John Brown's Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review

[Found on the Web:] Inauthenticity and the Tweet Tweet of Digital Diplomacy

robertalbro.com Albro image from Inauthenticity and the Tweet Tweet of Digital Diplomacy Most often associated with Alec Ross’s stint at the State Department as Senior Advisor for Innovation, diplomacy’s rush to better leverage the advantages of social media and mobile technologies by investing in ediplomacy and PD 2.0 is no secret. On his first day as new Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs last February, Richard Stengel made his position clear: social media are “transformational tools” and the State Department needs to move toward a “digital-first strategy.” Ambassadors now tweet regularly. Out of a desire to “make foreign policy less foreign,” even Secretary of State John Kerry tweets. And the State Department is now running what a 2012 Brookings report described as a “global media empire.” But if digital diplomats extoll the reach and connectivity offered by social media platforms, less attention is given to what they think these advantages mean in practice, tha..

Ooh la la: Her French food truck is one of a kind

Paul Maryniak, ahwatukee.com La Petite Provence appears at various food truck rodeos and special events throughout the East Valley. Special to AFN With all the time she spends in the kitchen of her Ahwatukee home making more French dishes and pastries, it’s a miracle that Eve Visconti gets out at all. But the fact is, she does quite a bit on the weekends – tooling around to various places in the East Valley in the only all-French food truck in Arizona.She doesn’t just sell her crepes, quiches, lasagna and other items – along, of course, with a seemingly limitless variety of French pastries – from her specially designed truck with the bold moniker “La Petite Provence.” She also caters private gatherings big and small – most recently a 14-course gourmet Christmas dinner for 25 and, next month, 1,000 people for a Mesa church – and even makes dishes she delivers or arranges for pick-up.And she does it all herself, aided by a young woman who mainly handles paper work and takes orders, sinc..

Public Diplomacy, Foundations for Global Engagement in the Digital Age

books.telegraph.co.uk; see also (1) Excerpt: [New book] by Nicholas John Cull [JB - see] Part of the Contemporary Political Communication series Information Format: Paperback / softback Pages: 272 pages Publisher: Polity Press Publication Date: 08/03/2019 Category: Public opinion & polls ISBN: 9780745691206

Starting Conversations About Structural Violence

Michael Edward Walsh, uscpublicdiplomacy.org uncaptioned image from article The field of public diplomacy [JB emphasis] should make greater use of the quantitative measures that have been developed by media critics to explore the representation of disadvantaged groups in societies. These qualitative measures not only provide public diplomacy practitioners with analytical tools for describing the representation of disadvantaged groups in a society, or between societies. They also provide public diplomacy practitioners with interactive engagement tools for raising foreign publics’ consciousness about structural violence in their own societies.Consider the Bechdel-Wallace Test. This test serves as a “cultural barometer” of the extent to which women are represented in fictional works. It simply asks whether there are at least two women who talk to one another about something besides a man. This quantitative measure not only provides an analytical tool for describing the extent to which wom..

Is Bolton Steering Washington into War with Tehran?

intpolicydigest.org Excerpt: uncaptioned Bolton image from articleWhite House National Security Adviser, John Bolton, is back in the saddle after news reports broke the stories that he asked Pentagon officials to develop possible military strikes against Iran following a mortar attack by an Iranian-backed group on a massive diplomatic compound that houses the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in September 2018. Bolton is an Iran hawk who has promoted striking Iran over the years. His ultimate goal is regime change in Iran. He promotes the view that attacking Iran will benefit the U.S. non-proliferation goals, re-install a pro-American regime in Iran, as well as ensure its regional allies about America’s security commitment in the region. ... Bolton seems obsessed with changing Iran’s current political landscape and yet contradicts himself by claiming that Washington is not seeking regime change in Iran. Bolton’s request to strike Iran militarily is not new nor surprising. In 2009, Bolton wrote a..

NewsGuard Rates Sites that Falsely Attacked Covington Kids as ‘Trustworthy’ Breitbart

breitbart.com image fromExcerpt: NewsGuard is a web browser extension app which has recently become a default extension in Microsoft’s mobile edge browser. Advised by individuals such as Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security for the George W. Bush administration; Richard Stengel, the former editor of Time magazine and Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy [JB emphasis] for the Obama administration; and Don Baer, the chairman of Burson, Cohn & Wolfe and former White House Communications Director for the Clinton administration; Newsguard aims to apply rankings of “trustworthiness” to individual news websites in an attempt to fight “fake news.”

Blast from the Past re Propaganda/Public Diplomacy –

Public Diplomacy and Propaganda: Their Differences (2008) John Brown, from American Diplomacy (original article has evidently changed site) Is “public diplomacy” just a nice way of saying “propaganda”? There are common elements, but, this essay argues, there are also some very important differences. – Ed.Not long after 9/11, former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, in a Washington Post article, “Get the Message Out” (October 28, 2001) asked a key question regarding the so-called “war on terror”: How could a mass murderer who publicly praised the terrorists of Sept. 11 be winning the hearts and minds of anyone? How can a man in a cave outcommunicate the world's leading communications society?What was needed to offset terrorists, Holbrooke wrote, was “public diplomacy, or public affairs, or psychological warfare, or – if you really want to be blunt – propaganda.” Holbrooke is not the first person to equate public diplomacy [1] with propaganda [2]. Some public diplomac..

[JB Note]: No mention of public diplomacy in the below document, “The National Intelligence...

dni.gov Image from Wikipedia, "Seal of the United States Intelligence Community," which states: "The United States Intelligence Community (IC) is a federation of 16 separate United States government intelligence agencies and a 17th administrative office, that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities to support the foreign policy and national security of the United States." Excerpt from document cited above:The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States of America August 2019 IC Vision: A Nation made more secure by a fully integrated, agile, resilient, and innovative Intelligence Community that exemplifies America’s values. IC Mission: Provide timely, insightful, objective, and relevant intelligence and support to inform national security decisions and to protect our Nation and its interests. This National Intelligence Strategy (NIS) provides the Intelligence Community (IC) with strategic direction from the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) for the..

Russia, Information and International Influence

by UCL Anthropology, eventbrite.co.uk image fromDate And Time Thu, 7 February 2019 17:00 – 18:15 GMT Add to Calendar Location LG26, Bentham House 4-8 Endsleigh Gdns London WC1H 0EG United Kingdom View Map Description Russia’s use of information policy and media instruments to project influence abroad, in part by confusing and disorienting target audiences, is the subject of lively debate in Western countries. In Russia itself, management of 'the information space', including attempts to regulate the internet and social media, is seen as a key element of domestic political control. At this panel seminar three eminent experts will consider Russia’s approach to information policy and public diplomacy [JB emphasis], and the nature of its roots in Soviet and post Soviet social and political structures and values. Duncan Allan is an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and Director of Octant Research & Analysis Ltd, an independent consultancy. He wa..

AAV Alumni and Award Promotions Coordinator – Port Vila, Vanuatu

careers.coffey.com Image of Vanuatu Republic from Wikipedia Image (not from entry) from, which notes: Port-Vila is the capital of Vanuatu and the administrative centre of the Shefa Province. It is situated on the southern cost of the island of Efaté and possesses the biggest port and airport in the country, as well as a university. Thanks to these facilities, the city of Port Vila has become an economic and commercial centre. Job no: 497618 Work type: Contract Location: Vanuatu Categories: International developmentOpportunity to contribute to the education sector in VanuatuBased in Port Vila, VanuatuDuration: Full time contract until December 2021The ProgramOn behalf of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Coffey is managing the delivery of support and technical assistance to the Vanuatu Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) as part of the Vanuatu Education Support Program (VESPII). We support the MoE in implementing its reform program that is focused on children ..