Media Studies and Public Diplomacy

In theory, public diplomacy differs from traditional diplomacy because it deals primarily with non-governmental individuals and organizations and presents the differing views of private individuals and organizations. But public diplomatic efforts are often coordinated with and reflect official government views (USIA). Historically, public diplomacy was controlled much more by governmental institutions than it is today. This is due largely to the advent of television and the World Wide Web. Today's global citizens can access information about international events from a variety of sources, often before national governments have the chan

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. Many of the USIA's services were cut back or eliminated altogether (Laqueur 19). The British government also initially reduced its budget for the BBC World service and the Germans reduced the efforts of their information agency, the Goethe-Instituts (Leonard 48-56). Still, during this time both the BBC World Service and Voice of American created television programs to support their radio broadcasts. (Laqueur 19). Still until the events of September 11, 2001, on a per capita basis France and many other countries, including, Spain and Germany, spent much more on public diplomacy than did the United States. Even, Iran, for example, has had more powerful radio stations than the Voice of America (Laqueur 19). This is, of course, changing since September 11, 2001, as demonstrated by the U.S. government's abortive attempt at forming the Office of Strategic Influence (Weber and Morgan 56). Despite the decline in governmental support for public diplomacy, the proliferation of information in an increasingly global society has made such efforts even more necessary while the increasing internationalization of television as well as the surge of the World Wide Web in the latter half of the twentieth century has at once made public di
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Diplomacy Public, Middle East, Wide Web, White House, Iraq Public, Douglas Hurd, Web Today's, public diplomacy, World Service, Wall United, taylor 61-72, bbc world, world service, bbc world service, elliott a17, leonard 48-56, public diplomatic efforts, world wide, september 11, 11 2001, voice america, world wide web, september 11 2001, usia argue public,
Approximate Word count = 1600
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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