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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

PART TWO: CLOCKING GOVERNMENT INTERNET TRAFFIC: LET THE RACES BEGIN
FEB 18, 2009 - 7:04PM PST
Posted by Alvin Snyder
All posts by this author

The Voice of America has one of the most popular Internet news websites in the world, and in the United States as well, based on website page turns and user reach. According to Alexa.com, which ranks websites according to their daily traffic volume, the VOA is ranked as the 53rd most popular website in the "news category" of almost 9,000 news websites on the day we looked, February 17, 2009. Of the top 100 news websites, the VOA is ranked ahead of the Guardian, the International Herald Tribune, Sky News, US News and World Report, Al Jazeera English, the Associated Press, and the Toronto Star among many others. Some insightful comments were offered following my recent blog on the subject of Alexa.com. Brian Carlson wrote, "A fair comparison would be to look at the relative ranking of America.gov (the U.S. State Department site) and other government-sponsored websites like http://www.britishcouncil.org/. Thus, Voice of America.com might be compared to bbc.co.uk… and Alhurra, a government-owned news site, would be compared to VOA or RFE/RL's language sites." John Matel felt likewise. "As a general proposition," he said, "we too often fall into the PD trap of allowing people to frame us w/o a real world reference point. We need to deal with reality ... and comparisons." We looked up America.gov, which is ranked at number 21,406 in popularity, while Britishcouncil.org, which builds cultural relations with other countries, is ranked higher at 5,439th place. Comparing other global rankings: http://www.bbc.co.uk - #46 http://www.voa.com - #1,639 http://www.alhurra.com - #139,587 http://www.rferl.org - #62,968 European media consultant Morand Fachot notes "the very poor ranking (100,460th) of Voice of Russia, in spite of the number of languages (33), and also to be noted that some 75% of its traffic is from outside Russia itself. Now if you compare that with even a small Western broadcaster such as Radio Netherlands - nine languages (ranked 107,566th and 90% of traffic from foreign-based users) you see that Russian broadcasters have a serious credibility problem." Coming back to the VOA, it must be noted that although its news website is one of the most popular in the U.S., it was not intended to be heard in the U.S., as the Congress's Smith-Mundt Act banned domestic dissemination of such information intended for audiences abroad in 1948. Today, almost 40% of VOA's Internet users come from the United States, according to Alexa.com, although the VOA claims that Alexa "fails to capture a large percentage of our international traffic." But the point may become moot. "I think it might be time to kiss the Smith-Mundt Act goodbye," says Morand Fachot.
 
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Read Comments:

Kim Andrew Elliott on February 20, 2009 @ 2:34 pm:
The voanews.com website might more appropriately compared to bbc.co.uk/worldservice, but typing that URL in Alexa brings their ranking for the mother site: bbc.co.uk.

Here are some other competitors to voanews.com's #1,639 ...

chinabroadcast.cn #2,430 (China Radio International)

dw-world.de #2,694 (Deutsche Welle)

As for kissing the Smith-Mundt act goodbye, it might be time to kiss it hello. The BBC employs IP addresses to restrict certain web content to users inside the UK and to users outside the UK.

Internet users who know how to use proxy sites or other methods can work around this, but most web surfers are not so savvy.

bob baker on March 10, 2009 @ 11:48 am:
Elliott is right. The Smith-Mundt Act must be preserved to protect the VOA from being used for American partisan political ends. The BBC method of restricting certain web content to users inside or outside the U.K. seems a sensible way for the VOA to copy and to stay within the spirit as well as the letter of the Smith Mundt Act.

Jay Henderson on March 20, 2009 @ 4:37 am:
Full disclosure: I run the East Asia Division at VOA.

The VOA website to which you refer is only one of dozens operated by the Voice of America. In addition to the English site, which Alexa ranks so highly, VOA operates 44 sites in other languages; all of them carry news similar to the English site. These sites, too, are enormously popular in their areas, even in countries such as Vietnam that are uncomfortable with VOA's content. Take VOA's Chinese site, for instance. Even though the PRC government does its best to block access to it (except for a brief time during the Olympics), the site is accessible enough to serve as a virtual wire service to dozens of newspapers and magazines inside China. Practically every article VOA posts on its site in Chinese is picked up and republished by dozens of newspapers and magazines inside China, including everything from party organs such as the People's Daily to influential publications such as Oriental Morning (Dong Fang Dzao Bao). And not just Americana, either. One recent report, "American Forces Combine with Chinese to Combat Piracy in Gulf of Aden" was picked up and republished by 126 different news outlets in China. Another on a dispute on the Sino-Russian border generated over 500,000 reads and 2,000 written comments after it appeared on a blog in China.

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