by Craig Hayden

Shawn’s post here about the recent Gallup poll raises some interesting questions about the relationship of access to communication technologies and opinions about the U.S. around the world. He rightly observes that this has some serious implications for how the U.S. expects to make changes in public opinion with strategies of global engagement. But there are some larger, structural issues that I think need to be addressed.

First, Shawn’s point that the findings are “terrible news for American PD practitioners that have been working tirelessly to get America’s message out…” may actually reflect a different set of problems than the one Shawn is suggesting. I believe initiatives like the State Department’s Digital Outreach team and Dipnote may simply not address the scale of activity required to shift structures of opinion in the network of referential opinion-formation that is the Internet. It’s not that the message is bad on face (thought it certainly may be). This kind of PD engagement must contend with the message carrying and shaping characteristics of the larger “infrastructure” – which is a considerable barrier to short-term PD “effectiveness.”

So what does this barrier entail? The Gallup report specifically uses the term “communication infrastructure” – a term that I think we need to unpack a little here. Gallup is referring more generally to the array of media outlets that people claim to have access to. But what do people do with this access, and why? We should understand that a communication infrastructure is not just accessed technologies, but as the network of media consumers and the narratives (or media frames) they share and develop across platforms to describe events and topics that are meaningful or otherwise significant. Adapting mass communication scholar Sandra Ball-Rokeach’s definition of “communication infrastructure” to the global flow of messages – this network is in turn set within a larger “communication action context” – the real-world elements that constrain or enable access and shape or focus attention to communicative outlets.

So, for a nation-state to engage in some form of Internet-centric PD, it must deal with the established, inter-textual and referential nature of evidence and argument that exists online. U.S. bloggers speaking for America online are but one voice, up against the flexible structure of already credible sources, shared visual arguments, and often tailored information streams that inform the opinion of the self-identified individual that is highly connected to the “communication infrastructure.” At the same time – mediated PD trying to leverage this infrastructure has to contend with the communicator’s status in the communication action context. The U.S. case is pretty straightforward – U.S. policies and attitudes towards foreign public opinion have established a relatively unreceptive and potentially hostile communication action context for PD initiatives.

Of course, I am also not arguing that the U.S. just needs more bloggers or more transmitters to overcome these two obstacles. US PD does not need a greater number of government voices and outlets; the Cold War “information battle” that Rhonda Zaharna has described as outmoded PD strategy. Rather, the U.S. needs to understand that much of Gallup’s polled “connected” individuals are already immersed in a network of news frames and other vehicles of argument that aren’t necessarily pro-American just because they are grounded in facts. And on top of that – audiences increasingly get the news they want. Whether you call it Sunstein’s “daily me,” the increase of news narrowcasting, or whatever – the communication infrastructure provides both a plurality of information and customizability. There are enough satellite news outlets and RSS feeds to customize ones information filter – and provide the kind of interpretive filter to reinforce existing attitudes and worldviews.

And let’s face it: like Shawn said the “facts” about U.S. policy are already out there amidst the array of news choices, blogs, discussion forums, and other kinds of connectivity that distribute and package the news. The communication infrastructure amplifies what is out there. It’s not necessarily an autopoietic system (where the media system may be stuck in a feedback loop that can’t entertain pro-U.S. perspectives) – yet the representation that reverberates across the global mediascape is not likely to be one that is sympathetic to U.S. foreign policy, but rather picks up and amplifies the voices of those who experience these policies directly and share their grievances.

Robert Entman and some of the COMOPS researchers have explained this problem plainly. The U.S. has very little control over how a message gets propagated, transformed, and re-incorporated into the media frames that ultimately reach audiences. The U.S. can attempt to craft messages that are sensitive to “global” audiences, but realistically, the best the U.S. can hope for is that at the U.S. perspectives are at least considered amongst the plurality of voices and frames that populate the “communication infrastructure.”

All this talk of communication infrastructure aside – I think the biggest point here is that Gallup’s finding should not be read as a reason to NOT engage in public diplomacy efforts. Rather, U.S. policy planners need to calibrate what they can expect from mediated public diplomacy, and also, to never forgot that as Shawn said the facts about U.S. policies are already out there. It should be telling that those who are most connected to the flows of information about the U.S. and its policies are also those most inclined to express disapproval. Cue the obligatory call for more “listening” in public diplomacy. And of course this is yet another reminder that the US is still feeling the effects of the “say-do” gap problems relentlessly exposed in global media over the course of the Bush administration.

A final word about the Gallup poll. I think it’s fair to remind ourselves that there may be some correlation issues here – where the context of those polled matters much more than any causal impact of being connected. I think those relationships need to be further investigated. The demographics of who gets to go online, for example, may reflect vastly different circumstances (and attendant political attitudes) than simply the information afforded by internet access.