Middle East

If public diplomacy (PD) is understudied as a discipline, then even less is known about PD as practiced - or not - by less developed countries (LDCs) and their representatives abroad.

October 6, 2009

In Washington last week I sat down with a group of bloggers to interview two smart and savvy foreign correspondents. The fact that they were women, representing influential media from the Middle East, made their views interesting on several levels.

Nadia Bilbassy is a correspondent with MBC (Middle East Broadcasting Co.) and Joyce Karam is with London-based Arabic language daily Al Hayat. MBC owns Al Jazeera.

The response by individuals using Twitter to the Iranian election provides important perspectives for the scholarship and practice of Public Diplomacy.

Since last June’s election in Iran, updates of developments have appeared on Twitter alongside messages of support for protesters and celebratory tweets when websites from one side or the other were taken down. This spawned a number of press articles focusing on Iran’s Twitter Revolution.

Religion and immigration inspire passionate debate, but are immigrants and their beliefs causing the social fabric to unravel? In this lecture, Peggy Levitt will argue that immigrants are, in fact, the translators, bridge-builders, and religious diplomats that the United States so desperately needs.

September 8, 2009

The USC Center on Public Diplomacy and ASC School of Journalism were proud to host a forum discussing Iran: New Politics, New Media. This discussion was moderated by Philip Seib, Director of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy and featured an illustrious group of panelists.

June 2, 2009

As President Obama embarks for Riyadh and Cairo this evening, the "scene setters" appear: the BBC headlines "what could be one of the most important speeches of his presidency"; America's own NPR features a pre-departure interview focused on the Cairo speech as a "high-profile opportunity to reshape America's image among Muslim countries."

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