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WASHINGTON --- Voice of America and other American international broadcasters now reach 187 million people every week, an increase of 22 million from 2010 and an all-time record number of listeners and viewers, according to data released yesterday.

Welcome to the opening entry of Culture Posts, an interactive blog for exploring the cultural underbelly of public diplomacy. Over the next two years, I hope that you will join me, collecting and discussing your insights on the hidden, and often times not so hidden, aspects of culture in public diplomacy.

Each year, Google hosts a conference called “Zeitgeist,” organizing presentations and discussions surrounding the most popular search queries of the past year. Much is learned about the zeitgeist through Google searches.
 

Americans learn in high school that one of the greatest acts in our history happened when George Washington said no when offered the opportunity to stay in power. He actually said it twice. The first time came at the end of the long war for independence. Instead of accepting a title of nobility and possible kingship, Washington famously took off his uniform and returned to Mt. Vernon a civilian, an American Cincinnatus.

WASHINGTON – U.S. embassies in Africa have created new models for public diplomacy, models which are already producing significant advances. That was the word at a conference here last week from Bruce Wharton, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy for the Bureau of African Affairs. Wharton, who was appointed last year, described the “Kampala model” of public diplomacy, named for the perhaps unique structure in the American embassy in Uganda.

DOHA --- When the Islamist Ennahda Party won 40 percent of the vote in Tunisia’s first free election since the overthrow of Zine Abidine Ben Ali, the party’s leader, Rachid Ghannouchi said, “We will continue this revolution to realize its aims of a free Tunisia, independent, developing, and prosperous in which the rights of God, the Prophet, women, men, the religious, and the non-religious are assured because Tunisia is for everyone.”

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