Quick take on the July 29 New York Times article about the twitterific musings of the State Department’s senior technology advisors, Alec Ross and Jared Cohen.
The article “Twitter Musings in Syria Elicit Groans in Washington” addresses the discomfort caused by Ross and Cohen’s candid musings about their experience while traveling Syria for the State Department. The two were “riffing about how visitors can buy an American-style blended iced coffee at a university near Damascus and how one of them had challenged a Syrian communications minister to a cake-eating contest.”
Sounds like a perfectly reasonable use of Twitter to me. Yet apparently the two were gently chided by the State Department. Supposedly, the State Department does actually support the embrace of such technology as part of 21st century diplomacy. As the NYT’s piece suggests: “Yet despite the youthful indiscretion, their broader goal of using technology to further diplomacy enjoys enthusiastic support from the highest levels of the department, notably Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
So why is this a “youthful indiscretion?” This sounds profoundly out of sync with what I understand to be the real implication of social media for diplomacy. Social media like Twitter and facebook are not just other vehicles to address target audiences; touchpoints in a slick marketing campaign. They are means by which the State Department can be rendered something other than a monolithic voice of the US government. They reveal the human faces of the US government, and not just another sloganeering or exposition platform. It is through these media that credibility can be cultivated, by providing ways to identify with communities of social media users, to show that government social media users listen and participate in such communities.
Perhaps this is not such a big deal. Perhaps the report is as much a reflection of the framing of the news story as it is actual conflict within State. There are some very intelligent people at State who “get” the social implications of social media. I just found this article to strike against the spirit of engagement present in social media.
July 14th, 2010at 3:20 pm(#)
[...] Twitter credibility – Intermap: Social media like Twitter and facebook are not just other vehicles to address target audiences; touchpoints in a slick marketing campaign. They are means by which the State Department can be rendered something other than a monolithic voice of the US government. [...]
July 15th, 2010at 3:58 am(#)
[...] Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence « How Strategic Can Diplomacy Be? Integrating PD2.0 July 15, 2010 In the last week or so there have been kerfuffles about the blogging British ambassadors and the twitterific cake eating Americans. [...]