MPD in China 2013: Thoughts on Beijing

APDS Blogger: David Mandel BEIJING. So the first thing is that it is big, bigger than you thought, though you imagined it to be very big. Big in an almost surprising way, such that you are taken aback but not so much that you cannot rationalize it, because, after all, you knew it would be. Read More

The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency: American Public Diplomacy, 1989-2001

Nicholas J. Cull

Nicholas Cull’s new book The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency: American Public Diplomacy, 1989-2001 is the second and final volume in his comprehensive history of the United States Information Agency (USIA), the independent foreign affairs agency within the executive branch of the U.S. government charged with the conduct of public diplomacy (PD) from 1953 to 1999. The first volume traces the Agency from its post-World War II birthing pains to what many perceive to be its high-water mark in 1989 when, in December of that year, Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.

MPD in China 2013: An Introduction

APDS Blogger: Sarah Myers In January 2013, a group of nine Masters’ of Public Diplomacy students will embark on a trip to Beijing, China. A mixture of native Chinese and Americans, we hope to accomplish an ambitious set of goals: to gain an understanding of how public diplomacy is thought about and engaged in academic contexts as well as how it is innovatively used in practice—through film, at airports, over the Internet, in media, and by corporations. Read More

Re-imagining the World Expo

Few had probably even heard of the country Kazakhstan until the 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. At the time, the satiric film starring Sacha Baron Cohen was roundly denounced by Kazakhstan for its unflattering portrayal of the country, still coming out of the shadows of the former Soviet Union. Read More

London 2012: Everyone’s a winner

Before the Olympics, if you'd asked me where the UK would rank in Monocle’s annual "Soft Power" Survey this year, I'd have hoped for a podium finish. After the Olympics...I am proud to find us carrying off the Gold. Read More

Development in the Arab World: Lessons from China

For nearly two hundred years the measure of a nation’s progress has been its capacity to Westernize. Today, to a great extent, China has shifted this narrative. In the last three decades, China has lifted over 500 million of its people out of poverty according to the World Bank. The scale and speed of China’s growth are unprecedented. The world has never seen anything like the rise of China according to Martin Jacques, author of bestseller ‘When China Rules the World: the End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order.’ Read More

Foodathon 2012 & the Opportunity of ‘Category Blogging’ in India

Blogs are gradually emerging as mainstream media in India. I previously mentioned in my own blog that the presence of a free press and recent proliferation of media outlets in India has relegated bloggers to the background, unlike in societies where there are limits to freedom of expression. This is true especially in the space of ‘issues’ where the ability of bloggers to influence public discourse in India seems to be limited by being ‘somewhat unnecessary’. Read More

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