My response to "The Limits of Country Branding"

"The Limits of Country Branding"

My response to classmate Alejandro Neyra's post found by clicking here.

The Boston Globe makes note of the nation-building as a trend, reporting on how “the last few years have seen an explosion of ‘nation-branding,’ shorthand for coordinated government efforts to manage a country's image, whether to improve tourism, investment, or even foreign relations” (Risen, 2005). As Alejandro points out, Mexico, South Korea, and other middle powers are no exception. These middle powers are invested in gaining soft power, 'top of mind awareness,' cultural leverage, and a means to foster mutually beneficial relationships with its own constituents, prospective investors, potential customers, and/or other countries. Cesar Villanueva Rivas highlights how some countries, such as Mexico, are compelled to remake its image in effort to dispel the negative press that has plagued the country since it experienced a surge in "narco-violence." Other developing middle powers, such as South Korea, are trying to polish their public image to foster their influence. This is illustrated in Sook-Jung Lee's briefing on "South Korea's Soft Power Diplomacy," where he underscores how "South Korea’s national image and values for [the brand concept of a] Global Korea should be prosperous, democratic, modest, nonthreatening, and culturally syncretic, since many Third World countries see South Korea as a model with its simultaneous achievement of development and democratization” (Lee, 2009). One tactic indispensable to South Korea's branding strategy relies on translating its commercial and private sector success--Samsung's or LG's brand power for example--into soft power. The other tactic that is critical to South Korea's branding strategy is that it must follow through with the realization that branding, to put it in Alejandro's words, "is not only about having a commercial logo or a catchy slogan," but about building trust and fostering a credible rapport with the public.

This tactic goes beyond branding and moves into the realm of public diplomacy, which not only promotes the understanding of a nation's brand, but also the understanding of its culture, heritage, and people. In a sense, governments seeking to create their own brands and grow brand value also want to “develop [an] emotional, positive reaction between their part of the world and citizens...[they] want to make or re-make their image in the world to gain clout vis-à-vis their neighbors to achieve certain political ends” (Youde, 2009). In order to pique and develop the public's empathy for and/or sense of connection to a brand, a nation must look to its public diplomacy programming. As Alejandro also notes, public diplomacy is intrinsic to branding—and not secondary to it—because it provides various groups with the possibility to interact with, learn from, and connect to others. In other words, branding alone has its limits, but when combined with public diplomacy and people-to-people initiatives, the two have the power to building bridge across cultures, fostering mutual understanding within a larger regional or global community.

Just as branding is indispensable to shaping and communicating brand value, so too is public diplomacy to “helping audiences identify with” nation-states and “encouraging them to buy its products and services” (van Ham, 2002). And just as Lee emphasizes how “the soft power of a country operates in constant interaction with its hard power,” so too does public diplomacy operate in tandem with nation-branding.

What do you mean when you say this picture is propagandistic?

How does Black's extensive exploration of propaganda help us understand its distinction - if any - from public diplomacy?

In the post-Cold War era, the word ‘propaganda’ still casts a long, dark shadow in the English language. As Black highlights in his article, “Semantics and Ethics of Propaganda,” the term often brings to mind a practice that is sinister and unethical, despite its origins as a moral duty in the Roman Catholic Church. Propaganda—as it is understood in the aftermath of the Cold War—is seemingly inseparable from “manipulation and control, if not outright coercion,” and an unfair “power imbalance…between propagandists and propagandees” (121).

By exploring “how people perceive the world and how they subsequently communicate their perceptions or misperceptions,” Black’s analysis identifies more commonalities than differences between propaganda and public diplomacy (130). Black’s exploration of propaganda underscores how difficult it is to disentangle the two terms, since both practices are nuanced, varied, and dependent on individual orientations and belief systems.

In considering whether or not public diplomacy is distinct from propaganda, I conclude that it depends on the number of the aforementioned factors. The most primary factors are: (1) The intention of the information communicator(s) and (2) The belief systems of information receiver(s). How does the information communicator package information? Do they attempt to package it in a non-propagandistic manner? In turn, how do information receivers seek and process their information? Do they seek varied sources of information (as Rokeach’s open-minded individual would) and question what they learn? Or do they seek a monochromatic source of information and accept what they learn without question?

Ultimately, in U.S. democratic society, public diplomacy programs—be they U.S. or foreign—are recognizable competitors and contributors to the pluralist marketplace of ideas. They embody forms of “propagandas that challenge all of us—producers and consumers—to wisely sift and sort through them” (135). This is not likely the case in a closed society, such as Iran or North Korea. Therefore, the term ‘propaganda’ has a wide spectrum of nuanced significance, striking positive, negative, and all connotations between.

While Black concludes that propaganda is characterized by at least six specific characteristics, I believe whether or not public diplomacy fits the definition of propaganda depends entirely on how an individual, organization, or country elects to execute its public diplomacy program. If a public diplomacy program does possess all of the six characteristics, then it certainly seems heavily propagandistic. However, if a public diplomacy program such as the U.S. Embassy of Vietnam’s public diplomacy program—which elects to not emphasize the catastrophes of the Vietnam War—upholds a “time perspective characterized by an overemphasis or under-emphasis on the past, present, or future as disconnected periods rather than a demonstrated consciousness of time flow”—is it not also a bit propagandistic?

Perhaps, as Black suggests, an overemphasis or underemphasis on history may be intentional. It may also be unconscious, rooted in a certain view of the world, particular belief systems, “their personal and institutional loyalties, and their semantic behaviors” which may have propagandistic tendencies (135). Propaganda and public diplomacy cannot be understood in binary terms. Instead, they are very much nuanced, varied, and dependent on the orientations and tendencies of information senders and receivers in each unique communication exchange.