'Social Media Detox' is good. I say this to all those of you who checked on me to figure what happened to my blog and where was I to be found on social media. If you write on a topic that is not necessarily mainstream, the 'noise' in social media and the content blitzkrieg, indeed gets to you.

We tend to lose sense of what's important and what's not, what's relevant and what's not.

TIME ASIA COVER MARCH 10, 2014

Recently,  I got a taste of what I was missing as my reading habits became increasingly 'social'. It was on a long flight back to India where I happened to pick up the TIME magazine as I settled on my seat after dinner. Years ago I was a regular reader of the magazine and was now shocked to see now how much the magazine had shrunk!

It almost seemed like a pamphlet, the last few pages of a news magazine trying to hold its own against social media onslaught.

I don't really know how the magazine is doing in its digital format, but I as read through the stories, news analysis and updates it was the magazine I always knew - solid research, impeccable reporting, depth of analysis but most importantly stellar news judgement and news selection. The role of an editorial team in planning and presenting content was but obvious.

It's not the digital bit that I am wary about, but the social bit.

Social media not only makes us publishers of our content but also offers us more choices in terms of what we read. But our reading habits and information gathering skills again, sometimes, are limited by our awareness or the lack of it, exposure, biases and habits. We may not always make the best choices in what we read and sometimes, as I realized while reading the magazine on my flight back, it's good to have professionals to help keep our focus on topics that are important. We need our editors and reporters back and find a way to keep them at the job they do for us and not let the social media deluge take over completely.

The competitive noise of social media has its own place but is definitely not an answer to everything. I leave you with this editorial from the The Washington Post: The Dumbing of America, by Susan Jacoby that has interesting insights into how the proliferation of video content potentially affects how we make sense of our world.

"(We are)...in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations."

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I. AUDIENCE: Youth will be the primary drivers of your message. Find ways to engage with them on almost everything. According to the ‘State of the Urban Youth, India 2012: Employment, Livelihoods, Skills,’ a report published by IRIS Knowledge Foundation in collaboration with UN-HABITAT, every third person in an India city is a youth and by 2020 the median age of the country will be 29 years. See INDIAN YOUTH PORTAL of the Government of India : http://www.youthportal.gov.in/

II. MESSAGE: Localize your message and content for India; for each of its regions. India has a long tradition of assimilation and a composite culture. We like to give our own shape to stuff. Remember to package it audio visually, sometimes it helps to overcome barriers presented by linguistic diversity or illiteracy.

III. TONALITY: Aspiration is what it should represent. Irrespective of geography or socio economic standing. Here I would like to draw the approach of Harvard Professor Dominique Moisi’s much criticized work - “The Geopolitics of Emotion” - where he maps the world according to three primary emotions – hope, fear and humiliation.

 IV. MEDIUM: Do not forget alternative media, the ubiquitous mobile phone and social co-creation. The mainstream press and journalists remain important but the monopoly over production of viewpoints is  broken and so is the monopoly over the medium. Also remember access to technology and media in India is often ‘informal’ – people without the means or know-how still manage to access through friends, family, community groups etc. See this excellent slideshare presentation below by Mohit Chhabra: 

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The Global Post reported the launch of the first civilian diplomatic corps by South Korea last month. The article stated,

"The corps with five groups as well as 30 individual adolescents and 20 senior citizens plan to push for diverse projects with the government's support to improve the national image abroad and to help increase its influence on the international arena"

Among Asian countries, South Korea is quite innovative in its approach to PD as seen over the last few years. This information is significant because,

1. The PD corps not only includes civilians from diverse backgrounds but also non-Koreans 
2. This development is associated with the securing of a PD budget of nearly USD 5.99 billion; as per the report in the Global Post. Now this should easily be among the highest PD budgets in Asia reflecting the growing importance of soft power in managing international relations. Note that South Korea's PD program is relatively recent - 2010 was when it formally began.
3. This also means coming together of the government and the people on foreign policy. Foreign policy can finally come down from its ivory tower of 'geo-strategy' & 'security' and acquire a human dimension - nations, after all, are an imagined community of people. Nations exist in people's minds and that's where foreign policy should begin. Quite interesting actually, something that I have been writing quite frequently in this blog.
4. The South Korean experiment seems like an institutionalization of informal/formal citizen groups & networks by the government. Now this is open to debate since the possibility of co-option by the state may exist. 

I remember being a member of the Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace & Democracy (PIPFPD) as a student of Delhi University. An experiment in Track II diplomacy, initiated by prominent citizens, with blessings from the government it was complementary to the peacemaking efforts of the Government of India. Numerous such 'people to people' programs are currently underway in India and there is definitely a diverse network of civilian diplomats working behind the scenes.

 

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" ... only a late harvest will discover all the fruit of public diplomacy. Student exchange programs, for example, may have greatest effect decades later, when the former students have become government officials"

"In speeches delivered since he became Secretary of State, Kerry has shown he understands the need for foreign policy to have a strong popular base at home as well as in the countries with which the United States is working. He has been in politics a long time and knows the importance of constituency-building."

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“The illiterate of the 21st Century are not those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” ― Alvin Toffler  in Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Power at the Edge of the 21st Century

       ‘Hyperconnectivity’ is one such trend and is going to define the future. What it essentially refers to is a paradigm shift from ‘going online’ to ‘being online’ – a coming of age of the internet; the reality of a parallel virtual universe.

1. Complex media environment: We need to be agile and alert. It is increasingly becoming a complex media environment. We need to be adept at communicating ‘in’ and also ‘across’ different platforms being aware that the message will be consumed differently and conveyed further increasingly differently.  It’s complex where there are numerous apps, different screens, different devices, different formats and add to it the customized narratives for each. While we talk content, it’s interesting to realize that the monopoly over content by prominent individuals and conglomerates have been completely broken. A good story can be told by anyone, anywhere with great impact. Managing narratives have become difficult and this brings me to my second point of  target audiences.
2. Demanding  Audiences: Our audiences demand more, and along with the story we need to deliver an ‘experience’. Interactivity is important, so is the format and experience of consumption, and we have to take care of all, knowing fully well that a story that isn’t credible won’t last long.
3. Audience Fragmentation: Audiences have access to multiple sources of information. Loyalties switch across platforms depending upon the format and experience across platforms and there can be 'multiple loyalties'. Multiplicity of platforms actually means audiences are getting divided into smaller groups and the same group of people might exhibit different behaviors across different platforms. This brings me to my third point.
4. Measurement Difficulties: How do you make sense of all this? I am not too sure of accuracy levels of current data analytics and to what extent are they effective when it comes to some sort of predictive modeling simply because of the overwhelming number of variables that are coming into play. Will be glad if any reader can enlighten here…
5. Monetization difficulties: How do you monetize what you create? How do you protect what you create from being duplicated? While we talk of content marketing and content being king, content actually seems to have become real cheap thanks to over supply! You should read this interesting piece (if you haven't read it already) in The New York Times, that talks of the Slow Death of the American Author.

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The Asian Tribune recently made an interesting observation on Sri Lanka's Public Diplomacy capabilities. The article refers to the screening of the Channel 4 documentary ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Field’, at the Capitol Hill on July 15. It says,

It further says,

Most South Asian countries are not very advanced communications societies and  bureaucracies therein may not always be adept at navigating the world of global media. For many it may not be worth the time. Sri Lanka is likely to feel the heat all the more in the coming few years with the international community and even Ban Ki Moon himself asking for genuine and thorough investigations into the alleged atrocities committed by the armed forces during the Eelam War IV. The Indian foreign policy establishment in the meantime are ambiguous in their response to the airing of the Channel 4 documentary and has refused to react/comment on the matter. (Read here: Lanka war crimes: No comments, says Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao)

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