Friday, November 16, 2012

Where does Public Diplomacy go from here?



If there are but a few core things I have learned about about PD during my time in this course it’s
-          The study of public diplomacy is a relatively new
-          There is an acknowledgement that America’s core public diplomacy strategy is weak
Then, of the interested PD practitioners we have the Sharks and the Jets – the academics that focus much of their work to analyses of foreign relations and the field workers that get involved actively in campaign work on the ground. Two groups, barely at the edge of understanding one another, are of the opinion that each faction is neither helpful nor necessary to the cause.
9/11 was the catalyst for public/foreign diplomacy awareness in America – the problem was that people were too eager and too unprepared.  The result is this chasm that currently exists between two integral aspects that are needed to make PD work.
I believe that it goes without saying a solution for this is greater collaboration. Academics should draw their ideas from real case studies, as well as immerse themselves in real-life situations as field-based interviews and discussions as a core part of their study. Likewise, practitioners should actively seek out who study and write about public diplomacy in publicizing and popularizing their work.
The combined strengths from both sides can help to solve many of the problems prevailing within the system, lack of staffing, inadequate training, dwindling budgets, poor communication between field posts and the leadership in Washington, and so on.
This blog post is stating the obvious but most important thing that I believe must be carried over from the classroom out into the field. The structure supporting the system needs to be stronger and that will only happen if there are more people there to make it so.

3 comments:

  1. Hi, Amanda:

    I absolutely agree that the system supporting public diplomacy efforts must be stronger. I also think that this transition can potentially happen not only by more people being engaged in the work of PD, but more of the right kind of people who are innovative and are willing to change based on technology advances and varying cultural dynamics.

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  3. I don't think that stating the obvious is harmful. It serves as a reminder of what has been achieved and what still needs to be done in order to make gains in PD. You bring up sound points about the history and the trajectory for PD especially as we head into he 21st century. In regards to your point on practitioner and academics, I would definitely say that a balance is needed. The academics have I would dare say the luxury of being the observers, while the practitioners are the ones out there in the last three feet making it happen, but it is definitely important to compose a PD methodology that includes both frames of mind.

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