Public Diplomacy and Virtual Worlds

THEME: Internationalism: Worlds at Play Abstract Public Diplomacy and Virtual Worlds An examination of the role of Massively Multiplayer Online Games as an extension of and venue for cultural dialogue, exchange and identity. Background Over the past decade, communications technologies have evolved more rapidly than has our ability to understand them. Since the early 1990s, we have witnessed a communication revolution, fueled by advances in computer technology, mobile and wireless communication, new information communication technologies, the expansion of broadcast through cable television and most significantly, the Internet. One element of this transformation has been the emergence of "many-to-many" networks, communication networks that allow large numbers of users to communicate with each other, without interference from gatekeepers, regulators or editorial influence. The global information culture is fundamentally shifting from a broadcast environment to a topology where broadcast amplifies, and is amplified by, many-to-many networks that are increasingly enabled by information technologies – including web services, publicly accessible databases, social software (weblogs, wikis, buddy lists, online games, file-sharing networks), mobile devices (camera phones, text messaging, global positioning systems), and the tools and technologies that blur the line between online and real-world spaces (web cams, wi-fi, distributed sensors, Internet cafes, MeetUp and other smart-mob phenomena). This transformation of the global information culture has deep and fundamental implications for politics and public diplomacy – dampening (or reversing) the effectiveness of traditional public diplomacy campaigns while opening up new opportunities that are not on the radar of public affairs people doing "business as usual." For example, relationships formed in the virtual gaming world transcend traditional geopolitical and geosocial boundaries; weblogs played a key role in the last Korean election, and text messages sparked rallies during the recent Spanish elections. Radical movements of every political stripe, from left-wing antiglobalists to religious fundamentalists (Christian, Muslim, Hindu), are fully conversant with the dynamics of these technologies, while their governments are not. The bureaucratic obesity of national governments, often precludes awareness of, much less a well informed response to, these emergent phenomena as they happen. These changes present new research challenges, as well as new opportunities for developing projects with long-term, real world social impact. The Study We are attempting to understand the relationships between many-to-many technologies – networked interaction on a mass scale – and public diplomacy. Our goal in this essay will be to describe how massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) or "virtual worlds" can facilitate intercultural dialogue among various groups. What is Public Diplomacy? Traditional definitions of public diplomacy include government-sponsored cultural, educational and informational programs, citizen exchanges and broadcasts used to promote the national interest of a country through understanding, informing, and influencing foreign audiences. We view the field much more broadly. In addition to government sponsored programs, we are equally concerned with aspects of what Joseph Nye has labeled "soft power." The impact of private activities - from popular culture to fashion to sports to news to the Internet - that inevitably, if not purposefully, have an impact on foreign policy and national security as well as on trade, tourism and other national interests. Why Virtual Worlds? Virtual worlds, mainly constructed through massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), function as communication networks in three different ways: • As one-to-many networks (developer to community). Virtual worlds, in other words, are created by a team of developers and include assumptions, values and beliefs in the structure, design, and art of the game. • As many-to-many networks. Virtual worlds are networked communication systems, which allow for interactive chat, internal email, and private and public messaging. Communication can occur among and between any of the online participants in a multitude of configurations. • As one-to-many networks (player to community). Virtual worlds also offer individual players increasing access to a new form of "broadcast." from things as basic as avatar appearance and selection to the ability to create and display objects or messages in public forums or virtual space. Each of these spaces provides us with research questions that can help us to better understand the role of virtual worlds in public diplomacy. Early research has confirmed that within these spaces, there is a unique opportunity to create, foster and sustain intercultural dialogue and that perception of national values, ideals, and character are both reinforced and altered by the real time interactions that occur in these spaces. Understanding Virtual Worlds • Cross Cultural Comparison. Our report will highlight representative examples of games produced in different countries (for example, United States, Korea, Finland, and England) with varied themes and designs in order to explore both the manner in which notions of nation, cultural values, and citizenship are reflected, integrated and assumed within the content of those games as well as the degree to which those representations are positive, negative or neutral. In doing so, we will ask three fundamental questions: 1. How does game content reflect issues of national identity and cultural values both of the producers and of the players? 2. In what ways are players encouraged or discouraged from engaging in intercultural dialogue and what opportunities exist for such dialogue? 3. What means do players have to reflect national identity or specific cultural values (private chat, avatar appearance and naming, object creation and placement) and how frequently do they engage in such opportunities? • Categorization. The answers to these questions (types and uses or networks, types of game design, and cultural content) provide us with extremely rich data to describe, measure, and access each MMOG’s facilitation of intercultural dialogue (from low to high effectiveness) within the three domains of design, content, and network. Those analyses, in turn, serve as the foundation for a typology that will provide categorical profiles of MMOGs according to combinations of the relative strengths and weakness in each of those domains with regards to fostering various forms of cultural dialogue. We will seek to identify nascent and novel manifestation of such dialogue. The typology overall and the categories elaborated within will offer a wide variety of useful tools to public diplomacy practitioners who are seeking to facilitate productive intercultural exchange during this time of intensifying globalization and technological change

Promoting Public and Private Reinvestment in Cultural Exchange-Based Diplomacy

Makes the case for renewed investment in public diplomacy and cultural exchange. Analyzes trends in government, foundation, and other private support for cultural diplomacy, the benefits and obstacles, and models of engagement. Details recommendations

Next-Generation Media: The Global Shift

For over a decade the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program has convened its CEO-level Forum on Communications and Society (FOCAS) to address specific issues relating to the impact of communications media on societal institutions and values. These small, invitation-only roundtables have addressed educational, democratic, and international issues with the aim of making recommendations to policy-makers, businesses and other institutions to improve our society through policies and actions in the information and communications sectors.In the summer of 2006 the forum took a different turn. It is clear there is a revolution affecting every media business, every consumer or user of media, and every institution affected by media. In a word, everyone. FOCAS sought to define the paradigm changes underway in the media, and to identify some of the significant repercussions of those changes on society."Next Generation Media" was a three-day meeting among leaders from new media (e.g., Google, craigslist, and Second Life) and mainstream media (e.g., The New York Times and Time), from business, government, academia and the non-profit sector, all seeking a broad picture of where the digital revolution is taking us.This report of the meeting, concisely and deftly written by Richard Adler, a longtime consultant in the field, weaves insights and anecdotes from the roundtable into a coherent document supplemented with his own research and data to form an accessible, coherent treatment of this very topical subject.The specific goals of the 2006 forum were to examine the profound changes ahead for the media industries, advertisers, consumers and users in the new attention economy; to understand how the development and delivery of content are creating new business models for commercial and non-commercial media; and to assess the impact of these developments on global relations, citizenship and leadership.The report thus examines the growth of the Internet and its effect on a rapidly changing topic: the impact of new media on politics, business, society, culture, and governments the world over. The report also sheds light on how traditional media will need to adapt to face the competition of the next generation media.Beginning, as the Forum did, with data from Jeff Cole's Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California, Adler documents the increasing popularity of the Internet for information, entertainment and communication. Users are increasingly generating and contributing content to the web and connecting to social networks. They are posting comments, uploading pictures, sharing videos, blogging and vlogging, chatting through instant messages or voice over Internet (VoIP), or emailing friends, business colleagues, neighbors and even strangers. As Cole observes, "Traditional media informed people but didn't empower them." New media do.The report describes three of the Internet's most successful ventures -- Wikipedia, Second Life, and craigslist. Wikipedia is a prime example of how an Internet platform allows its users to generate content and consume it. As a result of "wiki" software technology anyone can contribute or edit existing information free of cost. Second Life, a virtual world, sells virtual real estate where subscribers, in avatar form, can conduct conversations, go to lectures, even create a business. Craigslist, a predominantly free online classified site with listings in every major city in the United States, has become so popular that it is posing a significant threat to newspapers as it competes with their classified ad revenues.As a result of these and other new media phenomena, not the least being Google and Yahoo, print publications are wrestling with new business models that could entail fundamentally restructuring the way they operate. For instance, reporters are now expected to report a story on multiple media platforms and discuss them online with readers. Newspaper publisher Gannett is exploring the incorporation of usergenerated news or "citizen-journalism" into its news pages.In an era of abundant choices marketers have an even greater challenge to figure out how best to appeal to consumers. The report explores how marketers, e.g., of Hollywood movies or pomegranate juice, are moving from traditional or mainstream media to viral and other marketing techniques.For much of the world, the mobile phone rather than the computer is the most important communications device. Users depend on their phones to send and receive messages, pictures, and download information rather than just talk. In developing countries mobile phones are having an exceptional impact, penetrating regions which are not being serviced by land lines. Thus we are seeing new uses daily for this increased connectivity, from reporting election results in emerging democracies to opposing authoritarian governments in order to bring about new democracies.Meanwhile, the report discusses the need for the United States to develop a new form of public diplomacy rather than the traditional top-down approach to communicating to foreign citizens. This topic has been a recurring theme at FOCAS conferences the past few years, this year calling for more citizen diplomacy -- that is, more person-toperson contact across borders through uses of the new media. Indeed, Peter Hirshberg suggested that American leaders should listen more to the outside world to effectively manage what he called "Brand America."Finally, after acknowledging the detrimental effects that new technologies can bring about, the report discusses what role those technologies could play in expanding freedom and opportunity for the next generation. As a conclusion, FOCAS co-chair Marc Nathanson proposed adding a ninth goal to the United Nations Millennium Goals, namely, "to provide access to appropriate new technologies.

Blogs, Wikis and Official Statistics: New Perspectives on the Use of Web 2.0 by Statistical Offices

This paper explains the roles that blogs, wikis and social networking play in the provision and dissemination of official statistics.Official statistics, internet, web

Debranding in Fantasy Realms: Perceived Marketing Opportunities within the Virtual World

This paper discusses the application of the concept of debranding within immersive virtual environments. In particular the issue of the media richness and vividness of experience is considered in these experience realms that may not be conducive to traditional branding invasive strategies. Brand equity is generally seen to be the desired outcome of branding strategies and the authors suggest that unless the virtual domains are considered as sacred spaces then brand equity may be compromised. The application of the above concepts is applied to the differing social spaces that operate within the different experience realms. The ideas of resonance, presence and interactivity are considered here. They lead to the development of a constructed positioning by the participants. Through the process of debranding, marketers may be able to enter these sacred spaces without negative impact to the brand. Perception of these virtual spaces was found to be partially congruent with this approach to branding. It thus presents a number of challenges for the owners of such virtual spaces and also virtual worlds in increasing the commercial utilization of investment in these environments

State of Play V: Building the Global Metaverse

Welcome to the State of Play Conference Presented by: Institute for Information Law and Policy New York Law School The Berkman Center for Internet & Society Harvard Law School Nanyang Technological University Trinity University Information Society Project Yale Law School August 19-22, 2007 at Marina Mandarin Hotel 6 Raffles Boulevard Marina Square Singapore 039594https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/iilp/1122/thumbnail.jp

Social Media: the Wild West of CSR Communications

Purpose - The central argument that this paper posits is that traditional media of old presented a clear, ordered world of communication management for organisations to extol their CSR credentials. In contrast to this, new Web 2.0 social media is increasingly being used by activists and hactivists to challenge corporate communication CSR messages and does so by highlighting instances and examples of Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSI) (Jones, Bowd and Tench, 2009; Tench, Sun and Jones, 2012). Design/methodology/approach - The paper reports on research data from the European Communication Monitor 2010, 2011 and 2012 (http://www.communicationmonitor.eu/) and draws on work already published in this area (Tench, Verhoeven and Zerfass, 2009; Verhoeven et al, 2012; and Zerfass et al, 2010, 2011) to illustrate the unruly unregulated Web 2.0 social media communication landscape in Europe. A range of literature is drawn on to provide the theoretical context for an exploration of issues that surround social media. Findings - In late modernity (Giddens, 1990) communication comes in many guises. Social media is one guise and it has re-shaped as well as transformed the nature of communications and the relationship between organisations and their stakeholders. Originality/value - Communicating CSR in the Wild West of social media requires diplomatic and political nous, as well as awareness and knowledge of the dangers and pitfalls of CSI. The data reported on in this paper illustrates well the above points and sets out scenarios for future development of corporate communication of CSR through, and with social media

Always in control? Sovereign states in cyberspace

For well over twenty years, we have witnessed an intriguing debate about the nature of cyberspace. Used for everything from communication to commerce, it has transformed the way individuals and societies live. But how has it impacted the sovereignty of states? An initial wave of scholars argued that it had dramatically diminished centralised control by states, helped by a tidal wave of globalisation and freedom. These libertarian claims were considerable. More recently, a new wave of writing has argued that states have begun to recover control in cyberspace, focusing on either the police work of authoritarian regimes or the revelations of Edward Snowden. Both claims were wide of the mark. By contrast, this article argues that we have often misunderstood the materiality of cyberspace and its consequences for control. It not only challenges the libertarian narrative of freedom, it suggests that the anarchic imaginary of the Internet as a ‘Wild West’ was deliberately promoted by states in order to distract from the reality. The Internet, like previous forms of electronic connectivity, consists mostly of a physical infrastructure located in specific geographies and jurisdictions. Rather than circumscribing sovereignty, it has offered centralised authority new ways of conducting statecraft. Indeed, the Internet, high-speed computing, and voice recognition were all the result of security research by a single information hegemon and therefore it has always been in control

Presidential Public Diplomacy 2.0: Seven Lessons to Prevent Fire in Cyberspace

The Amazon fires in summer 2019 triggered an incendiary Twitter debate between French president Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro that engaged political leaders, celebrities, and audiences worldwide. Currently, diplomats-in-chief connect to the global public through completely open debates, often without proper advice from foreign-affairs ministers, which may result in misunderstandings and conflicts among world leaders. Hence, this study argues that these interactions must be supported by Nicholas Cull’s seven lessons in public diplomacy. The main topic on hand is presidential public diplomacy performed through digital means in cyberspace. Thus, after distinguishing cyberspace, digital diplomacy, and cyberdiplomacy, the literature review focuses on presidential public diplomacy, presidential diplomacy on Twitter, and Cull’s seven lessons. Subsequently, the case study method provides a snapshot of the debate between Macron and Bolsonaro over the Amazon fires. This study concludes by answering the research question and indicating grist for the mill with regard to future developments.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio