As seen in Chapter 2, American thinkers developed the concepts of public diplomacy and soft power (Cull 2009b), and other states have come to adopt them both as necessary and valuable means to project state power. However, this does not mean that different states
understand these concepts in the same way. Because of this, Hayden (2011) suggests, we should look to the “rhetoric of public diplomacy,” the ways in which politicians and practitioners
describe and implement public diplomacy policies, to understand state expectations and plans for the various assets and tools they deploy. While individual journalists working for IBs often shun the term public diplomacy, IBs are typically considered part of the state’s public diplomacy apparatus. What this apparatus entails and how it colors IB practices varies widely.
As the phrase “rhetoric of public diplomacy” implies, language is, if not everything, at least important to how states formulate their public diplomacy. Take, for example, the Chinese term xuan chuan, which means “propaganda,” called dui wai xuan chuan for “external
more like “public relations” in the thinking of Chinese practitioners (Y. Wang 2008, 259). Rawnsley (2015b) suggests, Chinese PD practice is grounded in an attitude of “to know us to love us,” predicated on the idea that managing information about China will cause foreigners to have a more positive evaluation of the country. In contrast, Germans may translate public diplomacy directly to öffentliche Diplomatie, or some variation like diplomatische
Öffentlichkeitsarbeit meaning “diplomatic public relations,” while the German government uses auswärtige Kulturpolitik, “cultural policy abroad” (Zöllner 2006b, 162). These terms reflect the dual role of German PD to support both foreign and development policy goals by managing Germany’s image as well as addressing cultural and economic development in other states. Połońska-Kimunguyi (2015) argues that German PD’s Cold War role of fostering dialogue has increasingly been combined with the state’s desire to see development in African states, and to counteract increasing Chinese presence in that continent, to the point of not presenting Germany to Africans, but depicting ways in which Africans could potentially be richer and more
developed, potentially more German.
While these translations may seem similar, they reflect ambivalence about how
governments should conceptualize public diplomacy efforts. In Chinese practice, the goal is to manage and improve information about China itself, which is what xuan chuan is for, both domestically and internationally (Shambaugh 2013). The German approach directly references public relations as a field in some cases, and officially focuses on the “abroad” part of public diplomacy, indicating that the government sees the domestic and international spheres as fundamentally different.
Alternatively, Russia uses the terms obshchestvennaya diplomatiya, publichnaya
Western states. When referring to Russian PD in the post-Soviet space terms like gumanitarnoe sotrudnichestvo, “humanitarian cooperation,” or gumanitarnoe napravlenie “humanitarian trend” are used. Saari (2014) suggests that these differing terminologies reflect a soft power oriented “Western” strand of PD and a “manipulative” Soviet style of propaganda in post-Soviet
countries. However, scholars like Borchers (2011) and Pomerantsev (2014) might argue that all Russian PD is a form of political technology of manipulation and differences between the West and post-Soviet spaces derive from their audience specific messaging. In any case, Russian PD has neither the consistency of Chinese PD, nor the ideological content of liberal values seen in German PD. In contrast, Qatar configures its public diplomacy and broader foreign policy as a mediator between diverse interests and states (Gray 2013).38 Public diplomacy in the Qatari
model involves removing the Qatari state from most mediated interactions and crafting an open space for dialogue, going so far as to pursue relations with Israel (Fromherz 2012). Despite having very little real press freedom, Qatar’s PD efforts have thrived on their openness, in contrast to Russia’s efforts in its “near-aboard” based on Soviet “political technologies” of manipulation. In each case, the state has internalized the value, if not necessarily the term in the case of Qatar, of public diplomacy, but also modified it to reflect its particular history and interests. In turn, just as I expect their respective media system to shape each IB, the ways states comprehend PD and soft power shape their larger PD programs.
Table 3.2 shows that each state in the study uses relatively similar methods of outreach. All have multiple media outreach projects in several languages, finance educational institutions, promote people diplomacy with schools or think tanks, and have target audiences in mind for these various efforts.
38 Though, as we have seen in the previous section there are many reasons to doubt that Qatari efforts can rest on an open mediation model anymore (see also Dickinson 2014).
Table 3.2 Sponsoring State Public Diplomacy Programs
China Germany Qatar Russia
Media Outlets Wire services (Xinhua), Newspapers (China Daily and People’s Daily), Radio (China Radio International), several CCTV language specific channels DW Radio particularly in Africa, DWNews Al-Jazeera conglomerate, includes sports and specialty language channels, AJ+ online channel Wire services (Ruptly, Sputnik, RIA Novosti), Online newspaper (Russia Beyond the Headlines), Educational Institutions, Language, and Think Tanks Confucian Institutes, exchange of Chinese undergraduates, exchange of intellectuals Provides German language education via DW, DW- Academie for media training, Goethe Institutes Qatar Foundation, partnerships with Western universities, finances academic scholarship on Qatar, finances Museums
Russkii Mir and Russian Cooperation Agency in post- Soviet space, Institute for Democracy and Cooperation Targeted Audiences Chinese speakers abroad, English speaking travelers, African sub-continent African sub- continent, Europeans Arabs in neighboring states, English speaking elites globally Russian speakers in Baltic, Americans and Europeans in English
Within these activities, however, there are key differences where the varied definitions of PD seen above shape practices. Key among these differences is the relative amount of state direction of the efforts, depth and breadth of media enterprises, and the value placed on particular regions and people as targets for outreach. These differences illustrate the variety of ways in which states understand public diplomacy and soft power and provide a standard to evaluate the content analyzed in subsequent chapters.
Joseph Nye (2013), has argued that the greatest source of soft power is an active civil society. The paradox of this view is that PD is state originated by definition. Nye further argued
that both China and Russia make a “mistake of thinking that government is the main instrument of soft power. In today’s world, information is not scarce but attention is, and attention depends on credibility. Government propaganda is rarely credible.” However, evaluating non-Western (or even Western in the case of Germany) PD by American standards risks placing them in a
normative framework that undermines our ability to understand the internal logic of their programs. Indeed, both Chinese and Russian efforts are largely state guided. Media systems interact with powerful central governments to make independent action and thought difficult in both countries. Meanwhile Germany and Qatar’s public diplomacy, though state funded, operate with relative freedom. However, state guidance is what we should expect, especially given the Chinese and Russian models of journalism. In both cases, commercial pressures exist but are carefully monitored and influenced by the state to achieve broader goals (Meng and Rantanen 2015; Vartanova 2015; Zhao 2012). So, while we might expect greater conformity to state interests in CCTV and RT than DW, it does not immediately follow that CCTV content is
“brittle propaganda,” to use Nye’s phrase. Likewise, we might expect greater independence from state narratives in DW and AJE given the relative freedom of their journalists, though we should still see state interests moderate that freedom, not just for Qatar but for Germany as well. While Nye suggests that China and Russia misapprehend what fosters soft power, it seems more likely that they have a different view on how one gains soft power in the first place. In this way, using Western standards of public diplomacy to evaluate non-Western PD efforts can lead to
misapprehension of the PD policies and methods employed by each state, something I am trying to avoid by using a comparative framework (Hallin and Mancini 2004; Meng and Rantanen 2015). The various media efforts of each state also suggest differing approaches to PD and soft power.
The networks analyzed herein are not the only mass media efforts adopted by these states, but there are important differences between them as well. The choice each state makes between traditional broadcast television, wire services, and online platforms illustrate their differing conceptions of how IB and PD should operate. China’s wire service effort is
particularly robust. Xinhua, like much modern Chinese media, started as a tool of the CPC, but since the 1979 reforms it has morphed into an international news service working in Mandarin and English and is now subject to market pressures (Hong 2011).39 Similarly, Russia has started
Ruptly, a news service that provides a “bolder, deeper point-of-view than the established figures of the news marketplace” (Ruptly 2015). Given international communications long standing interest in news wire services (see for example O. Boyd-Barrett 1980), Russian and Chinese entrance into this arena represents the continuation of a long standing dispute over control of international information flows (Nordenstreng 2012). Alternatively, AJ and DW are invested in online platforms such as the AJ+ and DWNews (Gummer 2015). This is not to say that Russia and China do not invest in internet space for their PD efforts. RT remains popular on YouTube and CCTV has a web presence. Nevertheless, China and Russia opting to create wire services that supply media content means they provide sources for other news channels, especially those that do not have on the ground assets in either Russia or China, and can alter the global supply of information and undermine Western dominance of news services.40 However, information is plentiful and each state has other methods for reaching audiences. China’s use of multiple outlets including newspapers such as the People’s Daily, an official arm of the CPC, allows CCTV to
39 In addition to CCTV International, the state funds Xinhua News Agency, China Radio International, and the People’s Daily Newspaper, all translated into English (Shambaugh 2013).
40 While a complete analysis is not forthcoming here, it is worth mentioning that RT does use content from Ruptly and Sputnik in its reports and CCTV’s web page content lists Xinhua as their wire source. In these limited cases, there do appear to be synergies between wire services and some IB content.
operate less as a propaganda mouthpiece and more as a journalistic institution, even if it is one based on Chinese journalistic models that encourage deference to the state. Germany continues to provide FM radio in many parts of the world, particularly in Africa where educational
programming is a popular genre (Połońska-Kimunguyi 2015). Finally, Qatar has spun out the Al- Jazeera brand into a conglomerate structure, providing children and sports programming in addition to news and changing the name from Qanat “channel” to Shabaka “network,” signaling it expansion and compartmentalization (Kraidy 2008). Each effort, radio, television, online, or wire service suggests a different approach and a different audience. Wire services supply news to other outlets, but as both Ruptly and Xinhua have access to Russia and China that other services may lack, they have the potential to build market niches and alter the flow of information as AJE’s images of Iraq, Egypt, and Afghanistan once did (El-Nawawy and Iskander 2002; Ibish 2016; Wessler and Adolphsen 2008b).
The variety of media outlets also suggests that each state has particular audiences in mind. Their sponsors intended CCTV America and Al-Jazeera America for the US market, while wire services are for journalists specifically as opposed to general audiences. Likewise, a state’s cultural and intellectual advocacy has specific targets, which indicate particular strategies and understandings of PD and influence how IBs address audiences. For instance, Russia’s Russkii Mir program exists to promote the Russian language, particularly in the Baltic, while the Russian Cooperation Agency promotes Russia’s vision of the international system and foreign policy (Saari 2014). These programs, in Russia’s near-abroad, work to activate Russian speakers and undermine the states in which they reside by providing specific narratives about Russian history (Borchers 2011). Further afield, several European states have accused Russia and RT news content of targeting members of their societies and using them to damage national prestige
(Amann 2016; Bidder 2013; Borchers 2011; Nimmo and Eyal 2016). In this way, the Russian programs and ideas are likely to connect with a narrow segment of “fringe” groups of the left or right and operate more as traditional one way propaganda designed to undermine foreign publics (Osipova 2014). In contrast, China wants to reach people in the West and depict China to them but does so in a way that adjusts to the use of media to conform to the CPC’s goal of maintaining domestic cohesion (Edney 2012). Put another way, Russia reaches Western audiences but
particularly seeks those disaffected with the status quo and speaks to them in their own liberal democratic idiom, while China’s PD speaks to Westerners as though they are Chinese. What all of this suggests, is that each PD program contains within it different normative expectations for reaching foreign audiences and these expectations may influence the form that particular news content can take. If RT operates to undermine Western legitimacy, as many have claimed, then it appears to speak in the language of Western values to its audience; it is not about Russia it is about the West. If CCTV operates as an extension of domestic propaganda targeted at
international audiences, the channel will seek to convey similar ideas about China’s stability, development, and the role of the CPC in maintaining both. If this were the case, I would expect the content of each IB to reflect their broader understanding of public diplomacy and target audiences in different ways. Because of these factors, I expect IBs to create narratives not only based on the norms of economic journalism, but also potentially in specific political languages drawn from the journalists and oriented towards specific audiences.
Broadly speaking two sets of pressures can shape a given international broadcaster, the media system where they operate and the public diplomacy program of which they are a part. The first provides formal professional limits on journalistic practice and thus content. The second reflects state directed norms and the editorial outlook the channel fulfills. While an in-depth
examination of these pressures would require a newsroom based study, the presumption in the literature is that international broadcasters are subject to these pressures and thus they should be detectable in IB content. However, they must also have some concrete policy to narrate or project. Otherwise, they would not serve the sponsoring state’s interests.