India should balance capacity and capability

In his article on “India’s Soft Power: Prospects and Limitations,” Christian Wagner examines India’s soft power in several contexts—the U.S.-dominated military context; our contemporary globalized context with empowered nation-states and non-state actors; and the ever important international economic context. By providing several categories for understanding “soft power capacities”—culture, political values, and foreign policy—Wagner highlights India’s immediate advantages in its public diplomacy practices. He does so by underscoring its strong democratic traditions in a post-colonial society, Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy of non-violent engagement and peaceful conflict resolution, its promotion of India as a global technology hub and investment destination, its storied engagement in multilateral diplomacy, and its increasingly popular Bollywood film industry.

He concludes that while positive perceptions of India’s social and political values assist in fostering its soft power, such perceptions are only a stamp of approval and not an acknowledgement of influence. In other words, although India has incredible brand power and potential, it currently lacks the star-appeal of other soft-power giants for a few reasons: (1) India’s values and practice of democracy are not perceived as models for the rest of the world; (2) India favors attracting foreign direct investment to its own land and is very slow in fostering its own political, social, and/or economic investment in other countries that could benefit from its leadership; and (3) Indian society is just beginning to comprehend its diversity and its identity.

While it is evident India boasts a number of strengths in effectively leveraging soft power to project its desired image of a tech-savvy and sexy investment destination, the regional hegemon is missing critical foreign policy considerations and long-term strategies in its public diplomacy vision and practice. These missing long-range considerations will give rise to foreign policy challenges that India will likely face down the road. One limitation to India’s soft power capacity is its emphasis on capacity over hard power capabilities. Moreover, its use and aims of soft power seem to stray from its menu of hard power.

Second, India is the world’s largest democracy—heir to the storied legacy of Gandhi—and yet it has been shockingly slow in seeking to promote its democratic ideals abroad and exert influence. Despite its strategic location bordering Burma (Myanmar), India failed to step forward to strongly support Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratic minority and “missed the Burma bus”—allowing regional competitor China to seize influence instead. All this, despite India’s experience as a strong multilateral player.

Wagner highlights how India specifically uses its soft power—by way of its industry, economy, political and social values—to build up its image rather than to exert its influence on foreign policy. However, these factors are capacity-enablers, not capability promoters. As Wagner notes, a nation’s soft power capability allows it to effectively channel its capacities or resources into instruments or initiatives of foreign policy. As I previously emphasized, India could stand to improve a number of its soft power outlets. However, there is one soft power medium India’s public and private organizations could more easily restructure for everyone’s benefit—Bollywood. Wagner is ambiguous when he describes “Bollywood as a quasi-global dream fabric.” It is not clear what he means by this, but I imagine he is trying to describe Bollywood as a medium that delivers the Indian Dream—the endless opportunities for freedom, innovation, romance, and prosperity found in India. As Wagner notes, Bollywood films compared to “Hollywood…do not reflect or promote a universal model for political or cultural development and should therefore be seen as mere entertainment.” While Bollywood films depict the energy and drama of different classes of Indian society and daily life in a glamorized fashion, its soft power influence seemingly pales in comparison to South Korea’s popular K-Dramas.

South Korean dramas have had an extraordinary influence in shaping the country’s national image around the world—even in North Korea, where South Korean materials are verboten but immensely popular. One North Korean defector told the New York Times how influential the K-Dramas were in shaping her perception of the world outside Pyongyang. Popular Korean dramas often feature the newest technologies on their sets—brand new kitchens, electronic accessories in bathrooms—and the characters in most shows often showcase the most luxurious accessories. Although they are just TV dramas, these South Korean productions have ignited a wave of South Korean popularity throughout Asia and Latin America. And while a TV show may just be a fragment of reality, its soft power capital has the potential to change lives, as evidenced by Ahn Mi Ock’s defector story. If India can mimic and invest in a balance between capacity and capability, it will stand to benefit in the long-term.

Social Media & Communication Flows of Public Diplomacy

Despite assumptions regarding social media as a space meant for the proliferation of pointless quips and equally pointless content, the mere fact that civil society now has the ability to interact on these platforms without the control or approval of the state provides an entirely subversive aspect to state-controlled public diplomacy, an area of both national and international importance.

As author Peter Van Ham notes in Social Power in International Politics, the public diplomacy environment formerly mediated much at the hands of state actors is now being altered into a more multi-directional scene where the state, NGOs, international orgs, individuals and other actors can produce and consume information directly, thereby weakening state control. Often this process plays out in social media technologies where actors can take messages into their own hands.

However, the state should not be discounted in the social media realm. In fact, the state or other actors can take on a mediator role in all three typologies of public diplomacy, as outlined by Cowan and Arsenault in Moving from Monologue to Dialogue to Collaboration: Three Layers of Public Diplomacy. This is because the three typologies are based upon communication strategies that can be easily employed by any entity engaging with a foreign public. I’ll describe how each typology can engage publics with social media: 

Monological 

Although monological or one-way communication where one entity transmits a message to an audience may seem to contradict the very nature of social media it actually can be an effective way of engaging with foreign publics. Making the choice to participate in social media platforms does not automatically open up the way for dialogical or collaborative forms of public diplomacy. An actor can create an account on a social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Pinterest and solely utilize that platform to amass a following and promote information carefully crafted in tune with their particular interest.

Monological communication on social media is advantageous because actors can target audiences according to these particular interests and goals, gain heightened visibility fast and reach a wide swath of active users. Although there can be commentary or feedback given to the actor by its community, the actor has control over the choice to reciprocate or not.

The downside to monological communication is that the information promoted isn’t able to be contained within the confines of the group. Social media is meant to be shared and users can/will disseminate messages further to estranged groups that may not have the desired reaction. A way the actor can assuage a hostile reaction to their public diplomacy effort is to ensure prior to sending out the initial communication many various viewpoints and perspectives are considered. An actor can also provide carefully crafted responses back to users, but this would break the monologic aspect of the public diplomacy effort. 

Dialogical 

Dialogical public diplomacy works well with social media because of the necessity to create a conversation between the actor and audience. Social media features like commenting, re-tweeting, ‘liking’, instant messaging and texting can help actors gauge public opinion surrounding their perspective as well as the importance foreign publics weigh on certain topics. This could be a good method for an actor to get ideas flowing for a project or a way to foster intercultural exchange. Again, this is advantageous to actors because dialogical communications can be targeted to interested groups where the actor can initiate and steer the dialogue in certain directions.

The negative aspect of dialogical public diplomacy is that, again, the communications can be driven away from the control of the actor and may veer off in a separate direction than originally intended. There are also competing dialogical conversations that are started within many other contexts that may tangentially or directly influence or challenge the goals and perspectives of an actor.


Collaborative 

Certain types of social media outlets are uniquely appropriate for collaborative public diplomacy. Because the goal in this effort is to produce a product from the contributions of many, open-source projects like the Linux operating system or the Drupal content management system are particularly relevant. In these, any users who are interested are encouraged to assist in the creation and maintenance of the product. The public diplomacy goal that results from collaboration is a sense of common ground and shared loyalty/experience to a goal by all members despite observed differences.

Easy ways to utilize collaborative public diplomacy is in working with wikis, file-sharing systems like Google Docs and mass-multiplayer role-playing games like Second Life or World of Warcraft. Each of these allow for users to personally take on responsibilities and contribute to the building or maintenance of a greater initiative. The potential downside to collaborative public diplomacy is that users must be involved from the ground floor or else they will not establish the necessary trust and social capital needed to foster the bond. Ensuring the collaborative project forces cross-cultural groups to view issues in a different light is particularly challenging, but if done correctly and assist in such areas as conflict resolution.

I think it is imperative to understand that social media is not a magic bullet for public diplomacy. Social media is the next innovation following other revolutionary technologies such as radio, television and the Internet. Although it has brought all actors in society closer together at an unprecedented rate, it is best to realize these capabilities are only as effective as the actors that use them. As Van Ham notes, technological progression must be met with human agency and the correct political economy to flourish.