Content area
Full Text
The internet is enabling new approaches to public diplomacy. The US Digital Outreach Team (DOT) is one such initiative, aiming to engage directly with citizens in the Middle East by posting messages about US foreign policy on internet forums. This case study assesses the DOT's work. Does this method provide a promising move towards a more interactive and individualized approach to connecting with the Middle East? What are the strategic challenges faced by "public diplomacy 2.0?"
The past few years have witnessed innovations in American public diplomacy methods towards the Middle East, moving from one-way communication through broadcasting and the print media to a more interactive model in which the government joins the conversation. This article assesses the potential of this new model through an analysis of an early US government Web 2.0 public diplomacy initiative, the State Department's Digital Outreach Team (DOT), focusing on an embedded case study, that of Arabic internet discussions of Barack Obama's Cairo speech of June 4, 2009, in which the DOT participated. The DOT is a team of ten civil servants that has its own Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter accounts, but mostly operates by posting messages on popular internet discussion forums. The Bureau of International Information Programs that hosts the DOT states that the DOT's mission "is to explain U.S. foreign policy and to counter misinformation."1
Public diplomacy in "Web 2.0" (or public diplomacy 2.0 for short) is embraced by the Department of State on several levels.2 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a team of bloggers who post English-language blog and Twitter entries about her activities.3 The State Department website launched an initiative in 2010, Opinion Space, that invites visitors to register their opinions about a number of issues, from politics to the economy, and to instantly find out where they stand on the opinion scale vis-à-vis others in the world.4 A number of US diplomats also blog or use Twitter to reach out to people. In South Korea, the American Embassy runs a networking site called Café USA to engage Korean youth.5 However, in the context of the Middle East, public diplomacy initiatives have been driven by the post-9/11 security framework that regards the "war of ideas" as a component of the "war on terror."...