The past, the present, and the future of public diplomacy research

Public diplomacy and strategic communication are closely connected. Both fields focus on helping organizations and/or institutions to achieve their goals and missions through communication, but in different contexts. The goals of public diplomacy may differ: For governments, public diplomacy can help achieve foreign policy goals. For NGOs, public diplomacy can be linked to development goals. And for international corporations, it may be an indispensable element of global expansion. Although various actors may have different goals in engaging in public diplomacy, they use strategic communication to achieve them. This chapter explains the development of the public diplomacy research field, and the changing roles of different public diplomacy actors. We outline major streams of public diplomacy research. In conclusion, we discuss the current research trends and offer suggestions for future studies

Place branding in the Øresund region : From a transnational region to a bi-national city-region

The Øresund Region that connects Copenhagen metropolitan area in Denmark and Southern Sweden is an interesting example of a European cross-border collaboration. In this article, the contemporary development of the region and the place branding process is described. The aim is to increase understanding of how a complex and bi-national place brand is developed in a process of continuous change due to societal and political contexts. The article is inspired by a theoretical framework for place branding based on ideas from corporate branding (Kavaratzis, 2004) and organizational identity (Kavaratzis & Hatch, 2013), and emphasizes the role of media. The place branding process is defined in three contemporary phases: the public opinion phase, the invoking of a transnational brand phase, and the Europe of City-Regions phase. The analysis leads to two main conclusions: (1) the development of the current place brand at hand mirrors a possible change in geo-spatial focus in: from a transnational approach toward a bi-national city-based approach and (2) the case study suggests that a strategic communication logic, focusing residents rather than the wills of elites, is more relevant to such cases than a marketing logic

Opportunities for Strategic Public Relations : Evaluation of International Research and Innovation Project Dissemination

European industry, academia, and potential end users for future solutions are widely involved in applying for European Union (EU) funding of research and innovation and implementation of the projects. Funding instrument requirements emphasize the influence of skills and knowhow of these project consortia professionals. This chapter proposes a co-creative model for communication and dissemination, or project PR, based on the experiences of both planning and coordinating dissemination activities of three EU funded projects. Multidisciplinary international project PR offers strategic opportunities for PR professionals. The model employs the co-creation methods based on the pedagogical model called Learning by Developing (Laurea, 2011). In addition to the pedagogical model, the proposed conceptualization of co-creation for public relations and dissemination utilizes a media evaluation framework, which is adapted from Vos & Schoemaker’s model (2004), combining elements of both balanced scorecard and quality management. The findings demonstrate that commitment and active participation of end user groups in the early stage of the project are needed for successful dissemination, which should be supported by each partner’s PR actions and networks. The dissemination process should start when the project begins, be ongoing, even extending to beyond the project. Dissemination is an expanding process, and it requires facilitation that supports PR and the engagement of key stakeholders. The European Commission can gain from modernized PR and dissemination activities, and from as many end users as possible adopting new innovations, which generate more business possibilities for the industry, and further research projects for the academia

Flux and the public sphere

This item is closed access because the published version cannot be made available.John Urry’s call for a paradigm shift in sociology away from a consideration of social interaction at a standstill or stasis and towards a consideration of flux and the infrastructures of movement that enable social interaction to take place has been adopted extensively, if unevenly, in sociology. As Allen-Robertson and Beer point out, work on mobility either focuses on the physical mobility of things and people or on information. Thus, it largely ignores Urry’s initial call for the study of the movement of ideas (and, one could add, images) as well as humans and objects. Here I take up Urry’s original call for the study of mobile ideas and images and argue that such a move is helpful in analysing change in the public sphere