Creating a Kurdish Brand

A new article evaluates Facebook as a public diplomacy tool of exchange—used by the U.S. government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to communicate with each other—and posits that the social media platform has the potential of working toward the creation of a Kurdish brand and of promoting the KRG abroad.

"Public Diplomacy Effort Across Facebook: A Comparative Analysis of the U.S. Consulate in Erbil and the Kurdistan Representation in Washington" is authored by Ahmed Omar Bali, Mahdi Sofi Karim and Kardo Rached of the diplomacy and public relations department at the University of Human Development in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

The authors explain, "this article presents a theoretical argument that assumes that public diplomacy can be practiced by nonstate actors and states. The Kurds are considered and targeted by the U.S. public diplomacy program across Facebook, and this helps the Kurds develop their relationship with the United States as a supporter of potential Kurdish statehood."

The full article was published in February 2018 by SAGE Open and can be found here. 

Photo by Levi Clancy | CC BY-SA 4.0