Showing posts with label Ministry of External Affairs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ministry of External Affairs. Show all posts

Friday

South Korea develops comprehensive Public Diplomacy plan

South Korea never fails to impress us with it's quiet commitment to public diplomacy. While there's lot of talk around the world about projecting soft power, very rarely do we find discussions on South Korea.

 The tensions with North Korea aside, the latest that has come from South Korea is that the country has set up clear actionable and measurable public diplomacy plans for 2018 and beyond. South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced today that it has developed the first comprehensive public diplomacy program and constituted agencies to drive and execute the plan. 
We have discussed in this blog earlier as well how relevance, 'measurability' and being 'budgeted for' will become the 3 significant challenges for foreign offices worldwide as they think of public diplomacy. 

 If we don't have answers to these, most PD programs will take the easy way out, which in India's case is narratives around Bollywood, food, culture and heritage and the occasional 'sensationalism'. 

 South Korea seems to be working to overcome these challenges:


  • The plan has a clear budget commitment of 410 billion won.
  • The plan has 49 tasks.
  • These tasks include 320 culture related projects, 200 knowledge related projects and 190 policy-oriented diplomacy projects
Among various awareness promoting initiatives, the country also has plans to constitute private committees to "correct factual errors" regarding the country. Internally for South Korea, this is the first time PD policy has been integrated with local implementation agencies and central administrative agencies of the government. This is great!

Korea Foundation will serve as the overseer of this program.

 We will definitely ask PD practitioners to keep a watch on South Korea.

Posted by Madhurjya Kotoky 0 comments

Monday

Public Diplomacy vs Nation Branding

We often tend to use Public Diplomacy (PD) interchangeably with Nation Branding. While there are definitely certain overlaps, a clear distinction does exist between both the practice areas. That's why I found Daryl Copeland recent post on the CPD Blog: PUBLIC DIPLOMACY, BRANDING, AND THE IMAGE OF NATIONS, PART II: MORE OF THE SAME, OR DIFFERENT? very interesting. In this very well written post, Daryl explains some fundamental distinctions between PD and nation branding and aptly states that,
"If public diplomacy is thought of as a nations’ book, then a nation’s brand is something like its cover, designed to appeal viscerally to the consumers of international policy by encouraging potential buyers to open the book (or visit the country, buy the product, or support the international policy objective). But because the market evolves quickly, the cover’s design may need attention even before the book requires revision and a new edition can be released."
He explains that PD is characterized by meaningful dialogue and relationship building and not based on "information dominance" or "message dumping." An alternative policy instrument in the hands of governments today, PD is central to managing international issues through consistent engagement, in which, communicating a point of view is as important as listening to a point of view. PD can be one of the approaches for nation branding and consists within itself  host of activities focused on communications, stakeholder engagement, collaboration and influencing public opinion. With such an approach PD seems to be the application of public affairs and strategic communications to the practice of international relations (as I always maintained in this blog). Daryl also tends to agree when he says that PD has more in common with public relations as a practice. This was also underlined in the Report of the Defense Science Board (US Department of Defense, 2004) in which it clearly stated that,

"In an age of global media, the internet revolution and powerful non-state actors - an age in which almost everything governments do and say is understood through mediating filters of news frames, culture, memory, and language - no major strategy, policy, or diplomatic initiative can succeed without public support. Fulbright scholarships, youth exchanges, embassy press briefings, official websites in language versions, and televised interviews with ambassadors and military commanders are examples of public diplomacy."
To cite an example in the context of India, "Incredible India" , is more of a nation branding campaign while the distinguished lecture series organized by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is more of a PD exercise. PD as a practice has recently been growing and one of the primary reason is the media proliferation and information revolution (This was however was overlooked in the reasons given for a PD resurgence in the above mentioned blog post.).That's the reason why strategic communications form the core of PD.

Suggestions/Critiques welcome.

-- Madhur
Posted by Madhurjya Kotoky 2 comments

Sunday

@IndianDiplomacy posts on Twitter

India's Ministry of External Affairs' (MEA) is known to be quite active on Twitter compared to other ministries. The ministry also used Twitter quite productively for the evacuation of Indian nationals from Libya during the NATO led war.

@IndianDiplomacy currently has 26, 774 followers with 1,855 tweets posted till date. Indian diplomats and the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), as well, routinely tweet on foreign policy matters now. As one of the followers, I  receive regular updates from the ministry on my Twitter feed. One can't help but notice that most tweets remain in the form of notifications or announcements and are primarily in the 'broadcast mode'. While this is not bad in itself, in order to leverage Twitter, or for that matter any digital platform, it helps to switch to the 'engagement mode' where an action or a response is sought to a post and more and more two way communications happen. It may be a good idea to personalize it a little bit and not make it look like an information window of the government. While one may find lot of interesting information or updates, most of the times one may get the feeling 'so...why should I care?' This  is the question @IndianDiplomacy should seek to address. What is also required is better usage of hashtags and even some basics such as usage of bit.ly etc.

I personally think former Foreign Secretary and current Ambassador to United States, Ms Nirupama Rao is doing a fabulous job on Twitter. Not only her posts have a personality but the tone and overall nature of tweets are very engaging. Her Twitter handle is @NMenonRao. How do we add personality to a Ministry? That is another interesting challenge altogether.

Some useful resources:
Suggestions/Critiques welcome

-- Madhur
Posted by Madhurjya Kotoky 1 comments

Survey of attitudes by India's PD division

The Public Diplomacy division of Government of India in collaboration with the Center for Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, is conducting a survey of attitudes with regard to India's foreign policy. It is a survey of 'elite attitudes' - given that fact that it is a survey of international relations faculty in Indian academic institutions - and is a first of its kind exercise undertaken by the PD division.

It is currently also being conducted at the first National Conference on International Relations - Shifting Sands: India in the Changing Global Order, in New Delhi, India. The introduction to the survey states, 
"... there is relatively little understanding about what Indians take to be the nature of international politics, and correspondingly, how their power and influence should be used. This survey seeks to help better understand Indian attitudes on the role of power, order, force and justice in international politics. How will the interplay of long-held beliefs, India's vision of itself, the rise of new actors and institutions and India's changing relationship with the West influence India's worldview and role in global affairs?"
It will be interesting to see the results of this survey, which has good news potential as well. The conference in itself is a first time initiative by the PD division to create a forum for Indian academics, policymakers and practitioners of international relations to meet, network and exchange ideas.

Suggestions/Critiques welcome.

-- Madhur

Posted by Madhurjya Kotoky 0 comments

Monday

Gov2.0 Award for Public Diplomacy Division


The Public Diplomacy Division of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Government of India,  was on Friday awarded the prestigious Gov2.0  Award- 2011 by Governance Now  magazine for exceptional achievement in 'Gov2.in' and for being the first central Ministry to propagate and use social media extensively. Other recipients were Municipal Corporation of Delhi(MCD), Delhi Traffic Police(DTP), India Post, Census India 2011 & Planning Commission 12th Plan.

 The event was held in the evening of Friday, March 11 at the Hotel Le Meridien, New Delhi.

Initiated by Governance Now magazine in 2011, the 'Gov2.in' Awards aim to recognize the pioneers in the Government organizations for the use of social media tools for creating interactive platforms for improving citizen service delivery. It is also awarded for promoting use of social media by the government.Governance Now magazine successfully highlights issues related to governance and public policy. 

On this occassion, a Gov2.0 forum was launched by Governance Now, which was inaugurated by Honourable Minister of IT and Communications, MrShri Kapil Sibal. Speaking on the occasion Mr Sibal said,
"Social media platforms are transformational and should be used to facilitate governance though some time is needed for teledensity to improve in rural areas but eventually the mobile revolution will power gov 2.0 there."
Speaking at a panel discussion in the morning session, Joint Secretary Navdeep Suri, who heads India's PD division said, 
"The Public Diplomacy division is using social media to communicate more effectively with diverse constituencies, to receive feedback in a way that makes the Ministry of External Affairs more responsive to citizen concerns and to build global communities of friends of India. Effective use of Twitter during the evacuation of our nationals from Libya by Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and by PD division has received an extremely positive response." 
The award was received by Under Secretary Abhay Kumar, who manages digital diplomacy initiatives at the Public Diplomacy Division, MEA, on behalf of the Division. The PD division is one of the first Government of India organisations to tap into the potential offered by social media and Web 2.0 tools.

Suggestions/Critiques welcome.

-- Madhur
Posted by Madhurjya Kotoky 1 comments
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