Enter The Associated Press (AP). Its recent deal with the KCNA to open a bureau in North Korea...has put the spotlight on the AP’s much-vaunted credibility as an independent, credible news source. Given the stakes of the event as a template for future cultural diplomacy with the DPRK, we here at SinoNK think it is both appropriate and worthy of all the attention.

The Beijing-backed Confucius Institutes, which promote Chinese culture internationally, have been no stranger to controversy since their launch in 2004. Critics have charged they are platforms for Chinese espionage and propaganda—a salacious if still unsubstantiated charge

It is an axiomatic fact of realpolitik that public diplomacy carries neither a presumption of truth and accuracy nor of completeness and objectivity. It behooves us never to forget that it is first and foremost an instrument of advocacy, a means to an end.

China is pushing its soft power agenda with an aim to quash debate on the issue of Tibet, where self-immolation protests will continue until Beijing ends its policy of state-sanctioned discrimination in the region, a Tibetan advocacy group said Wednesday.

As multicultural media in Canada grows, so is its use by emerging countries "as a way of influencing foreign public opinion, and as a part of their formal foreign policy apparatus," says one academic.

Lydia Dennett: "One concern is that the origin of the propaganda for foreign audiences might not be known to the domestic recipient. Might this loosening of the ban on propaganda be a slippery slope?"

It is the summer of 2012 and America is debating whether to modernize a piece of 1948 legislation on U.S. public diplomacy called the Smith-Mundt Act. At a time when American officials are racing to keep pace with the new communication technologies and trying to “out-communicate” the terrorists, not just other nations, the whole debate is mind-boggling. Ultimately, the debate is about much more than the legislation and speaks volumes about America understanding of communication in a global era. To get up to speed, U.S. public diplomacy needs the U.S. public, and both need a U.S.

The Marine Corps decided their own public diplomacy strategy in Afghanistan (though they call it psyops, and other refer to it as propaganda) needed to be evaluated by a third party. They hired the Rand Corporation to review their programs, and then ...published the results, good and bad, for the world to see. Some takeaways...