soft power
In Pop Power: Pop Diplomacy for a Global Society, Luis Antonio Vidal Pérez explores pop culture as a tool for constructing a global society in the context of International Relations by studying the cases of South Korea and Japan’s pop diplomacy in Peru.
The news that Cambridge representatives held a series of one-to-one meetings with Wen Ruchun, the daughter of the former Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao, raises profound and disturbing questions about the integrity of British academia and the reach of China's soft-power machine.
There’s also been potentially catastrophic damage to the West’s influence and credibility. The US is accused of over-prioritizing and withdrawing attention and resources from Eastern Europe; it’s an open question whether the EU is an effective foreign policy actor at all.
On Oct. 1, the Toronto District School Board became the latest high-profile North American educational institution to sever ties with the Confucius Institutes, a Chinese government-funded language and culture program.
According to a declassified Ministry of Defence report on the power of soap operas, positive messages and storylines slipped into New Home, New Life, the British-backed Afghan incarnation of The Archers, have helped reduce landmine injuries, and persuaded Afghans to vote and to stop producing opium.
While the Chinese government perceives Americanideological influence as a potential strategic threat, the increase of US "soft power" leverage is merely an effect, and not an intentional policy, Robert Daly, Director of the Wilson Center Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, has told RIA Novosti.
Could a digitally adept nation change the rules of public engagement and become an influence far beyond their physical and financial resources? Why not? For one thing, the digital diplomacy space needs positive presences. In some ways, it has become a slightly moribund arena, with innovation at a premium. It's a digital cliché, of course, but diplomacy needs its disruptors.
Last weekend, the paradisiac island of Rhodes, Greece played host to the most recent debates on the budding ‘information war’ between Russia and the United States. The United States has traditionally invested enormous funds in perpetuating its ‘soft power’ abroad, particularly in the former territory of the USSR .