Mapping the Great Beyond: Identifying Meaningful Networks in

10 MAPPING THE GREAT BEYOND
John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt depict Netwar:
as having two major faces, like the Roman god Janus—
one dominated by terrorists and criminals that is quite
violent and negative, and another evinced by social
activists that can be militant but is often peaceable and
even promising for societies. 9
Yet the negatives—terrorists and criminals, combined with
militant activists and protests—align the discussion of Netwar with
elements of society with which few Public Diplomacy organizations
or Foreign Ministries wish to align. This has parallels with the
way Daryl Copeland contrasts actors within his image of a new
diplomacy:
Unlike all too many serving envoys, the guerrilla diplomat
will know how to swim with comfort and ease in the sea
of the people rather than flop around like a fish out of
water, and prefer to mix with the population rather than
mingle with colleagues inside the embassy walls. 10
Those likely to mingle within the embassy walls are unlikely to
align themselves with the approaches adopted by criminals, terrorists
and anarchists. Furthermore, the use of militaristic sounding terms
such as Netwar may in itself have been off-putting for organizations
delivering forms of cultural diplomacy and cultural relations or
even exchange or scholarship programs, such as JET, Fulbright
or Chevening. However, there must be differentiation between
objectives, methods and ways of organizing; non-centralized
approaches place emphasis on the way individuals connect and the
way groups function. As a result, they highlight the importance of
understanding the networks with which an organization seeks to
engage and the relationship between the digital and physical elements
of a network.
We live in a world of networks. After all, whether known as family,
kinship group, tribe, village, neighborhood, virtual community, work