A curated selection of public diplomacy-relevant news from a global cross-section of English-language media outlets, including independent, corporate-owned, and state-sponsored sources. The stories featured don't necessarily represent CPD's views nor have they been verified by CPD.

Why the Arab Spring was the best and worst thing to happen to Al Jazeera

In many ways, Al Jazeera is a victim of its own success. Since the beginning of the Arab Spring...Al Jazeera played a vital role in spreading news about the uprisings throughout the region. Once the revolutions started, the network featured more than just traditional newsgathering...made a point of aggregating social media content...to its TV viewers.

Tags: middle east, media, arab spring, public diplomacy, social media, new technology, crisis coverage, al jazeera, journalism

Fostering International Media Engagement

The United States Department of State has Foreign Press Centers in Washington, D.C. and New York that help foreign media cover the U.S. Their goal is to promote the depth, accuracy, and balance of foreign reporting for the U.S., by providing direct access to authoritative American information sources.

Tags: united states, media, government pd, public diplomacy, us department of state, freedom of press

Backpack Diplomacy

Public diplomacy practitioners, students and scholars are aware that one of the critical obstacles for public diplomacy is resource deficiency, which includes the lack of funding and personnel. In other words, the scope of influence is a problem. Both Biden and Locke successfully attracted Chinese attention, with which any diplomatic approaches can be magnified.

Tags: china, united states, soft power, government pd, public diplomacy, public opinion, social media, new technology

Has Hollywood cracked China?

The American companies get a peek into the high-walled Chinese playground; China gets an injection of Hollywood storytelling pep, marketing savvy and global distribution that might help its film industry kick on. Despite the endless barrage of coverage declaring the 21st century Beijing-owned, Chinese cinema isn't flourishing.

Tags: china, united states, Cultural Diplomacy, media, government pd, public diplomacy, film diplomacy, hollywood

Can the pope recapture Europe?

The pontifical council for the promotion of the new evangelisation represents a significant benchmark to measure the Vatican's capability to regain some influence in what was once "its" Europe...It has to fight against what the Vatican perceives as "the supremacy of the fragments": a cultural approach which tends to isolate and disperse western societies, and by consequence also Catholics: a sort of "grassroots relativism".

Tags: public diplomacy, faith diplomacy, europe, non-state pd, religion, vatican, catholic church, pope benedict xvi, catholicism

How Beijing Missed an Opportunity in Libya

Beijing invests a lot of diplomatic and public-relations effort in persuading the world that China's "peaceful rise" is nothing to fear. This is especially true in Africa...Libya's recent turmoil represents a missed opportunity for Beijing to have shown its readiness to shoulder the responsibilities of a great power.

Tags: china, government pd, public diplomacy, africa, libya

RI grants scholarships to 750 foreign students

About 750 foreign students from 73 countries received scholarships from the Indonesian government to study Indonesian culture, arts and language at universities across the country...the program, launched in 1974, was among Indonesia's cultural diplomacy programs aimed at promoting Indonesian cultures to the rest of the world.

Tags: Cultural Diplomacy, government pd, public diplomacy, language, indonesia, art diplomacy, education diplomacy, universities, scholarship

Pakistan’s unlikely storyteller of the Swat Valley

Written long before the emergence of the Taliban, "The Wandering Falcon" moves far beyond the Western media's stereotypical depiction of the tribal areas and lays bare the nature of a place that is now a focal point of U.S. and European foreign policy.

Tags: Cultural Diplomacy, middle east, public diplomacy, pakistan, non-state pd, literature, books

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