Toward a model of strategic influence, international broadcasting, and global engagement

Abstract

This article explores how strategic communication, public diplomacy, international governmental broadcasting, and social media networking can be brought together in a system of strategic influence and global engagement. The analysis offers a contrasting approach to various views of public diplomacy or strategic communication which privilege one form of governmental influence over others and treat partial aspects of national persuasion as complete pictures of government communication aimed at foreign audiences. Because so much of public diplomacy literature today emphasizes social media, it is necessary to determine how specific tools of influence such as international broadcasting, can be used in ways that fit new thinking in public diplomacy as well as continuously emerging new media ecologies.