that connectivity is an absolute good and pledged the United States to work to make the blessings of the information society as widely available as possible, but the voters of the United States will have to accept that the voices they empower will be diverse and will include some that are critical and even openly hostile.

RULES TO LIVE BY

How then should practitioners of public diplomacy - large and small - respond to this world of WikiLeaks and the wider Web 2.0 environment? The first step is to acknowledge the transformation of the world of which this winter's online shenanigans is just one example. Whether in Tunisia or in Tunbridge Wells individuals are inherently more powerful than they have been at any time in history, more especially as they connect across networks. This global and wired public cannot be ignored and communication aimed only at its leaders will necessarily fall short.

The new technology opens a frightening aspect of chaos - the response of the diplomatic establishment to WikiLeaks had all the hallmarks of panic - but it also offers the opportunity for a new kind of politics and a new kind of diplomacy.

The first step for communicators is to acknowledge that they cannot be all things to all people. The task of public diplomacy should evolve to one of partnering around issues with those who share the same objectives and empowering those who will be credible with their target audience. Some nations are recognizing that being seen to be of help in building a network can be a valuable act of public diplomacy in its own right; hence the Swiss government has established its chain of SwissNex offices at strategic locations around the world to connect innovators with one another.

In planning new technology ventures I would propose the following. Rule 1: Be relevant. Don't assume that what is important to you will matter to your audience: tweet the issue. Rule 2: Be cooperative. Look for partners and be ready to pass on messages from others and by the same token craft your messages so as to make them easy for others to pass them on. Rule 3: Know your audience. Understand the ways in which they use social media and be consistent with that culture as you would if you were physically entering a conversation. Understand the credibility that comes from being 'like' your online interlocutor. Rule 4: Be realistic. Public Diplomacy 2.0 can't make a bad policy good any more than its 1.0 variety could. The prime need is not to say the right thing but to actually be the right thing, especially in an era of growing transparency. Rule 5: Listen. Do not let the 1001 new ways to speak that you have discovered online keep you from exploring 1002 new ways to listen. In the old media or the new, public diplomacy begins with listening.

Extracted from Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, edited by Simon Anholt. Volume 7, Number 1, May 2011; Palgrave Macmillan.

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