I had the good fortune to attend a discussion last week between Alec Ross, the Senior Advisor for Innovation in the office of Secretary of State Clinton and Marc Lynch, professor of political science at George Washington University and a featured blogger on Foreign Policy.com. The focus of the discussion was primarily about the use of media technology for outreach and public diplomacy in the Arab world. Each gave a short presentation that talked about the need for embracing technology, and for sustaining realistic attitudes towards what communication technology can accomplish for the US State Department. For this blog post, I’ll summarize a few of the interesting points they raised:

Alec Ross:

- The US needs to focus on technologies of empowerment. Online content in particular is important to youthful audiences in the Middle East. Online content has a distinct kind of authority (compared to other media outlets) in this population.
- “Connection Technologies” are being used by many actors, including US antagonists.
- Such technologies have evolved to provide info, build community, and more importantly, to provide resources. E.g. – the web is a transactional medium.

For Ross, there are 2 positive and negative trends that go along with the increasingly ubiquitous information and communication technology in the region:

Negative Trends
1. Censorship and government infiltration of connection media is up (and not just in Iran and China).
2. Such media technologies are increasingly used for radicalization (Not just blogs and discussion forums, but video games as well).

Positive Trends
1. Increasing connectedness among the Middle East populace (reduction of the digital divide; dramatic increase in mobile handsets).
2. Reassertion of science and technology as an area of social and political emphasis in conservative and M.E. countries.

Marc Lynch

Lynch offered that we can’t just focus on particular technologies as politically transformative in the Middle East. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Paltalk, etc. are all trends. In his view, information seeks outlets, and we need to focus on the broader communication environment.

He suggested that we pay attention to how successful opinion leaders adopt new media platforms. And he discouraged paying attention to any specific media or message. What he calls “the forces of the status quo” (Arab governments, etc.) have caught up with new media technology, and thus radical groups usage of such technologies have been “defanged.”

What Lynch was driving at, in my estimation, is that we need a better understanding of how information flows and likewise, how people may be able to act on information (for as we know, some in the Middle East have access and blog, tweet, etc but can’t have a real political effect on their situation). Rather, we need to comprehend how such media transparency can lead to real accountability.

On the subject of social networking technologies, Lynch wonders how we can know at this stage what kind of relationships established through these platforms are significant enough (say, for public diplomacy) – and whether they are real or spurious.

Alec Ross then jumped in on the social media discussion, noting there is a significant difference between using such platforms for a US presidential campaign and using them for public diplomacy. The transaction is more obvious.

Ross noted that the “Cold War frame” for PD was “institutional.” People don’t want to get connected to institutions. (As an aside, I wonder what it means when we “Friend” the US on facebook? Does that mean Uncle Sam gets to see my crazy college photos? Does this count as engagement?)

But I digress. Ross goes on to say that we need a rich understanding of the local context for social networking to use it more effectively. On a related note, he suggested the State Department may need to rethink its strategy of “branding the Secretary” – and look to those individuals that represent the US on the ground in a local way. Public diplomacy may, in this view, emulate the practices of successful personalities (popular, influential, etc.) that have built up networks and institutions around them. At a practical level this might start with the US ambassador – to personalize the practice of US PD. We don’t relate to institutions in the same way we do to personalities. This may be a fundamental aspect of credibility in a highly media-saturated environment.

When pressed on what “success” might look like in public diplomacy, Ross pointed to the recently released Opinion Space project, a collaboration between the State Department and the Digital Media Lab at UC Berkeley, as an example of a new way to engage – a discussion forum organized as a visual representation of topics and opinions. It provides a potentially instructive form of mapping the contours of global public opinion around issues related to US foreign policy. Yet Ross acknowledged that it is still an open question whether the US can successfully implement an online community that is operated by a government. Also, the government should not embark on kinds of ventures that are “counter-veiling to the market.” I understand this as the government trying to use social media tools in ways for which they are not designed for, or, to try and impose strategic imperatives on tools for which they are ill-suited. (Lugar’s argument that we can “win the war of ideas through twitter” comes to my mind).

Lynch also sounded a word of caution on the need to “fill every space” with a government media presence. Similarly, given the volume of access that US presence in such networks affords – how can the US effectively respond to millions of tweets, emails, and facebook posts? And importantly, who should do the responding?

The talk was a stimulating look at how the US government is grappling with the social and political ramfications of a changing communication infrastructure in the Middle East. I disagree with some of what was said – in particular Lynch’s sort of neutral conception of the value of information in a sociological/cultural sense. But I think Lynch is right to note that public diplomacy (or whatever’s its going to be called in the future) needs to reflect a localized understanding of how technology shapes the routes to influence – both those social relations and bonds that rely on communication networks, as well as how the technological medium changes the nature of what counts as credible, persuasive messaging itself.

When the US State Department makes statements about how it needs to “shape the narrative” – it should start by noting how such narratives both reflect and constitute the social bonds, networks, and cultural structures that are the real terrain of public diplomacy. By embracing the notion that we can “shape” such things, we transgress potentially sensitive symbolic resources – so we should be careful to assert such goals without a rich social understanding. I am tentatively encouraged by both Ross and Lynch, and look forward to more thinking on this subject. The State Department’s “R” division is working out its game plan. Yet the frontlines of public diplomacy – the regional bureaus and the embassies – need this kind of thinking sooner rather than later.

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