The View from CPD

Sports diplomacy is a political function that trades on non-political credibility.  Someone who is skeptical of Barack Obama might welcome Michelle Kwan, and a person not ready to believe Hillary Clinton might embrace Cal Ripken.  Trust is a rare enough commodity in diplomacy that policymakers seek out personalities or methods that enable their viewpoints to receive a hearing, and sports figures have proved to be useful in accomplishing this. 

China is increasingly to be found at the center of discussions about public diplomacy.  Its Confucius Institutes and heavy investments in international broadcasting attract global attention. Not to be overlooked is its role as a producer and consumer of movies. 

The 2011 uprisings in the Middle East have proved that democracy retains its appeal, even to people who have long lived without it. These events also
showed the power of media to galvanize and unify. Social media, which can be defined as easily accessible media that foster social interaction, have attracted much attention and have been given credit for being the principal mobilizing tools in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere.

Nation Branding as a field of practice and study has enjoyed enormous attention in the past decade as countries have attempted to burnish their self-presentation to the world and jostled to improve their standing in the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index.

Welcome to the latest periodical from the USC Center on Public Diplomacy: PDiN Monitor.

This new electronic roundup of the Center‘s subscription service PDiN (Public Diplomacy in the News), is intended to serve as a one-stop resource for practitio-ners, scholars and policy makers around the world.

Pervasive global communication and global travel are changing diplomacy, making it more “public” in the sense that publics around the world are more easily reached than ever before, and they increasingly expect this outreach.

Why does faith diplomacy matter?

Billions of people throughout the world are sustained by their faith. In it they find a way to transcend temporal lives that are harsh or unrewarding. Whatever their religion, whatever their spiritual practices, they put their trust in belief.

As of today (June 11), there have been 12,718,400 visitors to the Shanghai Expo since it opened on May 1, 2010. That means that the anticipated projection of 70 million visitors may well be surpassed by the time the Expo closes in October.

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