The role of global media in public diplomacy

Date:2014/1/13 15:38:38 Hits:

By Young Sam Ma- the Ambassador for Public Diplomacy of Republic of Korea

From: ChinaDaily

I. Introduction

Global media in public diplomacy has increasingly proved its usefulness in recent years. Many governments have competitively engaged in a war of public diplomacy through media to make their countries look attractive and friendly to foreigners while also setting the stage for others to understand their positions in the international arena. The success or failure of public diplomacy through media, however, can only be judged by its intended audience. The most critical criterion is the media’s credibility, which can be achieved by the independence of media as well as freedom from editorial bias. Furthermore, only when such media activities are combined with cultural programs and people-to-people exchanges can its synergy effects be maximized. However, as seen in past cases of cartoons, photos and video clips, carelessness and negligence can seriously damage the public diplomacy efforts of major powers. To prevent these types of incidents, public awareness campaigns should be arranged to encourage every citizen to join in the public diplomacy activities. Furthermore, global media is expected to play a constructive role in the expansion of common ground for promoting peace and harmony among citizens of neighboring countries through consultations with counterpart media in the same region.

II. The Power of Global Media in the Foreign Policy-making Process
The progress of technology in mass communication has allowed media to reach every corner of the world more quickly with vivid graphics. Therefore, global media plays a very important role in international relations, and most policymakers depend on live news coverage provided by CNN and other outlets. This phenomenon provides a positive effect, as it introduces democratic and humanitarian aspects in the policy-making process. On the other hand, it causes a bigger burden to both policymakers and reporters. Under the time pressure required by global media live coverage, journalists may take risks by reporting what they see without deeply analyzing the situation and politicians may respond quickly without carefully considering their overall situation.

In spite of this problem, global media has become one of many tools each government employs in conducting its own public diplomacy programs. The BBC and Voice of America have demonstrated their powerful influence in the foreign policy-making process , and other major media are following suit, including CCTV, Russia Today, and France 24. Furthermore, new media are also targeting special groups of people with less sense of rebuttal from their targeted audiences. Radio Sawa, Al Hurra Television, and other broadcasters of special languages are some good examples.

As the influence of mass media continues to grow, policy-makers tend to utilize the media for their own benefit, publicizing their policies and positions on certain issues. In the case of Al-Jazeera TV, American government officials initially refrained from attending Al-Jazeera’s programs for several years because of its unfavorable stance towards the U.S. However, after 2005 State Department officials began engaging Al-Jazeera more actively because the U.S. concluded that appearing on TV results in more benefits than not appearing at all. By explaining American policies on TV, the U.S. government hoped to improve its overall image. In such context, President Barack Obama had an interview with Al-Arabiya Television, one of the most influential Arabic broadcasters, during the first week of his first term in order to directly appeal to Arabic and Islamic people. In the same token, the media tends to enthusiastically accommodate politicians’ wishes to attract viewers if it has news value.

As such, politicians go beyond the simple norm of public diplomacy and try to provide more detailed and comprehensive information through sophisticated techniques. This trend has encouraged big powers such as the U.S., China, Russia, and the EU to allocate increasingly larger budgets to their own global media. In short, they are now fully engaged in a war to win the hearts and minds of people of the world.

However, global media is not the panacea for public diplomacy. Without sufficient reliability of the media, it is hard to expect effective results. A long period of time and specific strategy is required to yield results. A survey involving university students from five Arab countries examined the credibility of two American broadcasts, Radio Sawa and Al Hurra Television. The survey found that there was no apparent correlation between the frequencies of the audience’s tuning into the media and the audience’s perception of media credibility. If this finding is accurate, it deserves closer analysis on the usefulness of the media. Efforts may be made to correct this phenomenon and to find ways to improve credibility. One of the solutions to enhance the reliability of media might be to receive audience feedback through Social Networking Services (SNS), which is discussed below. Another solution may be to combine cultural exchange programs and people-to-people visiting programs as well as scholarship exchange programs since face-to-face programs yielded many positive results.

Another issue that needs to be examined is the limited effect of global media. As many parts of the world do not welcome or otherwise lack access to global media, diplomats need to engage the local media. In order to do so, diplomats need to be comfortable with the local language as well as have a deep knowledge of local politics. Only then can diplomats substantially participate in debates on TV. This is one of the reasons why each government puts a considerable amount of energy in training regional experts.

III. Media vs. SNS
Nowadays the importance of SNS is well recognized in public diplomacy. Yet this cannot completely replace traditional media such as television, radio and newspaper. However, the traditional media has its inherent weakness in that it uses only an one-way communication. There is a large gap between what the media hopes to convey and what the audience actually perceives.

On the other hand, SNS is based on a two-way communication, and therefore plays a bigger role in addressing public opinion, especially that of the younger generation who tend to be higher consumers of SNS rather than traditional media. Also, SNS can sometimes reach the people in countries where formal diplomatic relations do not exist and all other channels are disconnected. Furthermore, this new communication system creates a fairer opportunity than before for local embassies. Even though some countries receive little attention from their host country, their representative embassies can compensate for this shortage by actively utilizing SNS.

If the messages sent from the traditional media receive responses via SNS, the messages can be disseminated extensively in a very short period of time. This phenomenon is a function of bilateral SNS communication. Therefore, traditional media and SNS can be combined to create synergy that yields maximum effect. In this context, many global media outlets now operate their own SNS systems to monitor public responses that are reflected in future programming.

Taking this situation into account, each government needs to allocate a larger budget and more staff towards SNS projects. More materials should be uploaded and updated onto the internet more frequently, and more opportunities for language education through the internet should be provided for easier access. Also, larger teams need to be established to monitor extensive SNS activities.

IV. Credibility of Media
Each government uses the media to achieve its goals in public diplomacy. However the issue of “journalistic integrity” needs to be addressed in this process. Each medium has its own body to make decisions regarding its operation and management. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is one such example in the case of the U.S. The Board is in charge of creating the strategies, policies and goals for the Voice of America, Worldnet television broadcasts and its surrogate media including Radio Free and Radio Sawa. Once a basic guideline is set by a governing body of certain medium, programming content is required to adhere to it. However, such a situation raises a serious concern regarding media independence. If the governing body’s decisions happen to collide with the independence of the media, which one takes priority?

A lesson can be sought from the case of the BBC. During World War II, the BBC was famous for only broadcasting the “truth.” Even the citizens of the enemy’s countries tuned to the BBC when they wanted to hear about the real situation on the field. Thanks to such tradition and reputation, the BBC now enjoys a high level of independence, sometimes even to the point of putting the British government in awkward situations.

Therefore, the decision-making body should only provide its corresponding media with basic guidelines based on noble ideals such as freedom and democracy. The detailed instructions and regulations should be left to the media specialists. By doing this, the media will enjoy solid credibility, which will lead to a perception of government reliability that will eventually elevate the country’s credibility. From a long-term perspective, this is the goal of public diplomacy.

As far as the credibility of media is concerned, the issue of the integrity of media specialists needs to be addressed. Although there is a danger of “editorial bias,” it is inappropriate for the government to intervene. A high level of specialists’ conscience, however, is just as important as media’s independence from the government. The outlets need to be very balanced in seeing, analyzing and presenting the news. Their audience becomes the only judge in re-evaluating the contents. Close monitoring and evaluation by the audience is crucial. Due to the competitive nature of the media market, viewer choices become the decision maker. Viewer opinion is the most effective tool to check against the misuse of the power of media, in which SNS serves as a useful tool.

The difference between reporting the “truth” and reporting “facts” should also be identified. An incident can be interpreted in many different ways depending on the angle or if some crucial facts are intentionally omitted. In the same context, a case can also turn out to be true if all surrounding details and elements are taken into consideration and viewed from a larger context. Therefore, the media needs to make sure it maintains its primary mission of reporting the truth rather than reporting the facts.

V. Awareness Campaign for Public Diplomacy
Global media can play very constructive roles in public diplomacy. Some years ago, the CCTV produced and broadcasted an excellent documentary series called “Rising of Great Powers (大國堀起)”. These films showed how traditional great powers made historical achievements. The documentaries recognized the basic values of democracy such as freedom, justice, fairness, and humanitarianism in the development process. Such recognition is a new interpretation by China. China used to credit the success of traditional great powers to the Western imperialism. Through this broadcast, the international audience gained the impression that China is slowly becoming more open-minded and recognizing the same values the West has long been pursuing. This implies that China’s public diplomacy is unfolding in a trustworthy manner.

However, careful attention should also be given to the possible negative effect of global media. Within the last few years, several cartoon depictions became a hot issue of debate because they humiliated a certain religion. Moreover, some video clips and photographs graphically depicted the misbehavior of the military personnel of certain countries. If distorted images are created and they happen to be an attractive subject of media attention, they can be distributed via SNS at an extremely rapid rate. Once these incidents are picked up by the media and SNS, they will completely demolish the efforts of public diplomacy that their representative governments have been engaged in for so long.

This is where the issue of public diplomacy clashes with freedom of expression. Whether a media outlet decides to carry an embarrassing report should be determined by the outlet itself under the principle of journalistic integrity. The outlet’s audience, and not the government, needs to play the role of check-and-balance in this case.

Strictly speaking, in the case of the cartoons, photos, and videos mentioned above, the media is not responsible for their negative effects. Rather it is a matter of the personality and conscience of the people. Therefore, the only way to prevent these incidents from reoccurring is to educate the people. There has been criticism that public diplomacy has neglected the involvement of the domestic populace. If information about their own government’s foreign policies is not readily available, citizens miss the many opportunities to conduct people-to-people diplomacy. Public diplomacy not only requires government initiative, but requires the involvement of all citizens. Awareness campaigns for public diplomacy need to be well organized to gain the support of domestic people at all levels.

VI. Conclusion
A large number of both government and private broadcasts have increased their number of viewers around the world. These global media have a responsibility to serve the common good. Originally, government broadcasts were established to promote the national interests of their host countries, and their reporting was filtered through a nationalistic view. However, global media today is expected to play a role in promoting more noble values that are commonly applicable to all people regardless of their nationality. These values include peace, human rights, and general wellbeing.

It would not seem very difficult for global media to produce programming that serves the common good. In actuality, this is difficult because audience reactions cannot all be positive due to differences in culture, customs, religion, history, and mindset.

If viewpoints are shifted from a global to a regional perspective, there is a higher likelihood of achieving these goals. Each region, however, has sensitive issues that affect its various members. This can be seen in Northeast Asia, where historical issues have harmed the relationships among relevant states. Media outlets in each country in the region have not put forth enough effort to solve the tension regarding these disputes. Rather, media outlets sometimes reported in a nationalistic sentiment, blinding historical facts.

There clearly exists some room for the media to play a constructive role in mitigating the resentment that has been surrounding the region for hundreds, or even thousands, of years. It cannot be expected of them to easily come to a consensus, but they can start with relatively easier issues to slowly build and expand the common ground, and then move to more delicate issues. Global media outlets need to remember that they have relatively small domestic audiences when compared to a larger international audience. This is the setting for neighboring countries to jointly conduct public diplomacy. Global media, with its powerful influence, is the most fitting venue for this joint public diplomacy project. Global media outlets should not ignore the sentiment of the people around the world and therefore global media should exercise its influence to promote the common good beyond the borders of its nation.

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