Paper prepared for the International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention San Francisco, 3-6 April 2013 People, Processes & Practices: Agency, Communication and the Construction of International Relations Cristina Archetti Senior Lecturer in Politics and Media School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences University of Salford Salford Manchester, M5 4WT UK c.archetti@salford.ac.uk WORK IN PROGRESS comments welcome and appreciated 1 People, Processes & Practices: Agency, Communication and the Construction of International Relations How are international relations constructed in an age of media ubiquity and globalization? How to explain the way both official and non-official actors contribute every day to shaping international politics in an increasingly interconnected world? What is the link between, on the one hand, individual and local practice and, on the other hand, the transformation of international affairs? The paper presents the findings of an empirical study that takes up the challenges posed by the ‘practice turn’ in international relations. Based on the case study of the UK and over forty interviews, it focuses on the daily practices of two sets of actors who operate at the interface between the national and the international dimensions and who are in a privileged position to “construct” the UK—its image and discourses—to the eyes of publics abroad: foreign diplomats and foreign correspondents based in London. The findings demonstrate that, within an appropriate ontological framework, the study of micro-practice can successfully account for the way in which individual thinking processes, respective organizational perspectives, and appropriation of emerging communication technologies ultimately translate into change at the macro level of international relations. Keywords: international relations, practice, constructivism, communication, diplomacy, public diplomacy, journalist, foreign correspondent, ontology, method. Introduction One does not need to be a constructivist in International Relations (IR) to see the world of international affairs as constructed. Switching on the TV or opening a history book will confirm that with plenty of evidence, at least of an anecdotal nature. Politicians and heads of states make politics among countries every day. Their practices cover not only the decisions that turned out to affect the international balance of power, the behaviour of millions of people, as well as their way of interpreting international events for decades, even centuries—one could mention, in this respect, the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD by emperor Titus, the beginning of the building of the Berlin wall in 1961 or, the unleashing of the “war on terror” through the “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan in October 2001. The political practices that contribute to constructing international relations on a daily basis also involve the negotiations—perhaps less dramatic but not less consequential—that constantly unfold inside the supranational institutions’ boxes—think about the fishing regulations agreed to in Brussels, which directly apply to 27 countries within the EU and affect many more external actors who further trade with them (European Commission, n.d.). Beyond the glamour and the spotlights of international summits on the one hand and the secret talks behind closed doors among diplomats on the other hand, international relations are also constructed by non-official actors. Public diplomacy, in this perspective, involves the engagement “in the open” between governments and foreign publics. Within the forms that public diplomacy might take—such as travelling art exhibitions, cultural exchanges, or advertising campaigns promoting a country to foreign audiences—the “ambassadors” are often ordinary citizens: artists, students, businessmen and women, celebrities (Cooper 2008), journalists (Archetti 2011). Journalists in particular, by writing their stories every day, have a political role in, effectively, constructing the very world we live in. Given that our direct 2 experience of reality does not often cover more than the commuting journey between home and the workplace, news is indeed a ‘window on the world’ (Tuchman 1978: 1). This especially applies to the outputs of foreign correspondents, who report about and analyse events in foreign countries. New communication technologies, additionally, provide individuals with platforms to exchange information, communicate ideas, network, and ultimately mobilize followers and resources across borders—examples are the gay right movement as much as Greenpeace or the terrorist group Al Qaeda. Perhaps this view of international relations, which involves official and non-official actors interacting within and across borders, through official meetings but also through Twitter and YouTube videos, could be regarded by some scholars in IR as generalized and analytically meaningless in its excessively broad scope. Realists, for example, would object to it by insisting that international relations are essentially about states and their interests (Morgenthau 1967). States are the units of analysis that matter and which ultimately define international relations. Individuals, especially ordinary citizens, in this perspective, are irrelevant. Because state interests also tend to be fully formed at the beginning of realist analysis, there is no construction process to consider (to understand how these interests came to exist in the first place, for instance). Constructivists, instead, would be interested in the process through which state interests are constructed, especially through the way policy discourses are articulated—the approach of discursive institutionalism, for example (Radaelli and Schmid 2004; Schmid and Radaelli 2004)—and how international norms are established (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). While Constructivists focus on the way discourses and norms affect policy/action, however, they tend to neglect the dynamics of interactions among agents that lead to the very development of those discourses and norms. To move on to yet another approach, although Liberalists would tend to acknowledge the role of individuals and associations of individuals—Thomas Friedman, for example, talks about ‘super-individuals’ (2002: n.p.) who, empowered by globalization and its technologies, can even compete with nation-states—there is a general reluctance in the field to engage with actors below the state level. Even when this actually happens—as with the conceptualization of individual agency within the ‘practice turn’—the approaches tend to be theoretical rather than empirical (Bially Mattern 2011, for one example). In all probability, no scholar of IR would engage with foreign journalists as a legitimate set of actors worthy of analysis, despite foreign correspondents being recognized by governments themselves as ‘highly effective, highly credible messengers’ in shaping foreign audiences’ perceptions of a country (Peterson et al. 2002: 13; see also Carter 2005 review: 20). The picture of international relations I have described could perhaps only reflect the way international affairs look to the eyes of child: a constantly moving knot of daily interactions among many different people, taking place across different locations, in different sequences, at different times, with different results. Yet, I am arguing in this paper, as naïve as this view might appear, it is much closer to the reality of world politics and a more helpful starting point to truly understand the construction of international relations in an age of interconnectedness than several of the scholarly accounts currently elaborated by various disciplines. In fact, as I will explain in pointing out the limitations of different approaches, Constructivism sees IR—its norms, stakes and conflicts—as the result of continuous negotiation among actors. As it stands, however, it does not offer a satisfactory explanation as to where individuals exactly fit within this process. Who constructs international affairs, and how? Besides, despite the emphasis on persuasion (in adopting shared norms, for instance), Constructivism neglects the role of communication: How do interactions actually take place? In the age of the Internet and social media revolutions, how do emerging communication technologies facilitate/hinder actors’ exchanges? Studies from Political Communication examine the interaction between media and official actors, mainly at political high-times, such as international crises. Questions that tend to be left unaddressed are: What is the role of communications in the everyday practices of 3 political actors? How can we conceptualize the political agency of non-official actors? Public Diplomacy analyses, in dealing with the way governmental actors communicate with foreign audiences, cover the function of communication technologies, the role of non-official actors beyond governmental ones, but tend to lack nuance when it comes to explaining variation of activities across countries. Especially due to most of the scholars focusing on a handful of Western countries and the little comparative research, a crucial gap area is: How do interactions between governments and foreign publics unfold in the cases of other nations? This paper aims to contribute to the debate about how to address at least some of these open questions in two ways. First by presenting a theoretical framework based on a combination of Relational Sociology and Actor Network Theory which more fully enables the investigation of practices. Second by showing the utility of applying this “package” constituted by ontology and matching method to a case study—the UK. The paper presents the findings of an analysis that, based on over 40 interviews, focused on the daily practices of two sets of actors—foreign diplomats and foreign correspondents stationed in London— who are in a privileged position to project discourses and images about the country they work in to foreign audiences. The findings ultimately show the ability of the proposed relational explanatory framework to account for the way individual thinking processes, respective organizational perspectives, and appropriation of emerging communication technologies can translate into change at the macro level of international relations. The analysis will develop in five stages. First I am going to identify the gaps in current accounts of the construction of international relations across IR, Political Communication and Public Diplomacy studies. The aim of the review is not only to outline the limitations of each of the approaches, but also to explain how such shortcomings are self-imposed. Especially in the case of IR, questions about the nature of agency and the interaction among actors cannot thoroughly be addressed due to an ontology that is designed to explain outcomes rather than processes. In the second section of the paper I am assembling an ontological framework that enables researching the political impact of the dynamic interaction between official and non-official actors in the communication age. The third section is about method: it covers the way practice is approached within the study and what the empirical investigation involved. Beyond the details of the samples of interviewees, this part also provides a rationale for the inclusion of foreign correspondents as politically influential non-official actors. As a fourth step the paper turns to the illustration of the findings. The purpose there is to show that the analysis of practice—which focused on the way diplomats’ and correspondents’ networks of relationships shape the actors’ respective identities, understanding of the environment and, consequently, actions—provides an effective explanation for the nuance and variation of agents’ behaviours, even within the same physical location (London). The conclusions make the point that an engagement with practice is truly key in understanding the construction of international relations. Empirical research is particularly useful in reminding us that international politics are, after all, not made by abstract “processes” and “agents,” but by people. The study of international relations, indeed, does not only need more practice, but more everyday life. 1. The Conceptual Gaps Thoroughly explaining the contemporary construction of international relations ideally requires providing an account of the process through which individuals, by engaging in their everyday micro-activities, ultimately contribute to macro changes at the international level. This explanation, given the proliferation of social movements, NGOs and single influential individuals who are in the position to have an impact on international politics, should cover 4 the role of both official and non-official actors. Especially in the case of individuals the focus should not be limited to prominent figures—the likes of Osama bin Laden, Julian Assange, or Bill Gates, for instance—but also the less known actors who contribute to changing world politics by playing each their small part in a broader process. One example is offered by the chain of events that, from December 2010 in Tunisia, ignited the whole Arab world and became known as the Arab Spring. To map that process one would need to include, among other actors and just to provide an indication of the opening stages of the potential analysis: the young fruitseller who committed suicide in Sidi Bouzid, a small town 150 miles South of Tunis; the individuals who filmed with their mobile phones the protests against the local government following the dramatic event; the computer programmer (Slim Amoumou) and computer engineer (Azyz Amami) who, from the Tunisian capital, noticed those videos on the internet, then posted them on their Facebook pages; the journalists at Al Jazeera who picked up those videos from the Internet and broadcasted them on their global channel, leading to further editors and journalists to re-broadcast them… (BBC 2011). This example already highlights the crucial role of emerging communication technologies. In an age of globalization and instant messaging, where a significant part of our routines takes place online, over the phone, and might actually consist in receiving and processing information, as well as exchanging it through email, an analytically effective account of international relations should also include a conceptualization of the role of communication. Beyond face-to-face interaction it should cover the role of the “media.” Media, in fact, both as organizations (news outlets, for instance) and as technological tools (the internet, social media…) provide us not only with information about society and the world at large. They also enable the establishment of relationships at a distance—what Craig Calhoun calls ‘indirect relationships’ and which constitute a defining feature of modernity (Calhoun 1991: 96-105). In the following brief review I am going to show that none of the main current accounts of international relations, on their own, from the very field of IR, to Political Communication and studies of public diplomacy, tackles all the aspects that have been mentioned. The review does not claim to cover in depth all possible approaches within each of the fields, which are indeed broad and would require far more discussion than the scope of this paper allows. The point of the reviews is rather to highlight trends and identify areas that tend to remain neglected for the purpose, in the following sections of the paper, of developing both an ontological framework and an empirical approach that allow addressing the unresearched gaps. As I am going to point out, it is not possible to tackle the relational complexity of contemporary politics, in its blurring of the national and international dimension, without an appropriate theoretical framework. What is particularly needed is an ontology—‘a general statement of the manner in which agents are believed to appropriate their context and the consequences of that appropriation for their development as agents and for that of the context itself’ (Hay 2002: 113)—designed to detect that reality. International Relations IR notoriously ‘lacks a theory of agency’ (Checkel 1998: 325). Beyond Realism, the fact that this also appears to apply to Constructivism is perhaps surprising. In principle, Constructivism is based on a constructionist view of the world in which agents create and recreate reality through their action while being constrained by structures they have themselves contributed to establish. These structures are not just material, but can be constituted by ideas and discourses. They do not exist separately from social action but are implicated in its production and reproduction (Giddens 1984: 376). Interaction among agents should therefore be crucial within this process. In practice, however, IR constructivism is heavily affected by the history of the field, particularly by the fact that the debate it traditionally aimed to contribute to—revolving around the question: “what shapes national interest?”—takes the state as the basic unit of analysis. As Jeffrey Checkel (1998: 341) explains, when Alexander Wendt, ‘who has been so influential in developing constructivism’ 5 talks about agents, he is not referring to individuals but to states. The result is a general neglect of most actors below the state level (ibid.). This outcome, as Brown (2004: 3) pointed out, has also meant a lack of attention regarding the process, an overemphasis on structures and their impact on final outcomes. Iver Neumann (in Schouten 2012: 1), interviewed about the current state of the field, confirms that the central concern of IR is indeed the ‘analysis of the outcomes of different processes’ rather than ‘an analysis of how the globe hangs together in the first place and what is it that integrates different political units.’ In other words, while there appears to be a consensus about the fact that norms, identities and values shape the behaviour of agents, what constructivism fails to explain is: How do norms come to exist in the first place? How do agents become bound by norms? Where do values and identities actually come from? The inability to address these questions is ultimately the outcome of the in-built limitations of the IR ontological framework. As Patrick Jackson and Daniel Nexon (1999) point out, most IR theories are ‘substantialist’ rather than ‘relational.’ A substantialist approach conceives units of analysis as ‘entities’: ‘they exist before interaction and all relations should be conceived as relations between entities’ (ibid.: 291). Relationalism, instead, understands entities as constituted by constantly evolving social ties (Emirbayer 1997). As such social ties are an integral part of the analysis. The substantialist leaning of IR translates into approaching all units of analysis, whether states, organizations or individuals as unproblematized “pre-formed” entities. As Jackson and Nexon (1999: 293) write in spelling out the practical consequences for the field: The majority of IR theories are substantialist—they presume that entities precede interaction, or that entities are already entities before they enter into social relations with other entities. The most common of these presupposed entities is ‘the state,’ but it is not the only substantialist starting point. Other scholars begin with ‘the individual’ or ‘the ethnic group,’ but the basic ontological move is exactly the same—units come first, then, like billiard balls on a table, they are put into motion and their interactions are the patterns we observe in political life. This ontological bias, beyond the field’s limited commitment to individual or below-the-state agency more in general, is the cause for the lack of serious engagement with the interaction among agents—communication. Constructivism does acknowledge the importance that non material aspects, such as ideas and norms of appropriate behaviour have in the way countries interact with the rest of the world, particularly in shaping their preferences (March and Olsen 1998). The underlying assumption is that agents do not exist independently from their social environment and its collective shared system of meanings (Risse 2007: 3). Several constructivist studies, in this respect, have explained the way shared meanings are constructed by way of communicative interactions among international actors. They are particularly concerned with the shaping of international preferences and norms of international behaviour. Risse, for example, calls this process ‘arguing’ (Risse 2000). Schimmelfennig (2001) refers to ‘bargaining’ and ‘rhetorical action’. Both Lynch (2002) and Risse (2000) talk about ‘communicative action,’ while Schultz (1998) writes about ‘signalling.’ Lynch (2002: 190), for example, explains how communicative engagement establishes ‘common interpretations and mutual expectations governing both cooperative and competitive behaviour.’ While these analyses tend to agree on the idea that national interests are not a given, but are subject to re-definition, negotiation, and change over time, what is not clear is how the process of change actually occurs. How did the preferences arise in the first place? How do they exactly transform during the negotiation or debate? What is the role of individual political agents in shaping them? An ontology does not only allow to “see” certain aspects of reality, but by containing the “laws” according to which the social world works, it also allows to explain them. Jackson and Nexon (1999: 292), on this point, write that a relational approach in IR would allow scholars 6 to elaborate more effective theories, especially in relation to processes in world politics that involve change, like globalization or interdependence. This is because the relational framework allows a researcher ‘to problematize the existence of units […] at any given time, and to account for their existence in a theoretically informed manner’ (ibid.). The fact that IR is fundamentally limited by a mismatch between existing ontology and the problem to be solved is demonstrated by the fact that, despite the proliferation of discursive approaches precisely to study the process of construction of international relations (Wendt 1992, Finnemore 1996, for influential examples), there are still open questions about the way norms, ideas and interests are in fact built over time by agents. To illustrate this further, I am going to use the examples of the securitization approach, discursive institutionalism, and the modelling of international norm formation. The securitization approach of the Copenhagen School (Buzan, Waever and de Wilde 1998) developed to explain how security is constructed through speech-acts. While Buzan, Waever and de Wilde recognize that securitization does not always ‘go through the state’ (ibid.: 24) and incorporate, as a result, different levels of analysis—international systems, international subsystems, units, subunits and individuals (ibid.: 5)—the main units are still ‘collectivities’ (ibid.: 40). The authors explain what the securitization process involves. They write that ‘a successful speech act is a combination of language and society, of both intrinsic features of speech and the group that authorizes and recognizes that speech’ (ibid.: 32). In principle anybody can securitize issues, even if there are three facilitating conditions. First it is more likely that an actor succeeds in securitizing an issue if the demands of the securitizing actor follow the ‘grammar of security’ (ibid.: 33). This means that the claim involves ‘a plot that includes existential threat, point of no return, and possible way out’ (ibid.) and is expressed is the jargon (‘dialect’, ibid.) of a specific field, such as for example ‘sustainability’ in the environmental sector or ‘sovereignty’ in the political sector (ibid.). Any object allegedly targeted by an existential threat can be securitized: ‘the reference object is that to which one can point and say, “It has to survive, therefore it is necessary to...”’, (ibid.: 36). Second, achievement of securitization is more likely if the securitizing actor holds a position of perceived authority (not necessarily official) in the eyes of an audience. Third if the objects the securitizing actor refers to are ‘generally held to be threatening’ (ibid.: 33). While this approach explains how certain issues, created through the speech acts of a range of agents, end up on the security agenda, it still leaves unexplained: Why do certain actors define/perceive some threat as existential in the first place? Why do some claims prevail over competing claims and manage to be placed on the security agenda? Why have some actors a position of ‘perceived authority’? How does the audience come to learn about their security claims? All these conditions are relational and imply some form of communication. They are all linked to the ability of a securitizing agent to make ‘a case,’ which in turn is related to having the ability to frame an issue in a way that resonates with a wider audience, as well as to the relationship with and possibility of communicating to that audience. The fact that something is ‘generally held to be threatening’ also implies an agreement based on shared knowledge among members of a public. The media should certainly have a role in all of these processes. As a second example, Discursive Institutionalism aims to engage with the way international relations processes are constructed through discourse. For Claudio Radaelli and Vivien Schmid (2004: 369) discourse as ‘more than talk’: the discourse produced by social actors is both the output of structural constraints and a structure itself on the way agents interpret and construct reality. Boekle, Nadoll, and Stahl (2001: 6), further on this point, explain that there is a dialectic relationship among the actors who produce the discourse, the way they interact among each other, and the context in which they develop the discourse. Political actors, because of their power position in society are ‘privileged storytellers’ (Milliken cited in Boekl, Nadoll and Stahl 2001: 7) and are able to affect the development of a discourse more strongly than other actors, even if they are themselves influenced by former or actual 7 discourses. Discourses, in this perspective, do not only shape issues, but also identity and action. Indeed, as Schmidt and Radaelli (2004: 203) put it, ‘collective identity’ constructed through discourse ‘determines not only what “we” are and where “we” come from but also what can and cannot be achieved.’ While this approach is useful—Henning Boekle, Jörg Nadoll, and Bernhard Stahl (2001) effectively show, for example, the way hegemonic discourses which were established in relation to issues of security and defence after World War II have affected policy developments up to the present day—discourse is still approached at collective level. Would it be possible to map the interactions through which these discourses actually came to exist to start with? How did discourses exactly achieve ‘hegemony’? Why were some rhetorical choices made in the first place rather than others? What were the contributions of different individual agents in the establishment of these discourses? The answer lies in the interactions among actors, which scholars of this approach mention (as also Boekle, Nadoll, and Stahl) but which are not pursued further and more systematically in the field. Also when it comes to explaining the mechanisms of norm formation there are gaps that could be filled through a greater engagement with the way in which agents both interact and communicate with each other. Rodger Payne (2001), in this respect, criticizes the constructivist literature that explains norm changes and changes in preferences through the formation of a shared understanding. In that approach change is explained through the establishment of shared meanings and norms, which are the result of persuasion. Finnemore and Sikkink (1998), for instance, write about a three-stage cycle of norm formation. The first stage, norm emergence, requires ‘norm entrepreneurs’ ‘to call attention to issues or even “create” issues by using language that names, interprets, and dramatizes them’ (ibid.: 897). After these actors, who can be individuals but normally need to rely on organizational platforms, have persuaded a ‘critical mass of states’ to adopt new norms, the norm reaches a ‘tipping point’ (ibid.: 901). Once the tipping point has been passed the second stage, ‘norm cascade,’ begins: this is the phase of ‘international socialization’ (ibid.: 902). This part of the process, in which more states rapidly adopt the new norm, consists in ‘diplomatic praise or censure, either bilateral or multilateral, which is reinforced by material sanctions and incentives’ (ibid.). Stage three is the ‘internalization’ of the norm: it achieves a ‘taken for granted’ status and it is automatically followed. Payne (2001) argues that these approaches are flawed as they fail to consider that what appears as persuasion is actually the result of a struggle that can’t be understood just by looking at discourse but also needs to rely on an examination of the social process that support that discourse. More specifically, he writes that ‘the communicative environment...matters more than the content or framing of specific messages’ (ibid.: 39). As he writes, constructivist studies tend to explain norm change according to the following mechanism: A sends an appeal to states B, C and D. They agree with A and revise their preferences. A mutual agreement arises around a normative idea, ‘repetition and socialization then institutionalize the norm’ (ibid.: 42). This is a ‘linear and reactive communicative process’ (ibid.). What would happen, Payne continues, if B, C and D started advancing counterclaims? What if the original message actually changed their preferences, but in a totally unpredictable manner? He concludes, reiterating the argument of this review, that ‘Employing a non-linear and more explicitly social, view of persuasive processes would help explain how actor preferences are formed and changed in discursive situations’ (ibid.). In the attempt to fill some of the neglected areas that have been highlighted, the study presented in this paper examines the daily individual micro-interactions of two sets of actors who operate at the edge between the national and the international dimension—foreign diplomats and foreign correspondents. The results are part of a broader study that involves, apart from diplomats and journalists also public diplomacy officials (the project is in 8 progress).1 The inclusion of journalists reflects the attempt to include non-official actors who are not normally considered as a legitimate object of investigation in International Relations, but which nonetheless, as it will be explained in greater detail in the “Method” section, have a significant political role by shaping the image of the country they are stationed in to the eyes of foreign audiences through their stories. International politics, media, and public diplomacy Among other fields that, beyond IR, engage with the construction of international relations. are Political Communications and studies of public diplomacy. The reason why they are discussed here is that they can complement IR by explicitly addressing the role of communication, the media, and technological platforms. Although there is no lack of research on the role of media (both as organizations and as communication technologies) in international politics, current literature is not successful in theorizing exactly how exactly they affect the actions of the agents involved. This is surprising, given that most of the literature appears to engage precisely in this endeavour and largely consists in theoretical analyses that often take the form of modelling and conceptual categorization. Such inability to truly explaining change is due to the fact that, as it will be illustrated in a moment, each stream of the debate is one-sided in three respects: it tends to concentrate either on structural explanations or on agency (although mainly as governmental and institutional action rather than individual); it is grounded in the perspective of single countries, mainly the US; and, possibly as a consequence of this last single vintage point, tends to homogenize and generalize. A comprehensive explanation of change, instead, should illuminate both how technological structures constrain and enable practices, but also how at the same time individuals actively appropriate technological tools. It should also be able to explain variation of change across different political, social, and media contexts. These aspects will now be illustrated in turn. Political Communication Within Political Communication literature, there has been a growing realization that the media have an impact on international relations, particularly on the practice of diplomacy. This has largely led to theoretical discussions including modelling and categorizations of the different ways in which the media can affect diplomatic activity, either supporting or preventing negotiation (Gilboa 2000; Naveh 2002, for instance). Gilboa (2001), among the most elaborate analyses, distinguishes for instance three models of ‘uses and effects’ about the way the media are used as a tool of foreign policy and international negotiation: ‘public diplomacy,’ where state and nonstate actors use the media to influence public opinion abroad; ‘media diplomacy,’ where officials use the media to communicate with actors and promote conflict resolution; ‘media-broker diplomacy,’ where journalists serve as temporary mediators in international negotiations. The empirical studies in this area tend to address the way media, especially live TV news, affects foreign policy making (for example Seib 1996; “CNN effect” literature and its critiques: Livingston 1997; Strobel 1997, Robinson 2002) and mostly involve international crises as case studies. The problem with this literature is not so much the inability to explain some kind of transformation technologies lead to in the political process. The argument here is not that it is not rigorous or does not contribute to our understanding. It does illuminate the complex relationship between media and political processes in the context of instantaneous global communication. It does not, however, explain contingent change: how technology affects diplomatic practices of specific countries in specific political, social, and media environments. The complete empirical investigation will feed into the forthcoming book (2015) Constructing Britain’s Story: Policy-Makers, Diplomats and Journalists at Work (New York: Palgrave). 1 9 Even the literature that attempts defining the conditions of validity of a working hypothesis, for example establishing in which circumstances the CNN effect materializes (or doesn’t), end up in general statements about the relationship between governments, publics and media. The studies that look at specific case studies tend to examine different crises (time points) within one country only (mainly the US). To what extent do existing analyses apply to other countries? Through which micro-interactions between politicians, journalists, members of the public do the processes described by the CNN effect work (or don’t)? In addition to this, both theoretical and empirical studies within this branch of the literature tend not to address the impact of communication technologies on the everyday practice of politics: How do media affect the decision-making processes of the single policy-makers? How do policy-makers actually use the media to make sense of the political reality in their country and abroad? What is the impact of the media beyond times of crisis? Public Diplomacy A second strand of research is represented by the ever-growing literature about public diplomacy, whose focus is the analysis of how the use of global communication technologies can contribute to improved communication across borders. This focus has consolidated after 9/11 through the research of a large number of American scholars and is strategically aimed at addressing the “gulf of misunderstanding” that appears to fuel extremism against the West, particularly the US, in some quarters of the Muslim world. The ultimate goal of the debate is identifying ways in which public diplomacy can become more effective. Most analyses are based on extrapolations made on the basis of medium characteristics, as well as sensible assumption about sending and receiving messages. Less attention is given to the complexity of conditions a successful communication strategy needs to deal with. Corman (2009), in this respect, points out that US public diplomacy efforts, which should communicate American values and contribute to “winning hearts and minds” in the global “war against terrorism,” are based on the notion that ‘messages’ are transmitted by an Information Source through a Transmitter (via a Signal) to a Receiver, which will then convey the message to the desired Destination. The implications are that communication occurs only when messages are sent; that successful communication can be achieved by improving the skill of the communicator; by reducing the ‘noise’ in the system; by carefully planning the content of the message and carefully transmitting it. This model of communication is outdated. As he puts it: it was ‘cutting-edge at the time of Eisenhower’ (ibid.). Despite the differing levels of sophistication (Entman 2008, for example), this branch of literature tends to neglect the experience of actual diplomats and embassies in foreign countries. The result is that most of this literature is constituted by theoretical and speculative analyses. What is the perspective of the practitioners of diplomacy? Most of the contributions also come from US-based scholars. Given that the US is the world’s most powerful country, it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that the point of view of smaller and less influential countries—what about Belgium, for example, or an obscure African state?—is going to be extremely different. What is the perspective of other countries? Would the recommendation elaborated for a more effective American public diplomacy also apply to them? This literature also tends to talk about audiences in general terms: ‘European publics,’ ‘the Arab world,’ ‘world audiences.’ There are huge cultural differences between people living in Iceland and Cyprus (Europe), as there are between citizens of Turkey and Saudi Arabia (the “Arab world”), and between those who live in the Tirol region of Northern Italy and those living in Sicily, to consider variation within a single country. How can any analysis of the effectiveness of the communication with audiences have any practical relevance if local differences are not taken into consideration? Can analysis become more nuanced in relation to locality? 10 The study presented in this paper aims to address at least some of these gaps by exploring local specificity and variation through ethnographic interviews. It particularly it addresses: 1) The way communication technologies both constrain and enable the activities of foreign diplomats and foreign correspondents, particularly their networks of relationships; 2) How diplomats appropriate communication technologies and interact with media organizations both to pursue their own duties and to advance the interests of the governments they represent; how foreign correspondents make use of communication tools (especially the internet and social media) to find inspiration for, research and develop their stories; 3) In doing so the study explores the way in which social interaction, to a greater or lesser extent mediated by technology, transforms: the identities of the actors under study; their knowledge of and ability to assess their environment; and ultimately their behaviour. 2. A Relational Ontology The development of an approach that can account for the complexity of international relations in the 21st century needs to start from choosing an appropriate ontological framework. The importance of this step cannot be overemphasized because, being the ontology a statement of all that “exists” and is worth investigating for the researcher, it shapes both “what we look for,” as well as the ultimate limits to what we can find and the kind of explanations we can elaborate. In fact, an ontology could be thought of as a paradigm. For Kuhn (1962: 6) a paradigm sets ‘the standards by which the profession [we can think of it as a field of study] determine[s] what should count as an admissible problem or as a legitimate problem-solution.’ Paradigms ‘specify not only what sorts of entities the universe does contain, but also, by implication, those that it does not’ (ibid.: 7). By defining both what should be investigated and according to which method, the paradigm also narrows the range of possible findings of the scientific enterprise: ‘the range of anticipated, and thus assimilable, results is always small compared with the range that imagination can conceive’ (ibid.: 35). What does not fall within the paradigm’s range of expectation is either a mistake (‘the project whose outcome does not fall in the narrower range is usually just a research failure, one which reflects not on nature [international relations, in our case] but on the scientist’ [ibid.]), or they are unimportant facts: results that cannot articulate a paradigm ‘are mere facts, unrelated and unrelatable’ to the continuing progress of research (ibid., Kuhn’s emphasis). This study, to overcome the research limitations that have been outlined in the previous section, relies on an ontological framework that combines the Relational Sociology of Harrison White (2008) with Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory. These approaches are going to be briefly introduced, before moving on to the methodology section. Relational Sociology Relational Sociology approaches the social universe as entirely made up of relationships constantly being negotiated. The extent to which they are subject to incessant re-working is captured by Harrison White’s comparison of social reality to a shapeless matter that never sets: ‘There is no tidy atom and no embracing world, only complex striations, long strings reptating as in a polymer goo’ (2008: 18). This, for a start, is helpful in studying international relations as it acknowledges not only agents’ interactions, but also their dynamic nature. Identity in Relational Sociology is ‘produced and sustained within interacting relational networks’ (Bearman and Stovel 2000: 74). It is neither only related to human agents— people—nor restricted exclusively to the notions of the self and consciousness. Instead identity is ‘any entity to which observers can attribute meaning’ (ibid.: 2). Identities arise out 11 of communication situations (White 2008: 21). As White phrases it: they ‘trigger out of events,’ they are ‘switches in surroundings’ (ibid., p. 1): ‘A firm, a community, a crowd, oneself on the tennis court, encounters of strangers on a sidewalk—each may be identities’ (ibid.: 2). By understanding identity as the changeable outcome of shifting constellations of relationships (or contexts) an actor is enmeshed in, this ontology crucially enables overcoming the ‘substantialism’ that largely characterizes IR (Jackson and Nexon 1999). As Mustafa Emirbayer points out, constructivist approaches more broadly, despite having developed as a reaction to rational choice and explaining behaviour through an individual’s desire to act in conformity with certain norms rather than selfish rational calculation, still depict ‘individuals as self-propelling, self-subsistent entities that pursue internalized norms given in advance and fixed for the duration of the action sequence under investigation’ (Emirbayer 1997: 284). Saying that identity is the product of networks of relationships also means that it is made of the stories—we can think about them as discourses—that are attached to these relationships. In this respect, political institutions are, effectively, identities sustained by networks of relationships underpinned by discourses (laws, norms, both official and nonwritten) that persist through time by being constantly re-enacted. Political identities, in this sense could thus be thought of, to use Benedict Anderson’s (1983) words, as ‘imagined communities.’ As Peter Bearman and Katherine Stovel (2000: 74n8) explain, they can emerge ‘independent[ly] of tangible social relations.’ This helps explaining, for instance, the emergence of nationalism, where ties between people are replaced by ties ‘between persons and symbols’ (ibid.). Relational Sociology also helps making sense of the interaction between individual agents and their context. If a pattern of ties constitutes a network (White 2008: 20), every social agent can be conceived of as a node that is ‘located at the intersection of several distinct, often heterogenous networks’ (Azarian 2005: 60). This defines the unique position of each social actor within the social universe. Such position is defined by the content of the ties— which might be goods, information, capital, rumours (or in the case of international relations, trade, immigration, humanitarian aid)—but also by constraints in the shapes of expectations that other identities are imposing on the actor—international norms, what James March and Johan Olssen (1989; 2004) would call ‘logic of appropriateness.’ The social ties shape an agent’s horizon, scope for action, and whether such action is going to be more or less constrained (in this perspective no action can truly be independent). Ties affect what agents know and how they are going to interpret both the world around them and incoming information. Although social ties shape who they are, what they know, and ultimately what they do, social actors are not passive, but purposely manage social ties. This point is crucial to understand that the behaviour of all social agents (as of states, NGOs, diplomats, officials, journalists…) is not the almost mechanical product either of the environment in which they live (political opportunity structure of a country, economy, social norms...), or their own decisions (either individual interest, ambition, or sense of alienation, personal grievance, psychological stress...). Instead, social action results from the incessant negotiation—and relative ever-changing outcomes—between these two aspects over time. The extent to which ‘fresh action’ is constrained by network obligations is the outcome of the actor’s greater or lesser success at managing the ties and of moving beyond what White calls the ‘Sargasso Sea of social obligation’ (White 2008: 4). This ontological framework is particularly useful in bringing communication on the explanatory map: communication is acknowledged to be the essence of social interaction (ibid.: 3). Within this approach all that matters is the constitutions and constant re-workings of relationships and it makes no difference whether they are constituted face-to-face, over the phone, online, or even if they are imagined. The fact that communication is virtually—and indistinctly—everywhere, however, can turn into a hurdle on a researcher’s way to making 12 sense of mediated communication, particularly of the role of communication technologies in a world dominated by the Internet and constantly emerging platforms like social media. The analysis turns therefore to Actor Network Theory (ANT), which more explicitly addresses the question of the nature of technology and its role in society. Actor Network Theory Actor Network Theory (ANT) develops from the field of Science and Technology Studies. It is particularly associated with the work of the anthropologist Bruno Latour and his view of a networked social reality in which there is no distinction between the “technical” and the “social.” This means, in practice, that society is made up of networks—a view entirely compatible with that of Relational Sociology. These networks, however, do not only include humans, but also non-humans: objects, technologies, ideas. Latour developed this approach to overcome the tendency—which stretches its roots to Aristotle and medieval philosophy, but is still at the core of contemporary sociological explanations of reality—to see individuals as the ultimate source of social action (Emirbayer 1997: 283-284). More specifically, he finds puzzling that, albeit Sociology has developed mostly after the Industrial Revolution, in an era of profound technical advances, the role of objects in our society is largely ignored. In reality, as another influential voice within the ANT camp—John Law—points out, objects like machines are an integral part of our very identity: ‘we are all heterogeneous networks, the products of confused overlaps. Did you really find your way through last week without machines? Of course not! You are part machine’ (Law 1991b: 17). In fact, as Latour (1991: 110) points out: we are never faced with objects or social relations, we are faced with chains which are association of human (H) and non-humans (NH). No one has ever seen a social relation by itself [...] nor a technical relation [...]. Instead we are always faced by chains which look like this H-NH-H-NH-NH-NH-H-H-H-H-HN. Objects—communication technologies among them—in this perspective, do not just enable establishing networks, but they change the actors themselves. To ‘break away from the influence of what could be called “figurative sociology” [the tendency to attribute “faces” to social action], ANT uses the technical word actant’ (Latour 2005: 54). Actants have agency, which means that they ‘make a difference’: ‘hitting a nail with and without hammer, boiling water with and without a kettle, fetching provisions with or without a basket’ (ibid.: 71) do make a difference, which makes the hammer, kettle, and basket participants in the course of action. The same could be said for military weapons in the case of states; cars, computers, an iPhone, the urban environment of a hub like London rather than the village like setting of La Valletta in Malta for a diplomat or a foreign correspondent. This, however, does not mean that an object determines the action. The object participates in the action, among the rest, through what Latour (1999: 178-180) calls ‘interference’ and ‘composition’ (ibid.: 180-190). By ‘interfering,’ a technology can change an actor’s ‘programme of action,’ which can be thought of as the attempt to achieve a certain goal. A person holding a gun (like a state having a nuclear weapon) is not the same as a person not holding a gun. The man with a gun (or the state with the nuclear head) is a new ‘composite actor.’ This does not necessarily mean that the man with the gun will use it (as the US and USSR tension never escalated into outright war), but while an initial goal might have been just to cause injury, the fact that a gun is in the hand of the actor can lead to a different goal—killing (following on to the US-USSR example, the very possibility that nuclear weapons could be deployed froze international politics over the whole Cold War period). 13 ‘Composition,’ instead, refers to the fact that, if in order to achieve a goal an actor uses an object, then the reaching of the goal is a ‘common achievement’ (ibid.: 181) of both actants: ‘The chimp plus the sharp stick reach (not reaches) the banana’ (ibid.: 182). To apply this to political agents: states are composite actors in so far as what they do is the collective outcome of the activities carried out by their governments, civil servants, and all citizens at large; diplomats plus planes, cars, office desks, telephones, internet, buildings actually represent their country abroad; foreign journalists plus laptops, phones, internet connections and a rented offices write stories that inform foreign audiences about the country they report from. Action is therefore not the property of humans only but of ‘associations of actants’ (ibid.). In this sense, as for White, entities are ‘produced in relations’ (Law 1999: 4) and social actors are ‘network effects’ (ibid.: 5). This understanding of the social and the role of technologies within it is useful for conceptualizing the role of communication technologies in international relations for two reasons. First, it underlines that communication technologies are not just a passive infrastructure whose role is enabling the establishment of relationships or, in other words, allowing the transmission of messages from actor A to actor B. Instead, they are actants in the social actions being performed. As such, they transform both their own nature and the identity of those being connected. A diplomat with access to a technology that has global reach, like the internet, either to keep contacts and receive briefings with the home country or to engage foreign publics through public diplomacy 2.0 (Glassman 2008), is not the same as a diplomat without that technology. At the same time, as a second point, ANT allows the researcher to place technology into perspective. This particularly refers to placing into perspective the overenthusiastic assessments of the role of emerging communication technologies in changing international politics. Assertions, for instance, are being made about the ongoing development of a new kind of diplomacy. Some of the terms being currently used are ‘virtual diplomacy’ (Smith 2000; Brown and Studemeister 2001, for instance), ‘cyberdiplomacy’ (Potter 2002), ‘media diplomacy’ (Karl 1982; Gilboa 1998 and 2002, for example). Grant (2005) talks about a ‘democratization of diplomacy.’ One can also easily find references to ‘digital diplomacy’ and ‘web 2.0 engagement’ not least (respectively) on the websites of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO, n.d.) and the American State Department (Sonenshine 2012). But political actors engaged in public diplomacy, whether a government’s department specifically dealing with it like the office for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the US (US State Department, n.d.) or a single diplomat, are who they are and manage to do what they do not only because of the internet, or any other particular communication platform (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube…) but because they are actor-networks—the outcome of constellations of relationships they are involved in, which include other civil servants, politicians from the home country and abroad, citizens, computers, mobile phones, cars, roads, water coolers, and pizza delivery services... 3. Method The results of the empirical study presented in this paper are based on 16 interviews with foreign diplomats and 25 foreign correspondents based in London. They are part of a broader project whose purpose is to investigate the daily practices of a set of actors (a category not represented here is public diplomacy officials) who operate at the edge between the national and the international dimension. This position allows them to influence the portrayal/projection of the image and discourse of the UK to home and foreign publics. 14 Foreign diplomats do so by gathering information, sending diplomatic cables to and representing the interests of their respective governments. Foreign diplomats “construct” the UK in the eyes of audiences abroad by reporting and analysing events about the host country through their stories. In other words, this is an empirical study of the individual micro interactions that contribute, over time, to construct international relations at a macro level. The political role of foreign correspondents It is worth spending a few words to explain the inclusion of foreign correspondents, whose role in international relations might not be apparent. Foreign correspondents are part of the study as representatives of agents who are not officials, yet strongly contribute to the construction of international relations: effectively, they shape the image of a country to the eyes of foreign audiences on a daily basis through their reporting. Not only media stories are often all foreign publics see and hear about other countries. The image of the world foreign correspondents construct through their reports also constitutes the common knowledge base on which government officials and diplomats will take their decisions. Foreign policies, in fact, are often designed to respond to information publicly available, even if this was not entirely accurate. In the words of a senior German foreign diplomat based in London: ...if you are working in a bureaucracy, like a foreign ministry, it’s not so much important what is really going on. It’s important what your superiors have read. I mean, if they are convinced there is a war going on between Denmark and Britain and I know quite well there is no war going on it’s no good saying “No, there is no war going on.” I have to say “Yes, that is a terrible thing, and we have to do the utmost to reconcile the two countries.” If everybody is convinced the war is going on I can’t come up and say “No it’s not going on” because, you know, we have to react to the information that lands with the perception of our government, of our superiors, and not to the world as we personally may perceive it, as a specialist. So forget about specialist thinking. You have to react to the world that is created by the media and the world in which our politicians live; not the real world, ha. That’s if it exists. Foreign journalists, far from being irrelevant political actors, figured in the very first definition of public diplomacy. They were listed, in recognition of their essential role, alongside diplomats. Edmund Gullion, who is credited with having used the expression for the first time in 1965,2 famously defined “public diplomacy” with the following words: Public diplomacy… deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy; the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with another; the reporting of foreign affairs and its impact on policy; communication between those whose job is communication, as diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the process of intercultural communications’ (Public Diplomacy Alumni Association n.d., my emphasis). Despite this initial acknowledgment of the central role of foreign journalists in international relations, correspondents appear to have been neglected over the years by both policymakers and researchers. Although mentions of the key role of foreign journalists in reaching out to audiences abroad has been made in various reviews of public diplomacy (Peterson et 2 As stated in one of the brochures of the Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy that Gullion established. 15 al. 2002: 13; Wilton et al. 2002: 20; Carter 2005: 52), systematic research about their impact on diplomatic practice is virtually non-existent.3 Engaging with practice Practice can be understood in different ways. Friedrich Kratochwil (2011: 36), for instance, writes that the spectrum of engagement with practices: ranges from adherents of “implicit knowledge” and habits à la Polanyi to Giddean grand theory focusing on the dialectics of agency and structure. It encompasses “social” epistemology stressing the communal aspects of knowledge production, Bourdieu’s emphasis on “habitus” and doxa, and Oakeshott’s “habits” and “knowing how” rather than “knowing why.” The definition that best reflects my approach is that provided by Theodore Schatzki (2001:2): practices are ‘embodied, materially mediated arrays of human activity centrally organized around shared practical understanding.’ They are ‘not just skills and activities but bodily experiences, surface presentations, and even physical structures as well’ (ibid.). My use of empirical research, particularly interviews, meets Iver Neumann’s (2002: 628) call to a ‘return to practices’ that, beyond the textual and linguistic dimension, involve ‘the study of social action itself,’ through ‘data from the field […] that may illuminate how foreign policy and global politics are experienced as lived practices.’ This approach further matches Vincent Puliot’s (2010: 59-65) ‘sobjective-with-an-o’ constructivist research strategy: an approach that, moves from the local to the general (inductive); the development of ‘meanings about meanings’ (interpretive); and an understanding of the subject of study in context as it unfolds over time (historical). To ensure consistency with my ontological framework, I approached the investigation of practice as a mapping of the networks of relationships—face-to-face but also mediated by technologies—in which both diplomats and foreign correspondents were enmeshed in. I particularly focused on the way the variable constellations of relationships uniquely and dynamically shaped the identities of the actors, their knowledge and understanding of their environment, as well as their actual actions. Interviews with foreign diplomats Sixteen foreign diplomats were interviewed over the period 12 July and 18 August 2010.4 They involved mostly face-to-face conversations (12) but also phone interviews (4). The researcher spoke with 16 sources (4 women, 12 men) from 14 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Egypt, Greece, India, Japan, Malta, Russia, Sweden, Syria, US. Over thirty countries were initially approached for an interview. Their range was designed to cover variation in world geographical location, form of government of the home country, economic resources, level of influence in world affairs, membership of international alliances and organizations, foreign policy agenda, closeness of historical ties to the UK (former colonies, for example), tradition of journalism in the home country (objective vs. commentary-oriented, for example, or press freedom vs. varying degree of state control). The interviews lasted between 21 minutes and just over an hour (61 minutes). Most of the interviews lasted around 40 minutes. The roles of the diplomats ranged from Political Counsellor, First Secretary, Press Officer, to Head of the Press Office, Head of the Information and Culture Department, Deputy High Commissioner, and High Commissioner. 3 4 I have previously attempted to address this gap (see Archetti 2011). Form the point of view of the author, “foreign” means “non-British.” 16 The sources had spent between 12 months and 13 years in London and between 14 months and 31 years in the diplomatic service of their respective country, with several of the interviewees having over than 20 years experience. Given the fact that London occupies one of the highest levels in the ranking of assignments within a diplomat’s career, almost all interviewees had been posted to other foreign capitals and had covered diplomatic assignments before. Their previous postings covered Washington, New York, Ankara, Beirut, Amman, Tripoli, Brussels, Geneva, Madrid, Brasilia, Moscow, Cairo, Dubai, Damascus, Wellington, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Delhi, and countries like Bhutan, Portugal and Bolivia. The most senior interviewee had been posted to six previous locations. The sources were therefore in the position to confidently compare their current activities within the London diplomatic and information environment to their previous experiences in other countries. They were able to comment about the changes they had witnessed in the diplomatic practices of their respective countries since the advent of the internet, mobile phones, and emails. Some even remembered the introduction of fax machines and the computer. Most of the interviewees had also covered a variety of diplomatic responsibilities over their career: different portfolios, administrative tasks (like that of translator), involvement as representatives of their countries in UN and WTO negotiations in Geneva, or with EU countries in Brussels. They were thus able to elaborate on the role of communication technologies and the media in the fulfilling of diplomatic functions at different levels and in a variety of contexts. The sources were assured of their complete anonymity in exchange for greater openness and frankness. This is why all identifiers have been removed from the interview excerpts. The interviewees will be refereed at as ‘sources’ or ‘diplomats.’ Only their country of origin will be indicated. Interviews with foreign correspondents5 The interviewees were 9 women and 16 men from a range of countries: Australia (1); Brazil (3); Denmark (1); an Eastern European country (1); Germany (4); Greece (6); Finland (1); France (2); Holland (1); Pakistan (1); Spain (2); and Russia (2). The media organizations included:2 newsagencies (Australian Associated Press, Agencia Estado [Brazilian non-state agency], Associated Press of Pakistan; RIA Novosti [Russian]; radio (ARD [German public radio broadcaster]); magazines (two German publications: Stern and Focus); radio and TV (several Greek stations: ERT3; ANT ENA TV and Flash Radio; Net Radio 105.8; SKAI TV and Radio); newspapers (French La Tribune, L’Humanité, France Soir; Swiss Le Temps; Dutch De Telegraaf; Belgian Le Soir); websites (French MyEurop) foreign publications in the UK (Brazilian News [in Portuguese]; Angliya [in Russian]). The interviews lasted between 18 and 114 minutes, with an average of well over 40 minutes. They were conducted in the periods: November-December 2010; June-July 2011. These interviews provided the opportunity to get into the details of the journalists’ working routines and thinking processes that led to story selection, research, and production. The correspondents, at the time of the interviews, had spent between 7 months and 31 years in London, between 4 and 50 years in journalism. Most of them had been journalists for well over a decade. Their majority had been working for media organizations in the respective home countries, often in additional countries other than the UK. They were therefore in the position to compare newsgathering routines across different media and information environments. They were also able to comment about the way the advent of the internet, instantaneous communications, and social media had, over time, affected their working A ‘foreign correspondent’ in this study was any journalist working for a media outlet producing news (both hard news and features) for a non-British audience, regardless of whether this audience was in the UK or abroad. This definition was adopted to capture the variety of collaboration arrangements between correspondents and foreign offices, which go well beyond the reporting ‘full time on a staff basis’ of past studies (Morrison and Tumber, 1981: 16) 5 17 routines. Furthermore, the experience of having covered a variety of roles over the course of their career gave them both greater perspective and a reflective attitude on what affected their activities, especially their journalistic output. The questions of the semi-structured interviews covered for, both diplomats and journalist, the following: 1) Personal background of the interviewee; 2) Networks of relationships (faceto-face and mediated); 3) Daily routines; 4) Media consumption (sources of information); and 5) Use of communication technologies. Interviews with foreign diplomats were geared towards understanding both how they made sense of and navigated the political and social environment in London. As for foreign journalists, I wanted to find out what shaped the way they portrayed the UK in their reports (identity, newsgathering routines, content outputs). 4. Findings: The London Case The findings confirm that the engagement with micro-practice to understand the complexity of contemporary international relations is more urgent than ever. The fact that the world we inhabit is one of profound interconnection, where communication technologies allow individuals who might have never met to build communities of interest (like advocacy networks) across national borders (Keck and Sikkink 1998) and where the line between domestic and international politics is increasingly difficult to identify, could lead a researcher to safely assume that all that matters happens somehow at a “global” level. One could be forgiven for overlooking, if not forgetting altogether about, what happens not only at a subnational and regional level, but in the very corridors of embassies around the world, townhall offices, or the streets and cafés of foreign capitals. The daily life of diplomats, politicians, journalists, ordinary citizens—the “local”—in such a deluge of transnational exchanges could appear like a fading memory of the old pre-globalization times. Thinking that micro-practices at the local level are increasingly irrelevant, however, would be a huge mistake. Examining the way in which social agents (diplomats, journalists, politicians and members of the public) interact on a daily basis to pursue their own interests in each specific national political and social (even spatial and time) context is essential to understanding how exactly international relations are evolving in an age of interconnectedness. In this section I am presenting the results of an analysis that focused on the practices of foreign diplomats and foreign correspondents in London. Crucially, in the case of diplomats, the examination of the everyday and individual/organisational dimension of these officials’ activities shows that many of the claims that have been previously illustrated about a supposedly radical transformation of international relations are unfounded. More specifically, against the notion that we have entered the era of “public diplomacy 2.0” in which government-public engagement becomes almost limitless—a sort of “communication of everybody anywhere anytime”—the interviews suggest that diplomacy is becoming increasingly multidimensional and, counterintuitively, selective. As for the foreign correspondents, it is not possible to understand the way the image of the UK is projected to audiences abroad unless we research the “story behind the stories” that foreign journalists write about Britain. Again, the study of the way the identity of journalists and their newsgathering routines (including relationships with sources, editors and colleagues) affect their written outputs (portrayal of the UK) challenges widespread claims. The empirical study of foreign correspondents, in particular, questions two contradictory beliefs. One, coming from public diplomacy officials, is the assumption that foreign journalists can (and should) be “managed,” used as “tools” to convey positive images of a country. The study, instead, finds that there are a whole range of influences that shape 18 journalists’ outputs beyond officials—and, even if it might sound surprising to a civil servant, not all news is about politics. The second claim, coming from journalism studies, is the idea that foreign journalists are disappearing, being substituted by information available on the internet. News, as the argument goes, is becoming homogenised on a worldwide scale as a result of increasing reliance on global news agencies. Against such belief, whose implication would be that the image of the UK abroad is increasingly shaped by global news channels, the study finds that foreign correspondents are alive and well. In fact, not only their number might not be decreasing at all, but their reporting—including the image of the UK that emerges from them—has never been so varied and multifaceted. I am going to develop these points further by starting from the findings related to the foreign diplomats. The analysis will then move on to the foreign correspondents.6 Foreign Diplomats Life at the edge: The London environment How does the specificity of the local context affect the practices of foreign diplomats? Who do foreign diplomats interact with? How do they interpret their political environment? Where do they get their information from? Do advances in communication technologies make any difference to their activities? To find an answer to these questions, we need to understand the place of foreign diplomats, carrying out their functions of representation, negotiation, information-gathering and reporting back to their respective countries, at the edge between the national and the international dimensions. Being able to make sense of what happens in the country they are working in is of paramount importance to diplomats. They need information. And they get it not only by meeting people, but also by consuming the reports provided by the media. Local media, in particular, has always been vital to their daily activities. As Phillips Davison (1974: 177) wrote almost four decades ago: ‘The [national] press serves as the eyes and ears of diplomacy.’ This is still very much the case. Extremely high media consumption, however, is not a simple result of information availability. Diplomats do not consume just any information because it is there. They need reliable and accurate information. The media environment in London, in particular, according to the assessment of most interviewees, is characterized by high quality sources. This is the outcome of a strong tradition of objective journalism. A Russian diplomat, for example, said that the British press ‘is not only very open and encompassing all the sides of the social life in the United Kingdom, but also is very astute and, capable of digging for the information.’ Ashe continues: ‘The tradition of journalism here [UK] is very strong. Sometimes it is biased but in a very obvious way and so you can easily sort it out.’ This situation is very different from what was experienced by the same source in one of his previous postings: ‘In Ethiopia you had to take most of the material with a great pinch of salt, understanding that this [information] is poor government propaganda mainly, or a very cheap opposition assault on the government and nothing in the middle, usually. So well-thoughtthrough, balanced analysis for assessment was very rare there.’ 6 A reader who might want to hear more of the voices of the diplomats and foreign journalists beyond the brief excerpts presented over the next few pages can refer to: Archetti, C. (2012) “The Impact of New Media on Diplomatic Practice: An Evolutionary Model of Change,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 7(2): 181-206; Archetti, C. (2011) “Reporting the Nation: Understanding the Role of Foreign Correspondents in 21 Century Public Diplomacy,” paper presented at the International Studies Association (ISA) annual convention, Montreal, Canada, 17 March. 19 Through the multiplication of the opportunities for interaction—both face-to-face and mediated by technologies—diplomats have come to operate in what we could call a much broader information environment that they did in the past. Such environment is constituted by the networks of contacts spanning both the offline and online dimensions across which information is accessed, gathered, processed and distributed in the official, media, and public domain. Differently from a natural environment, which would be the same for all species living in it—for example the physical urban space of London, Beijing or Washington—the information space is different for every single actor, as if each diplomat or embassy office inhabited a parallel dimension. The way each diplomat operates in his/her own information environment, in fact, reflects the specific goals and objectives of the respective embassy office. These goals, in turn, are becoming increasingly differentiated—an outcome of both developing international relations, but importantly also of the ease with which communication takes place among politicians across countries. A senior German diplomat, for example, talked about an increasingly ‘ceremonial role’ for European embassies in the British capital over the past 30 years at the expense of their traditional hardcore ‘messenger’ functions. This is both because of the EU’s consolidation, particularly the fact that political leaders tend to meet regularly within the EU’s institutional structures and bodies, and the technical possibility of communicating directly: If Germany had a problem with Paraguay, the foreign ministry would probably ask our ambassador in Ascension to see the foreign minister or to see the president or prime minister [...] and to deliver a strong message [...]. If the German government had a problem with the UK government, [...] the head of the Chancellor’s office would call the head of Downing Street, Number 10, and would say “look, Angela [Merkel] has to talk to David [Cameron]. Could we fix a phone call for two o’clock in the afternoon?” And the embassy would perhaps not be even aware of it. This explains the increase in public outreach activity by European embassies in London: as the German source adds, ‘we are compensating for the diminishing role of traditional diplomacy by talking about our role in public diplomacy’. This trend is supported by the fact that, specifically in London, for several diplomatic actors there is less of a need of accessing officials to gather reliable information in the first place. This is related to quality of the information provided by British media mentioned earlier. Here is a further exchange with the German diplomat, asked this time to compare the proportion of time spent gathering information through the media rather than through official meetings both in London and Cairo, one of his previous postings: Q: If you were to define the proportion of your time that you spend consuming information provided by the media, versus the time you spend meeting people, what would that be? If you don’t include meeting people in our own embassy and co-ordinating with them [...] I would say that 80 percent of the information comes from media and 20 percent comes from personal contacts, talking to other people over lunch or going to their offices or inviting them to my office and exchanging information. Q: And if you compared this to the previous posting in Cairo, would the proportion change? I would say it was 70 percent meeting people and 30 percent following events on internet, print media, et cetera. 20 As the source further explains: ‘there is a lot of inside information offered in the media [in London]; that is true, whereas in other countries you would perhaps have to rely more on personal contacts to get the inside story.’ Non-European countries’ embassies, instead, tend to retain to a greater extent the diplomat’s ‘messenger’ role. A Syrian diplomat in London, for example, commented that his function consisted mainly in being ‘a tool of [official] communication.’ An Australian source also pointed at the increase of an ‘advocacy function’ at the expense of informationgathering and relaying: ‘...we weren’t writing cables predicting who was going to win the last election [...] [Instead] we were saying, you know, if the Conservatives win, this is what foreign policy may look like [...] Once upon a time you would have been sending a cable every couple of days saying “this is the latest” [...] You wouldn’t do that now because somebody could just go to Guardian Online or The Times Online and get that.’ The advocacy function consists of agenda-setting and lobbying through official contacts: ‘going down to Whitehall, trying to get the UK government to do things that we want them to do.’ Explaining the outreach activities of foreign diplomats Whether foreign diplomats want at all to engage with local publics, the extent to which they pursue such activity in case they do, as well as the communication channels used in the process—social media like Facebook, rather than an e-magazine, or a series of lunch receptions for selected guests—is thus the unique outcome of the match between each diplomat/embassy’s objectives—‘ceremonial’ function rather than ‘advocacy,’ for instance— with the information environment in which the diplomatic actor operates. A pattern observable in the case of the London environment is that the lower the level of political interest towards a foreign country in the mainstream British media coverage, the greater the effort by the respective embassy office at reaching out through alternative means of communications (social media, for example). The level of local mainstream media attention towards a foreign country—in other words that nation’s visibility—is, in the first place, shaped by the host country’s foreign policy, international alliances and membership of international organizations, as well as historical ties (to former colonies, in the case of the UK). Officials, in fact, tend to prioritize their interactions with foreign country representatives in terms of frequency of exchanges and the level at which negotiations are conducted. In the long term, the level of official interest by UK officials towards foreign countries affects the level of newsworthiness of the latter in the national media agenda (Archetti 2010, Chapter 1). Countries like Australia or India tend to receive extensive coverage in the British media because of their membership of the Commonwealth, their historical and economic ties to the United Kingdom and their status as former British colonies.7 Among the countries that tend to attract less attention—mainly because they are, like Britain, all members of the EU and there are virtually no sources of tension among them—are Sweden or Denmark. Such different levels of attention in the mainstream media translate into equally diverging outreach strategies and choice of communication platforms. The Swedish embassy tends to organize few press conferences. As a Swedish diplomat put it: ‘there’s too much going on in London and journalism is too fast. So, you know, people [journalists] may pop up for a press conference or they may not.’ The most important engagement activity, in this context, is rather targeted networking through face-to-face contacts at seminars and roundtable While no studies of foreign countries’ visibility in UK news are available, research conducted in the United States suggest that ‘in many ways, international news transmission continues to reflect the earlier imperial system in which news agencies follow national flags, armies, and traders’; See Wu (2000: 111). This statement is largely confirmed by literature on media flows. See, for example, Jones, Van Aerst and Vliegenhart (2011, particularly the literature review presented on pp. 2-6.). 7 21 discussions led by the ambassador. The press office of the Danish embassy, to further illustrate the variety of communication channels adopted, among other initiatives, established in February 2010 the ‘Defence News, Danish Embassy in London’ Facebook page.8 The purpose was enabling the Danish embassy to tell the British public about stories that did not normally make the news in the mainstream media: to ‘actively tell the British population about Denmark’s international engagements; especially explaining the extensive and mutually respectful cooperation between Denmark and the United Kingdom in Afghanistan’ (Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2010). Countries that tend to receive a great deal of official attention and, as a consequence, extensive media coverage, instead, are under less pressure to raise their visibility. This is confirmed, among the rest, by the fact that the websites of countries like the previously mentioned India, or Russia or Egypt—all identified as public diplomacy ‘geographical priorities’ for the UK) (Carter 2005: 14)—are rather basic when compared to those of less influential counterparts. The only exception is represented by the United States: despite receiving more coverage than any other country because of its ‘special relationship’ with the United Kingdom and its superpower status, it also uses alternative communication channels: a sophisticated website, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed, and a YouTube channel. Where next? Whether diplomacy is approached in its narrow sense of official negotiation or understood as public diplomacy, it does not consist in a homogenous set of practices, even if they might take place in the very same location—the London hub in this case. These results, by focusing on the way foreign diplomats network and appropriate technological tools to pursue their interest in the British capital, contribute to the current debate about public diplomacy. Particularly they show that when it comes to identifying an effective communication strategy in diplomacy there is no one-size-fits-all policy. It is all very well to say that Facebook and Twitter are useful tools in supporting a new kind of public diplomacy that is characterized by dialogue with foreign audiences. And indeed these platforms—in the right conditions and when used by certain actors in specific environments—will support the achievement of such a result. The outcome, however, cannot be a simple extrapolation from the characteristics of a medium. It is, instead, a social outcome that is shaped by the contingent interplay of macro structural factors (international relations) and the local initiatives of social agents. The structural aspects as they emerged in the case study, are a combination of: the countries’ positions within the international system, which affects also the level of newsworthiness of a country in the mainstream media national news; the host country’s prevailing journalistic culture (oriented towards balance and objectivity in Britain), which leads to the circulation of good quality reliable and accurate information; limited human and financial resources; even the physical characteristics of a capital. For example, among the rest, the fact that most of diplomats tend to live outside London due to the high living costs leads to more commuting, therefore less time that can be spent networking at receptions. The social agents are diplomats, local officials, local and international audiences who interact with each other both face-to-face and virtually. All these actors use technologies to pursue their own agendas within the structure of opportunities and constraints of the specific environment in which they operate. Every single actor occupies a different position within the social space. In order fully to understand these overlapping social geometries, it is necessary to combine the insights of different fields of study: international relations, politics, communication. It is also necessary to gain a better view of the micro-interactions of the social actors—the 8 Available at London/326005760827?ref=ts http://www.facebook.com/pages/Defence-News-Danish-Embassy-in- 22 diplomats, officials, journalists and audiences with whom embassies and governments aim to communicate. Examining these actors’ actual practices involves a greater use of ethnographic methods. Becoming sensitive to the variation of practices and the causes of such variation also requires international comparative research designs. As most current research is about the United States which, in whichever way one might want to look at it is an outlier case, and as the number of actors in the domain of twenty-first century international relations steadily increases, we also urgently need to engage with the question: how does this all work for the other 150 plus nations? Foreign Correspondents Foreign journalists have an important political function in shaping the image and discourses about the UK to foreign audiences. They engage in this activity virtually every day by writing their stories. But how is the portrayal of the UK actually “assembled” in their reports? Where do foreign journalists get their information from? Who are their sources? In other words, what is the “story behind their stories”? Before illustrating the findings related to the identities, routines, and outputs of foreign journalists in London, to better illustrate the extent to which the investigation of practice can illuminate the processes of construction of international relations, I am going to start this section by outlining two assumptions related to the role of foreign correspondents, one reflecting the thinking of public diplomacy officials, the other one coming from journalism studies. Both of them are squarely challenged by the evidence of the empirical investigation. It’s not as simple as officials think A first important finding of the study is that the process of “constructing the UK” to the eyes of foreign audiences does not work the way officials engaged in public diplomacy assume it does.9 Governmental reports on both sides of the Atlantic, recognizing the key role of foreign journalists, have issued calls for more directly engaging with correspondents in order to “manage” the image of both the US and the UK. Among the recommendations drawn by a task force for an urgent ‘strategy of reform’ of American public diplomacy in the initial context of the fight against terrorism (Peterson et al. 2002: 13), for example, is the establishment of ‘increasingly meaningful relationships between the U.S. Government and foreign journalists.’ According to the report, ‘to the extent that the U.S. government marginalizes foreign journalists, it alienates a group of highly effective, highly credible messengers’ (ibid.). Similarly, an official review of British public diplomacy activities (Wilton et al. 2002 report) pointed out that ‘an article written by a foreign correspondent in London has a greater impact than any of our other public diplomacy outputs. Feedback from embassies, when asked to give views for this review, overwhelmingly identified more attention to foreign correspondents in London as the one thing that could improve our public diplomacy work’ (ibid.: 20). A later document (Carter 2005) again underlined the ‘multiplier effect’ deriving from the presence of ‘over 2,000 foreign correspondents based in London (the biggest single concentration after Washington) with the potential to reach large numbers of the UK’s public diplomacy audiences overseas’ (ibid.: 52). These recommendations are based on two rather simplistic beliefs: that foreign journalists would almost automatically write what they are “fed” by governmental sources, in a sort of linear communication process; and that they all somehow report about politics, thus needing official sources to start with. The fact that the communication process between political actors, journalists, and the public does not take place in such a straightforward manner, however, is not only related to the fact that, in our age, information is ubiquitous. A linear 9 This observation, as I have noted in a previous paper, applies to the officials who write public diplomacy reviews rather than to the International Media Officers who actually deal with foreign correspondents daily (Archetti 2011, especially pp.31-37). 23 communication process might have never really existed. David Morrison and Howard Tumber, writing in 1981, already observed that correspondents in London overwhelmingly relied on local media (not officials!) to write their reports. Even more strongly making this point, are the words of Robert Vansittart, who had the responsibility of dealing with the press during the tenure of Lord Curzon as Foreign Secretary in the 1920s: Beside this Fleet Street [where the press headquarters were] leviathan I was small fry, but Curzon expected me to influence newspaper-men to an extent impossible in the twentieth century...He swung between thinking they knew too much and too little of his domain...Every morning trouble arose on the telephone. “Why did you put that in?” He did not understand that the modern journalists had sources of information other than the Foreign Office (in Taylor 1981: 16). The evidence gathered through the interviews confirms not only the reliance on an extensive range of sources, but also the fact that what ultimately becomes “news” is not just politics or foreign policy. What is newsworthy, in fact, depends on several factors. Among the rest, it depends on: the country for which a reporter is writing, particularly, in this study’s case, on the country’s relationship with the UK; on the editorial needs of the media outlet for which the journalist reports; but it can also vary depending on the short-term developments within the domestic situation of the journalist’s home country. I am going to briefly illustrate these points in turn. Sebastian Hesse-Kastein, a correspondent for a German public radio broadcaster (ARD), in describing how a story comes about, explains that there is ‘obvious’ breaking news, then there are stories requested by editors and pieces that are pitched by the journalist him/herself. However, the proportion among these different kinds of stories was different in the US, where he had been previously posted. This is because ‘breaking news’ there was more important due to a higher interest of German audiences in American politics: Q: So how would a story come about? You mentioned the differences between an emerging story or breaking news and an editor requesting something or you pitching a story, but what would you say is the proportion between them? One third each roughly. Q: So it’s quite balanced? Yes, it’s quite balanced I think here in London. I mean, in the US it was different. The news factor was a lot higher, and in America there are a lot of things going on that you have to cover as a foreign correspondent, and American politics are a lot more important for Germans than British politics is. Here, the election was a big thing and now there is the whole debate about cutting benefits, which is of course a big story but it’s not as dominant in the German news as say what’s going on in Washington DC or in Brussels. So here it’s really quite balanced I would say. As he later expands on this point, he emphasizes that he was covering more politics in Washington than he is in London: When I was in America or in Berlin a lot of the stuff we covered was purely political, about policy issues, and obviously there were some issues where you got a lot of angry reactions. For example, writing a pro-George Bush commentary in 2003 was something that definitely generated a huge wave of anger and reaction. British politics is not that interesting to European audiences, so here it’s more the sort of entertaining stories that we do. So the Royals, the 24 eccentric British, funny things, and of course the Druid story [which he had mentioned earlier in the interview] would be a perfect example. To further show how different foreign audiences are interested in different kind of issues, the interview with the Brazilian correspondent for TV Globo Jader De Oliveira shows that the main focus of interest for his home readers/viewers is the economy. The Greek correspondent Thanassis Gavos (freelance correspondent working among the rest for the Greek station SKAI) suggests that Greek audiences are particularly interested in financial and society news. The selection of news, however, is also affected by the editorial needs of the media outlet. The availability of pictures is particularly important for magazines. German Stern correspondent Cornelia Fuchs, for instance, when asked about what she normally reports about, replied: Well, that’s a bit difficult because Stern covers such a wide variety of topics. Obviously, everything that’s interesting in politics, you know? For example, the Irish recession and the Irish crisis would be a big topic now. Not internal politics though, since the English Government is not really interested in Germany. I always have to look at everything from a German perspective, and see whether it might be interesting in Germany. I also report on Royalty and things that happen in the Royal family, which is of big interest in Germany. And then I’ll also do stories such as a feature on The National Trust, and I did a story on narrow boats. But that’s specific to Stern, because Stern has a big section of the magazine that is very pictorial, so The National Trust story was mainly about the great landscapes of England which we could photograph. Stern is different to other magazines because it’s not only news-driven it’s also driven by great photo reportage. Developments in the correspondent’s home country can be an additional factor that affects the newsworthiness of events in the UK. This is suggested, for instance, by the Greek correspondent Isaac Karipidis (ANT ENA TV and Flash Radio): Q: What makes a good story? I mean, how would you select your stories? I’m sure there are several things that happen, especially if you cover everything. A good story definitely is a story that has an interest back in Greece, it’s a very good story. It’s only good to relate it Greece, directly or indirectly. Now the riots in London [violent student protest against tuition fees], there wasn’t a direct connection with Greece but because Greece has been on the spotlight for the riots [related to economic crisis] and unrest there, you know, the Greek people, they saw similarities in what happened here. It was also an interesting story for them. All these examples support the point that the “story of the UK” that reaches foreign audiences is indeed multifaceted. It is only partly shaped by officials, who are just one source among many others. In the next section I am going to further focus on the influences that affect the journalistic outputs, from the identity of the correspondents, to their working routines. A myriad stories from London Another important finding of the empirical study is that foreign correspondents are not disappearing as claimed by many in journalism studies (Hamilton 2009: 463). The argument 25 there goes as follows. For a start the fact that almost anybody with access to a computer can “report” to worldwide audiences—think about citizen journalism and blogging—challenges the very professional role of the journalist. The increasing speed of the news cycle, combined with fiercer commercial competition, is said to be leading to lower standards of journalism that favour “infotainment” over well-researched content (Thussu 2007), as well as to cuts in foreign reporting staff (Carroll, 2006; Constable, 2007; Moore and Loyn, 2010 p. 9; Sambrook, 2010 p. 13). The online availability of news has driven both audiences and advertisers to cyberspace, triggering a crisis of the newspaper industry which, especially in the US, is turning to local coverage as a last source of profit. The New Yorker bluntly called it the ‘death’ of newspapers (Alterman 2008). The very possibility for global audiences to access news in foreign countries at a click of a mouse, in other words, supports the idea that foreign correspondents are at best unnecessary “middle men,” at worst an ‘engendered species’ that is ‘becoming extinct’ (Hamilton 2009: 463). Even worse, “churnalism,” the endless recycling of online material, especially from news agencies (Boyd Barrett and Rantanen 1998) is claimed to be replacing first-hand reporting. The plausible political impact of these trends is that the image of a country to foreign audiences is increasingly going to be shaped by superficial, mass- and perhaps remotely-produced news, not in-country reporting. The empirical investigation reveals that this is not the case at all. In fact, I am going to illustrate the extreme variety of journalistic outputs produced by foreign correspondents in London. These stories are the outcome of the unique combination of the changing identities of journalists, their evolving routines, and the very understanding by the correspondents of their own role—that of analysts rather than mere reporters. Who are the foreign correspondents? A younger generation. The variety of reporting produced about the UK is driven by a younger and more dynamic cohort of correspondents than it used to be in the past. London has traditionally been a very prestigious foreign posting, only attainable by the most experienced and distinguished journalists: the average age of a correspondent thirty years ago was 41 and he—85% were men—had spent an average of 18 years in journalism (Morrison and Tumber 1981: 19-20). Today some still have extensive experience in journalism, like Fawad Hashmey of the Associated Press of Pakistan who became foreign correspondent after having worked for 31 years as a domestic journalist. Others join the ranks at a much earlier stage in their career. Staff correspondent Arnoud Breitbarth, 30, started to work as a journalist for De Telegraaf, the biggest newspaper in the Netherlands, while he was at university: ‘I needed money when I was studying. We had a consumer page where they needed someone who compared the prices in supermarkets. I wrote consumer stuff and it happened I was quite good at that. And after a while they offered me a job.’ He moved to London after 8 years working at the economic desk of De Telegraaf in his home country. ‘The editor-in-chief wanted someone with an economic background in London.’ When I asked him whether assigning relatively young correspondents to London was the outcome of a deliberate editorial policy he explained that in the past it was ‘usual to be far older to be a correspondent. But being a correspondent nowadays is [...] quite hard work, like long hours. You’re not only a newspaper correspondent but you do radio, internet and some TV as well. You need to be a bit younger and a bit modern to use all the technologies available.’ For also most of the other interviewees London is the first location they have been assigned to as foreign correspondents. Decreasing numbers? Foreign audiences’ image of the UK is not becoming shaped by internet “churnalism.” Although nobody really knows how many foreign journalists are in London,10 the interviews confirm that they are certainly not disappearing. What appears to The number of foreign journalists alone (often cited as evidence of correspondents’ “extinction”) is a terribly inaccurate measure of the health of foreign correspondence. Morrison and Tumber (1981) 10 26 be true is that the number of correspondents per organization indeed appears to be declining. The trend is directly related to advances in communication technologies, particularly the fact that recording equipment is portable, easily usable, and editing can be done on the spot. Isaac Karipidis (Greek TV station ANT ENA and Flash Radio), on this point, said: ‘I used to have a cameraman, I used to have a sound recorder and everything but now [...] I have my own camera, I have my laptop. I go there, I take my pictures, I do my stand ups, I edit the story and I send it to Greece. That makes my job a little bit more complicated but at the same time, 300 per cent cheaper.’ While many foreign bureaus are closing due their high maintenance costs, it does not necessarily mean that foreign correspondents are no longer on the ground. In most cases it is not a matter of “cutting” foreign correspondents, but changing their working arrangements. As French correspondent Tristan de Bourbon Parme—who works for five different outlets (two French, one Belgian and one Swiss newspaper, a French website)—points out, it is true that staff correspondents are in decline, but they are being replaced by freelancers. Only a high-ranking Chinese correspondent among all interviewees had an office and 11 colleagues in London. Virtually anybody else was working alone through a laptop and portable equipment, using their home as an office. As Raphael Honigstein, a German sport correspondent who normally works from home but also has a desk in a shared architects’ office puts it: ‘it’s really only a desk and a wireless internet connection. I don’t have a phone there. You don’t need anything else.’ It would be wrong, however, to think that there was some sort of a “golden age” in the past in which most media organizations had a foreign bureau. For instance, Dutch Arnoud Breitbarth, said that no print media organization from his country has ever had a whole office in London and that De Telegraaf has always relied on one correspondent. The conversations with the journalists also suggested that, where reductions of foreign staff were involved, they affected mainly the newspaper industry. Radio and magazines did not appear as strongly impacted. Cornelia Fuchs of the German magazine Stern, in fact, explained that her publication has never had so many foreign correspondents. Indeed, as she phrased it, ‘the only reason why someone would buy a magazine like Stern anymore is because people know that our journalist are actually there [reporting from a foreign country].’ Newsgathering routines If there is one single striking feature of the way foreign correspondents operate in the London media hub is the fact that there are no “typical” or established routines practiced by journalists as a homogenous category of guest workers. As it was already noticed in the case of diplomats, while all journalists operate in the same place, they develop individual ways of fulfilling their respective role—just as if they were living in parallel worlds. Such role is uniquely defined by each journalist’s employment arrangements, number of media outlets one works for, and ability to survive within the (normally very limited) resources at one’s disposal. Despite the challenges in researching stories within time and financial constrains, the variety of these routines and sources of information accessed further contributes to a multifaceted and diverse portrayal of the UK in the correspondents’ reports. Flexible routines. All interviewees, regardless of whether staff reporters or freelance, knew very well they could not cover ‘everything.’ Several of them referred to themselves as a ‘one man band’ who worked for several organizations. That is why they felt they had to establish priorities and concentrate on the stories where they could offer most value. This, paradoxically, involved staying at home during busy days to be able to follow events through wrote thirty years ago not only that ‘the exact number of foreign correspondents or even a close approximation was unknown and could not be established from documented sources’ (ibid.: 5). Already back then, they also found it ‘impossible to say with certainty if the number of foreign correspondents based in London [had] declined or increased’ (ibid.: 17). According to the estimate of the FCO International Media Officer John Hewitt (2011), the number of foreign correspondents is now ‘around the 1,500 mark.’ 27 the media. This applied for example, in the case of the correspondent for a Spanish regional newspaper, to the reporting of the extradition trial of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange: ‘I would like to go to the trial but the problem is that I don’t only work for one radio. There are several stations. Operationally it’s difficult because I would have to get out of the court, connect by phone to Madrid and at the end for me it’s more useful to stay at home and to follow the case through the newspapers, Twitter, TV. For the events when there is news every moment, you must stay at home because it’s the easiest way to follow.’ This is seen as a necessary process to build an “information skeleton” to then be able to add ‘flesh to the bones’—bringing out the angle on why the story is relevant to the respective audiences back home—through further conversations with selected and specialized sources. Sometimes these sources are experts, but in other cases the “flesh on the bones” is the experience of British people. As Arnoud Breitbarth points out: ‘For the Royal Wedding I just went out on the street and talked to real people in the supermarket or something like that. And for financial stories as well, sometimes it’s more interesting to talk to people who are doing their shopping at an Asda or a Lidl [bargain stores] and compare them to people who shop at Waitrose [high-end supermarket chain]. Those stories are maybe even more important than a big interview with a hot shot Economics professor because they tell more about the country and more about what’s happening to people.’ Proliferation of sources. The development of communication technologies does help in assembling the background for the stories. Some correspondents, beside broadsheets, tabloids, TV, radio and specialized publications often available through the internet, make use of social media, particularly Twitter for the links it provides to further sources of information. This is seen as essential for the correspondent to produce analytical pieces. As a Brazilian journalist who reports about financial news explained: ‘the news is [already] done. I don’t have to write the news. I have to go deeper.’ Journalistic outputs Finding a different angle. Far from being rushed into “churnalism,” overall the interviews suggest that correspondents are largely making an effort at producing exclusive content. This even applies to newsagencies—the very organizations accused of contributing to a global homogenization of news. Alexander Smotrov, correspondent for the Russian newsagency RIA Novosti, for example, said: ‘We do feel the pressure of other media [alternative sources of information for publics] and have a general awareness of the fact that audiences can access original sources of information and read the English language media; for example, BBC, Sky News, The Guardian, The Times, and other websites. Of course we feel this pressure and that’s why we can’t simply survive if we continue to work as our colleagues worked thirty years ago, when they picked up stories from the local media and went with that. We can’t do this anymore, but have to add significant additional value to our stories [...] special angles, maybe some opinion, multimedia and good background details.’ The added value of the correspondent. Some correspondents feel the editors are not always making the best use of their staff in London. As a correspondent for a Spanish regional newspaper put it: ‘they want us to report about the same things they read on The New York Times.’ Despite this, journalists are generally confident of the value of the correspondent not only because of his/her ‘witnessing’ function. They also talk the additional roles of explaining what events in a foreign country mean. Cornelia Fuchs (German magazine Stern), for example, says that: ‘...you can read American newspapers from Germany but that doesn’t mean that you understand what the Tea Party is all about, you know? Because the newspapers in New York or Washington write for American audiences, and American audiences know about a lot of things that German audiences have never heard about.’ Sebastian Hesse-Kastein, German correspondent for ADR, further underlines this aspect: ‘I’m working [as of November 2010] on a piece on the Druid movement in Great Britain, something which fascinates the Germans. Druids were officially recognised as a church in Britain a couple of weeks ago, which was my reason for looking at it. I could find nothing 28 useful on the web, so I have to go there and talk to people, experience it, smell, feel, hear, see for myself. And because everybody in Germany can now log onto the web and look at the BBC website, they don’t need me to read back to them what’s on the BBC website. What they need me for is to explain things.’ Another function consists in providing, in the words of French correspondent Eric Albert, ‘early warning.’ On this aspect, Thanassis Gavos, Greek correspondent for radio and TV station SKAI, further says: ‘...whatever happens in Greece happens almost a decade after it has happened in the UK. So the example from a more developed country is really interesting and in some cases provides a lesson on how to react to specific problems.’ More foreign news, please. Rather than leading to a reduction of foreign news reporting, new communication technologies are making foreign news more available than ever. Many of the correspondents not only produce stories for publication, websites, TV, and radio. They also have blogs. Often postings are used to complement stories circulated through mainstream channels or to write about issues which do not make it through the editing process. Alexander Smotrov of the Russian newsagency RIA Novosti both tweets and blogs: ‘Usually it’s a big story which we’ve reported during the day [...] In the evening I sometimes put forward some of my own views and opinions on this story on Twitter or my blog, just to try and tell people something that was left out [...] and to give some interesting details.’ A Spanish correspondent further explains how he uses his blog to make issues he comes across in the UK relevant and “interesting” to regional audiences in Spain: ‘I play tennis with a banker and I thought it would be very useful, very entertaining to reproduce some of our conversations about the economy [on my blog].’ The foreign news kaleidoscope The evidence provided by the interviews with the London foreign correspondents suggests a much more dynamic and resilient image of foreign correspondence—and with it the reporting about foreign affairs—at a time of economic crisis. The prevailing idea in the literature on contemporary journalism is that financial cuts are happening at the expense of good journalism and are badly serving audiences, who receive rushed and superficial reports about foreign countries. These claims are not entirely without merit, but they are sweeping generalizations. Foreign correspondence is much more variegated in nature than current studies lead to imagine. Indeed the very struggle for economic survival in an extremely competitive environment that is causing the shrinking of domestic foreign desks, is also leading to greater reliance on foreign journalists. In some cases, they are freelance paid per piece who might have little interest in researching their stories extensively. In other cases, they are staff reporters who provide precisely that quality edge—insightful journalism and access to exclusives—that keep the foreign media outlet profitable in the respective home media markets. The current trend appears for media outlets to diversify their news offering to cater to different audience niches, often dispersed across space and even located across more than one country. On the one hand some outlets do produce “lighter” news content because this is what a proportion of audience demand is about. Such content is not necessarily shallow. Indeed, if the role of a correspondent is ‘to open the eyes’ and minds of audiences, is a piece about what people in the UK do during the summer (one of the latest stories Tristan de Bourbon Parme, French correspondent, was working on, for instance) not a contribution to mutual understanding between British and French? Others are pursuing more entrepreneurial and creative journalism because, in a globalized world, there is an equally strong demand for in-depth covering of foreign countries. It is possible to detect a consensus among the correspondents that it is no longer possible to simply ‘translate’ the wires as it was sometimes the case in the past. As little as the creative and research contribution of the journalist can be, all stories need to contain something exclusive that is not available online. The result appears, overall, to be more news about foreign countries, with more varied and unique insights, across more platforms. 29 5. Conclusions If we want to explain the reality of contemporary international relations perhaps we need to start from looking at it straight in the face, not hiding it behind sort of initial simplification assembled to make our life easier or worse, based on a memory of what international affairs was like fifty years ago. If the world is tightly interconnected, let’s start from conceptualizing the whole of reality—by choosing our ontological framework—that sees all that exists as being shaped by relationships. The study presented here was a response to calls for a greater engagement with practice in the study of international relations. It has made two points. First it showed the utility of empirical and multidisciplinary approaches to international affairs. The study was conducted within a relational ontology. While the investigation has dealt empirically mainly with the micro-interactions end of the micro-macro continuum that one would need cover in order to hope to explain international affairs in its complexity, it has brought together, hopefully in a manner the reader has found useful, political communication, journalism, international communication, diplomatic studies and international relations. The second point this paper raises is that the ‘practice turn’ in IR is not going to lead very far unless, together with the practices, we bring back the people—the individuals and their everyday life—into the study of international affairs. Not only that, we also need to bring back the objects: the communication technologies, the tools we use every day and which shape not only what we can or cannot do, but also our identities. We need to bring back space: the way cities are organized, and how transport systems affect the way relationships are established, as in the case of diplomatic contacts at receptions, thus influencing who we are, how we see the world and our knowledge, and consequently our behaviour. The hectic routines of the correspondents, which are dominated by the speed of a 24/7 news cycle, are also a reminder that, beyond space, we need to bring back time, particularly a recognition that the timing and sequence—when events happen, how fast, and how frequently—matter in the social world. The findings presented here come from two separate projects, one about diplomats and one about journalists, which were conducted with less than £5,000 funding overall, on the side of teaching and administration commitments. While they required a huge amount of effort they might additionally show that an empirical/practice-oriented approach to international relations opens up a myriad opportunities for research, especially for young scholars. At a time of economic crisis, when obtaining research funding is increasingly difficult, the study of practices does not necessarily require astronomical budgets, especially when investigating the micro-interactions could mean that research could be conducted locally.11 Neumann (in Schouten 2012: 1) identified the key current challenge in international relations as ‘to make IR more of a social science discipline.’ I like to close with the positive final thought that, indeed, as social scientists, we can conduct research anywhere. 11 Another study of the role of image in politics was conducted in early 2012 with zero budget. 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