Xin Zhong Jiayi Lu- Public Diplomacy Model in the Era of Web 2.0 ...

“One constant in public diplomacy has been its early adoption of new technologies, whether it was radio,
motion pictures, high-speed printing, television or the Internet.” 1 However, technology is not self-made
or exists independently but constructed by various social factors; meanwhile it brings about new
communication models. Since the 1990s, the Internet-borderless, fast and equal-became the major
communication media. Upon the 21 st century when globalization strengthened the inter-dependence
among nations, enhancing mutual trust and recognition became the important target for developing
international relations and practicing public diplomacy. Thanks to the development of the Internet,
public diplomacy started to extend from the “real” platform to the “virtual” one. In particular, social
media based on Web 2.0 technologies, such as blog and micro-blogging, endowed the public who are
normally at the end of communication value chain with more power to say; what’s more, it created
inter-personal, personalized and multiple communication channels for public diplomacy.
Sino-US relation is one of the most important international relations nowadays, and the United States is
in the leading place in the area of strengthening public diplomacy by means of new media including
social media. In that case, the article takes the U.S. Embassy’s public diplomacy in China under new
media context as an example, explores the U.S. Embassy’s new public diplomacy model in China
through macro-view topic analysis, middle-view narration analysis, micro-view source of information
analysis and embedded communication model analysis.
Public Diplomacy: New Strategy for “War of Ideas” 2 in New Media Context
Since 9/11, American people ranging from US president to the general public have continuously asked
one question: “Why do they hate us?” The United States became the only superpower since the end of
cold war. In 1999, the United States Information Agency (USIA)-the real actor of public diplomacy
during the cold war-was merged into the U.S. Department of State, and Voice of America (VOA) was
subordinated to International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB). The explanation that American politicians
gave was: do we still need them when our enemy does not exist anymore? 9/11 attacks let US
government to reconsider the importance of public diplomacy. Before long, Charlotte Beers and Karen
Hughes, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in Bush administration,
successively launched “Shared Values Campaign” in 2001 and “Middle-east Listening Tour” in 2005
targeted at the Moslem World with the purpose of repairing US image in the middle-east. Unfortunately,
two large-scale public diplomacy activities were unsuccessfully viewed by people in the middle-east as
“arrogant” “defensive”.
The Internet narrowed the real distance between the United States and the middle-east, and it also
endowed them both with almost equal communication opportunities. From that point of view, it’s fairly
normal that the public diplomacy activities with “one-way” imprint which was popular in the cold war
did not bring about positive results. Al Jazeera English channel, one of the three biggest 24-hour
English news channels in the world, reached American audience through the virtual platforms, such as
YouTube, Livestation and Twitter, while before that American audience could not watch the channel
since “most cable and satellite carriers have apparently decided it would be politically unwise to offer
the channel” 3 In addition, state and non-state actors in the middle east started to make use of web-based
platforms to set up the websites for distributing pan-Arabic or pan-Islamic information in a greater area.
4 Under new media background, the traditional model of US public diplomacy is faced with challenges.
In the end of 2008, James K. Glassman, then Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public
Affairs, listed the challenges that US public diplomacy was faced in the context of new media and
proposed the term “Public Diplomacy 2.0”: the public diplomacy that is based on Web 2.0 or social
media technologies. He regarded it as the best way to cope with the challenges 5 and the important
strategy to implement “War of Ideas” in the era of Web 2.0.
“Landing” of Public Diplomacy 2.0: Case Study of US Embassy’s Public Diplomacy in China
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