Public diplomacy—simply described as diplomatic engagement with people—continues to evolve to fit and reflect the needs of twenty-first century statecraft. Most nations—large or small, liberal or authoritarian—understand that image, narrative and reputation underpin influence in today’s globalized world. Governments realize that to generate and exert this power they must inform, influence, and mobilize public opinion. This means engaging public audiences—including civil society representatives, opinion leaders, journalists, scholars, students, and ordinary citizens—both at home and abroad and increasingly through digital means, in the conduct of foreign policy.
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12. Public diplomacy
Caitlin Byrne
Chapter
17. Social Media
Larry Diamond and Zak Whittington
This chapter examines the role of social media in processes of democratization. Facilitating rapid and decentralized communication among a wide range of actors, social media have played a particularly potent role in the past decade in facilitating the mobilization of protest against authoritarian regimes, the exposure of corruption and human rights abuses, and the monitoring of elections to expose electoral fraud. The chapter explores how social media have provided new tools for challenging dominant parties. It also looks at the ways in which authoritarian regimes censor and suppress access to these tools, while appropriating them for their own purposes of propaganda and control.
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9. Communication and public opinion
This chapter discusses the way in which political ideas are put forward and relates this to the forming and mobilization of political opinions. It looks the forms of communication used, the means of ‘media’ for transmission; the approach that political parties and government take towards it; and the influence it can exert from within the democratic system. The chapter looks at how people transmit information and how organizations do too. An important element of this discussion is how people form political opinions in the first place and how they make decisions based on them. A key question is: how can the right to vote be used to transmit and impact a political view point? The chapter also examines the role of social media and recent phenomena such as ‘fake news’. It also asks: how can public opinion be measured? The chapter provides a number of theoretical perspectives and real-life examples: the ‘Leveson Inquiry’ of 2011–12 and what it revealed about political communication and the online parliamentary petitioning process. Finally, the chapter explores a debate about whether the Internet has made political communication more supportive of democracy.
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11. Media and US foreign policy
Piers Robinson
This chapter examines the academic debates over the relationship between US public opinion, media, and foreign policy. It first considers the nature of US media and public opinion, including democratic expectations of mass media and public opinion, before discussing pluralist and elite approaches to understanding the links between media, public opinion, and foreign policy. It then explores the role of propaganda and persuasion with respect to US power projection, with particular emphasis on the ways in which public opinion and media can be understood as a source of power for — and as a constraint upon — US foreign policy. It also reviews contemporary debates regarding the impact of technological developments, such as the emergence of global media like the internet and social media, upon US power and influence.
Chapter
6. The Media and Agenda-Setting
Political Turbulence
This chapter addresses media in politics, including newspapers, television, the internet, and social media. It seeks to answer the question of how influential the media is over politics, in areas such as voting behaviour. This discussion gives a broad overview of politics and the media, about the agenda of politics and its framing, and what shapes it. The chapter then covers the classic question of the influence of the media in British politics. It also considers the importance of social media, and how it is now part of all media today, especially in relation to elections and referendums. Finally, the chapter looks at media and social media campaigning in elections. It introduces the concept of chaotic pluralism as a way of characterizing today's social media-dominated and fluid political environment.
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15. Media and Politics
This chapter explores the link between media and politics. It first considers the more general relationship between the media and governmental organizations, and more specifically the overlap of governmental and media functions, and how dramatic representation influences our understanding of political life. It then examines the ways in which journalists and media organizations make news, along with the role of political journalism in political life, especially in democracies. It also discusses the globalization of media and the convergence of styles of news presentation and reporting on television around the world. Finally, it analyses the implications of the Internet and social media for political life, from potentially promoting democracy to accusations of false narratives and ‘fake’ news.
Book
Edited by Diego Muro and Tim Wilson
Contemporary Terrorism Studies is made up of three parts. Part One looks at the state of terrorism studies. Chapters here ask first, what are terrorism studies? These chapters also look at critical terrorism studies and conceptualizations of terrorism. The second part is about issues and debates in terrorism studies. This part starts off with an overview of the history of terrorism. It asks what the root causes of terrorism are and whether terrorism can ever be rational. Chapters here also look into old and new terrorism and social media and terrorism. To conclude this part, the last chapter here asks whether terrorism is effective. The third part of the book covers countering terrorism. Here, counterterrorism agencies are examined. Issues such as human rights, foreign policy, and international terrorism are covered. The chapters in this part also seek ways to prevent and counter violent extremism. They also consider victims of terrorism. The book concludes with an analysis of the end of terrorist campaigns.
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18. Social Media and Terrorism
Donald Holbrook
This chapter tackles the role of social media in the evolution of terrorism. It dissects the key components of social media, using Twitter as a case study. It then highlights ways in which the emergence of social media has impacted modern terrorism. These ways relate to notions of asymmetry where terrorists seek to maximize their impact against materially stronger adversaries, the networked aspect of terrorism, and the importance of communication for terrorists. Communication here is defined very broadly. The chapter looks at how terrorists have adopted social media techniques in various parts of the world and considers some of the pitfalls, in addition to the benefits, this adoption can bring. The final part of the chapter delves into the relationship between online habits and behaviours on the one hand and their implications in the real world on the other.
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7. Social Media
This chapter explores the increasing significance of social media in international political economy (IPE). How we experience and represent social media has profound implications for the ethical possibilities and limits of global market life. The chapter begins by problematizing social media through the related concepts of self-branding, the attention economy, and the prosumer. It then looks at social media via two popular documentaries on Netflix: Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (2018) and The Social Dilemma (2020). These documentaries tackle questions of reform and regulation, identifying how social media data carries immense value for corporate marketing, political strategy, credit rating, and other ways of knowing and governing society. This helps to establish an important dilemma: is social media a free and democratic space or a new infrastructure of surveillance? Finally, the chapter reflects on the politics of social media by considering different forms of critical agency.
Book
James Brassett, Juanita Elias, Lena Rethel, and Ben Richardson
I-PEEL: The International Political Economy of Everyday Life locates the study of international political economy (IPE) in the context of everyday life. It provides a fresh introduction to IPE, and highlights the relevance and prominence of IPE in the real world. In addition, the text establishes the conceptual and theoretical techniques required to engage with the IPE discipline and how those can help us understand the complexity of everyday power relations. Also, it prompts ethical self-reflection by asking if everyday economic relations are ‘right’ or ‘good’. The text starts off with an introduction to the topic. The first main chapter considers clothes. The next few chapters cover food, debt, and care. After that comes a chapter that looks at the concept of the ‘city’, followed by social media. The last two chapters present the idea of ‘share’ and humour. They are followed by a Conclusion.
