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4.2 Brief Chronology of Research
4.2.1 Public Diplomacy in the Cold War Period - More Than Propaganda
In 1963, Edward R. Murrow, the noted broadcaster who was director of the United States Information Agency in the Kennedy administration, defined public diplomacy as interactions not only with foreign governments but primarily with nongovernmental individuals and organizations, and often presenting a variety of private views in addition to government views.
As Edward R. Murrow describes it: “good public diplomacy has to go beyond propaganda. Nor is public diplomacy merely public relations campaigns. Conveying information and selling a positive image is part of it, but public diplomacy also involves building long-term relationships that create an enabling environment for government policies”.2
The idea of public diplomacy went on to be further developed and slowly gained more attention. Not long after the term was used by Edward E. Murrow, it was coined at Fletcher in 1965 by the Dean Edmund A. Gullion,
In his definition, “public diplomacy deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy; the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with those of another; the reporting of foreign affairs and its impact on policy; communication between those whose job is communication, as between diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the processes of inter-cultural communications."3
2 Joseph S. Nye Jr., “Public Diplomacy and Soft Power,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2008, p. 94, accessed December 10, 2012, doi: 10.1177/0002716207311699.
3 Nicholas J. Cull, “Public Diplomacy Before Gullion: The Evolution of a Phrase,” USC Center on Public Diplomacy, 2006, accessed December 20, 2012, http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/pdfs/gullion.pdf
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Furthermore attention must be given to an important development in ideas that helps us better understand public diplomacy and that is soft power, a concept coined by Joseph S.
Nye.
Joseph S. Nye Jr. a distinguished service professor and former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In his article Public diplomacy and soft power he underlines three dimensions of public diplomacy daily communication, strategic communication and development of lasting relationships with key individuals over many years through scholarships, exchanges, training, seminars, conferences, and access to media channels. Related to the international relations he points out the importance of soft power, where public diplomacy takes a stand, in building a national image.
This does not only show the continuity in the development of the term but also the importance that is being given to its significance. Constant changes in the international context offer the opportunity for countries to explore more possibilities in the usage of their assets when presenting themselves.
In international politics, the resources that produce soft power arise in large part from the values an organization or country expresses in its culture, in the examples it sets by its internal practices and policies, and in the way it handles its relations with others. Public diplomacy is an instrument that governments use to mobilize these resources to communicate with and attract the publics of other countries, rather than merely their governments.4
The list of soft power elements goes beyond values, culture and internal practices.
These characteristics belong to the sender. Soft power depends not only on the characteristics of the sender of the message but also on the characteristics of the receiving public and how it interprets the sender’s message.
4 Joseph S. Nye Jr., “Public Diplomacy and Soft Power,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2008, p. 94, accessed December 10, 2012, doi: 10.1177/0002716207311699.
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That is why diplomatic attention today centers somewhat less on foreign offices, negotiating tables, and conference rooms, and more on the streets and television screens where the outlooks of masses of people are formed.
Diplomats depend less on traditional practices in which emotion is set aside, where parties to negotiation refer to their position papers and deal with counterparts who share an established logic regarding international issues and the way to negotiate them.5
Considering that soft power relies on the capacity of a country to use its assets as culture and political values to create a positive image in the minds of foreign publics then the way it is constructed and delivered not only relies on the specificity of the public but the cultural code that that public uses.
Members of a common culture not only share information, they share methods of coding, storing and retrieving that information. These methods vary from culture to culture. Knowing what kind of information people from other cultures require is one key to effective international communication.
Viewed from the outside, each culture has “hidden codes” of behavior, which can rarely be understood without a “code breaker”. Communication experts estimate that 90 percent of more of all communication is conveyed by means other than language, in a culture’s nonverbal messages. These messages are taken for granted and transmitted more or less unconsciously.6
It is not only important the coding but the medium used in order to send the message and that is part of the discussion in the next section.
4.2.3 New Public Diplomacy
Considering that the state is not the sole actor in the international arena new developments in theory regarding public diplomacy try to incorporate other actors that can engage in public diplomacy besides governments.
5 Glen Fisher, Mindsets: The Role of Culture and Perception in International Relations, 2nd ed., London, Intercultural Press, Inc., 1998, p. 12.
6 Edward T. Hall, Preface to Understanding Cultural Differences, Intercultural Press, Inc., 1990, xiv.
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As Jan Melissen describes it: “public diplomacy collaboration between states and non- official actors is probably more flexible and results- oriented than states and official non- state entities working independently. This could be seen as a symptom of a rising collaborative public diplomacy, boiling down to more official cooperation with non- state actors and greater involvement by civil society. Such development presupposes the acceptance of less governmental control in public diplomacy”.7
As presented before the sources of a country’s soft power are maintained but a greater emphasis is now given to determine new limits to what it can be considered public diplomacy and who can be responsible for it. Additionally technology and the use of social media is an important part in the new public diplomacy.
Fergus Hanson of the Lowy Institute of International Policy Australia in his 2011 paper
“The New Public Diplomacy” presents a new take on the dimensions that can define public diplomacy 'E-diplomacy is not a boutique extra for foreign ministries and increasingly will be central to how they operate in the 21st century. 8
Public diplomacy, soft power and new public diplomacy are concepts that only enhance the work of traditional diplomacy that states are engaged in. There are presented in order to better understand further in the paper the possible recommendation given in the case of Romania regarding its public diplomacy challenges. For the same consideration a brief history of ideas surrounding public diplomacy is given.