Latest Must-Reads in Public Diplomacy: March 2026

CPD Faculty Fellow Bruce Gregory has compiled a list of the latest must-reads in public diplomacy. Known affectionately at CPD as "Bruce's List," this list is a compilation of books, journal articles, papers and blog posts on a wide variety of PD topics. Highlights from the latest list include an analysis of the role of narrative at World Expos by Jay Wang, Director of the USC Master of Public Diplomacy program; CPD Research Fellow Jessica Carniel's Perspective on the Eurovision Song Contest; CPD Faculty Fellow Nicholas Cull's new framework for measuring soft power, and more. 

Jessica Carniel, Can Fans Be Public Diplomats? Participatory Diplomacy at the Eurovision Song Contest, January 2026, CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Carniel (University of Southern Queensland, Australia) explores how Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) fans, as members of national and global publics, understand the politics of the contest and view it as a site for political expression, political agency, and diplomatic agency. Her research focuses on two geopolitical events: Ukraine’s ESC win in 2022 and controversies arising from Israel’s ESC participation in 2024 and the political intervention of Israel’s government. Carniel’s methodology draws on the concept of “participatory diplomacy” — for which she provides a reasoned literature-grounded explication — and evidence from an online survey of ESC fans, digital ethnographic analysis of X/Twitter, and other online sources. She concludes that ESC fans view song quality as the most important factor in their votes; they also see their votes and other fan practices as a form of political communication. Carneil asserts that Eurovision enables fans, performers, and broadcast media to “participate in the processes of public diplomacy.” That the ESC is a site for political expression and agency, notwithstanding Eurovision’s statements that it is a nonpolitical event, seems supported by the evidence. Whether the ESC is a site for diplomatic agency is debatable. Are self-selecting fans in music (or sports) events diplomatic actors engaged in representation and communication on public matters of governance and collective steering — or are they engaged in private political expressions in the domain of cross-societal internationalism intended to influence public opinion and the behavior of governance actors? Carniel raises interesting issues for further study and discourse. As the literature on societized diplomacy expands, much boundary work remains.

Jian Wang, “Revisiting Strategic Narrative Through the World Expo,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, January 13, 2026. Wang (University of Southern California) examines the role of narrative in nation branding through a study of Expo Shanghai (2010). His intent is to show why narratives matter and demonstrate the value of narrative as a structure of meaning and mode of persuasion in public diplomacy practice. Concepts discussed in the article include narrative as a strategic form, as a symbolic action, and as a process in time and space. Wang explores the meaning of narrative as storytelling at the intersection of fiction and nonfiction and as a co-creative process in which “nations jointly articulate visions of global order.” His Expo case study, he argues, has broader implications for public diplomacy in a networked environment where narratives “circulate, collide, and recombine.” 

Stuart MacDonald, Nicholas Cull, and Hendrik Ohnesorge, “Measuring Soft Power in an Age of Destruction: Why Trust Matters, and Why Its Character Matters More,”  February 2026, British Council. MacDonald (ICR Research), Cull (University of Southern California), and Ohnesorge (University of Bonn) offer a new framework for measuring soft power and understanding its characteristics in an era of trust destruction. They ground their analysis in the Munich Security Conference reports of 2025 and 2026, the US withdrawal from multilateral commitments, and its active dismantling of the institutional architecture it helped build during eight decades. Soft power measurement metrics used during a relatively stable liberal international order, they argue, must change to account for today’s environment. Their blog offers key judgments on the importance of trust in the current context. Trust matters because adversaries recognize its value and are investing in its destruction. Trust involves a story with a beginning, middle, and anticipated end — a temporal structure that explains why it is hard to achieve and easy to lose. High social trust correlates with institutional engagement, civic participation, and openness to global engagement. Today’s challenge is whether a country’s trust environment can sustain soft power projection when norms and institutions are being dismantled. There is grist aplenty here for academic seminars, foreign ministry training courses, think tank forums, and debate in the public sphere.

Ilan Manor and Moran Yarchi, “The Long Road Ahead: Assessing the Long-term Impact of Ukraine’s Innovative Twitter Practices,”  Communication and the Public, 2026, 1-23. Manor (Ben Gurion University, Israel) and Yarchi (Reichman University, Israel) examine Ukraine’s innovative use of Twitter (X) during the Russia-Ukraine War. Their goal is to determine digital technology innovations that may spread among diplomatic institutions, leading to the adoption of new norms and practices by diplomats and diplomacy’s publics. From a literature review of 90 digital diplomacy studies, the authors develop a matrix of 14 factors that facilitate or inhibit digital innovation in diplomacy. Then, using the matrix, they analyze social networking sites (SNS) developed by Ukraine. Diplomacy’s digitalization, they contend, is affected by external shocks to the international system and the emergence of innovative technologies. Manor and Yarchi provide a nuanced assessment of SNS tactics that Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFA) may emulate: (1) use of SNS to target open letters to Tech CEOs, (2) use of humor and pop culture references to gain virality and the attention of SNS users and news outlets, and (3) appointment of celebrities as digital ambassadors. Ukraine’s crowdfunding of humanitarian aid, they argue, is unlikely to be emulated by MFAs. This open access article is impressive for the scope of its literature review, the originality of its analysis, and its generative findings for researchers and practitioners. See also, Ilan Manor, “Assessing the Long-term Impact of Ukraine’s Digital Innovations,”  February 18, 2026, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Jan Melissen and Githma Chandrasekara, “Theorizing and Debating the Domestic Deficit in IR and Diplomatic Studies,” in Jan Melissen, HwaJung Kim, and Githma Chandrasekara, eds., Home Engagement in Diplomacy, 5-38, (Brill | Nijhoff, 2025). In this book’s open access introductory chapter Melissen (Leiden University) and Chandrasekara (independent researcher, Sri Lanka) advance claims that (1) diplomats increasingly act as “boundary spanners” with citizens in home societies and (2) classical statist understandings of diplomacy are giving way to a “multifaceted societal dimension.” The authors begin with a survey of mainstream IR theories (e.g., classical realism, neoclassical realism, constructivism), foreign policy analysis, and state-centric diplomacy studies pointing to their insufficient contributions to understanding the agency of individuals and collectives in societized diplomacy. They turn then to the 21st century’s boom in public diplomacy — a phenomenon long on quantitative output but short on productive theorizing. They conclude with evidence-based support for their argument “that the state-centered diplomatic process is co-determined by state-society relations [which] brings the whole of society into focus.” Attention is given to understanding “domestic publics,” diplomacy and democracy, participatory governance in diplomacy, deliberative governing, and peoples’ agency and identity in the digital age. This exceptionally knowledgeable and visionary chapter is not only an introduction to the book, it generates ideas for theory building and research in diplomatic studies.

Emma Briant, “America Once Sold ‘Democracy’ to the World — Now It’s Undermining Its Own Message,”  January 28, 2026, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy. In this perceptive CPD blog, Emma Briant (Notre Dame University) highlights what it will take to restore credibility, overcome de-professionalization and politicization, and rebuild tools and institutions in American diplomacy’s public dimension. Traditional public diplomacy “limps on” she observes, and it may regain capacity. But the damage done is long term and the most impactful change will come from outside government. “It is journalists, educators, artists, civic networks — and the public — who must carry America’s democratic voice and values forward: telling real stories, connecting across borders, and showing the world what they really stand for.”Nicholas J. Cull, “From World Wars to the Digital Age,”  February 6, 2026, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Cynthia P. Schneider, “Might Makes Right Revisited: Is Greenland a Modern Day Melos?”  January 20, 2026, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

The full edition of Bruce's List can be found here.