Elsevier

Public Relations Review

Volume 38, Issue 5, December 2012, Pages 652-664
Public Relations Review

Beyond a dyadic approach to public diplomacy: Understanding relationships in multipolar world

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2012.07.005Get rights and content

Abstract

This study advocates for a multipolar approach to public diplomacy within a public relations framework. This study applies semantic network analysis to understand Chinese public diplomacy efforts during the 2011 Libya crisis. Two theories, image building and relationship management, informed the analysis. Four important findings emerged from the analysis. First, the evidence suggests that the combination of image building and relationship management provides a comprehensive theoretical framework to understand public diplomacy communication efforts. Second, understanding triads of national relationships reveals nuances that cannot be captured by a dyadic approach to public diplomacy. Third, this study introduces a new method, semantic network analysis, to the research of public diplomacy, and reveals linguistic relationships and shared meaning manifested in the content of People's Daily newspaper coverage of the Libya crisis. Finally, the findings support the pervasiveness of multipolar thinking. Public diplomacy in general, and soft balancing specifically, is about positioning a nation in a wider context and strategically using relationships to accomplish foreign policy goals.

Highlights

► Public diplomacy efforts can be best characterized as multipolar rather than dyadic relationships. ► Semantic network analysis provides a new method to research linguistic relationships and shared meaning of public diplomacy. ► Public diplomacy is about positioning a nation in a wider context and strategically using relationships to accomplish foreign policy goals.

Section snippets

Public diplomacy as public relations image cultivation

The term public diplomacy has been explored in the Communication literature for over 20 years and it is natural to study it within the theoretical domain of international public relations. Image cultivation is the most dominant theme in the public diplomacy literature. It is premised on the idea that governments attempt to cultivate a certain image of their nation for international publics and that public relations strategies and tactics help to build and promote that image. We argue that

Relationship management as a framework for public diplomacy

Ferguson (1984) proposed that public relations should be studied and practiced as a relationship management function. Ferguson's idea has become the foundation for a recent theoretical shift in public relations research. Broom, Casey, and Ritchey (1997) explicated the concept of relationships from a variety of research literatures and tied the concept back to interpersonal communication, psychotherapy, inter-organizational research (IOR), and systems theory. At the heart of this article is the

Understanding relationships through soft balancing

Balance of power refers to the situation in international relations when there is stability between competing forces (Fry, Goldstein, & Langhorn, 2004). In an ideal world, the balance of power prevents any one nation from becoming strong enough to force its will upon the rest (Waltz, 1979). According to Pape (2005), when the balance of power cannot be achieved in a pure form, particularly when the world has one military and economic superpower, rising powers and other nations can resort to

China–U.S. relationship

In 1978, China and the United States established an official diplomatic relationship. Chinese presidential visits in 1985 and 1997 opened up a new era in the Sino–U.S. relationship. However, in 1999, the U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia severely damaged the bilateral relationship. During George W. Bush's first term, the relations between the United States and China had improved. However, during his second term frictions between Washington and Beijing arose again (

A test to the China–U.S.–Russia relationship: Libya's 2011 uprising

The situation in Libya during spring 2011 provided an excellent opportunity to study how the three countries engaged in public diplomacy and media relations. China and Russia opposed any international intervention in Libya while the United States participated as a member of the NATO-led coalition supporting the rebels. There are many ways to potentially examine the three-way relationship among China, Russia and the United States. The research team decided to test one small part of the

Semantic network analysis

The idea of semantic network can be traced back to philosopher Charles S. Peirce (Lehman, 1992). Semantic network analysis helps to illustrate positions and principles shared among different perspectives, documents and actors. The idea is that when nation states address issues that are of international interest, different public diplomacy strategies may affect governments’ use of language and framing strategies. For countries such as China, where the ruling political party directly controls

Results and discussion

This section reports the results of the semantic network analysis and also discusses the findings through the theoretical lens of relationship management and public diplomacy. RQ1 inquired about the ways in which the People's Daily covered the relationships of major countries and organizations involved in the Libyan issue. After performing the analysis through ZIPF, the words were listed according to their frequency. The total number of distinctive words analyzed was 1043. Among these words,

Image-building and relationship management: two valuable theoretical frameworks

This study critically reviews the image building and relationship management literature, and argues that both bodies of literature have value for public diplomacy research. First, image building may continue to dominate public diplomacy strategies because of the importance of image and the lack of feasibility for nations to employ other relationship building strategies with mass global audiences. As illustrated in our study, China carefully crafted its image through mass media coverage. The

Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge the Institute for US-China Issues at the University of Oklahoma for supporting this research.

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