A Learning Curveball (op-ed 1)

A LEARNING CURVEBALL; Government Going Straight To “The People”?

China is doing it. Google is doing it. I’m doing it.

You’re doing it right now.

And now, the Department of State is getting in the game too. So what’s the score?

On March 13, the Department of State (Team DoS) announced the launch [link to Associated Foreign Press article] of its new interactive portal, Opinion Space.

Essentially, it is an attempt to bypass hostile governments and organizations (i.e. terrorist groups & cells) by communicating directly with the people of the world’s various states, societies and cultures. In theory, it promotes a world where new media technologies engender world peace through cohesive international dialogue. Score for Team DoS!

However, like Achilles’ heel, Opinion Space has a fatal flaw:

It assumes that the people of the world’s various states, societies and cultures can and want to communicate with the people of the United States, let alone with the United States Government.

And no one likes a cocky adversary.

So two points against and one point for Team DoS. To rip off the band-aid, let’s first consider points made against Team DoS:

1. Even if Team DoS had created the most perfect interactive communication tool humanly possible utilizing new media technology [i.e.: the Internet; satellite phones and television channels; interactive and user-generated media like iReport, image below this paragraph] this portal means nothing if it does not attract individuals to communicate with the United States government. A comprehensive public information campaign needs to be made both domestically and internationally to inform and educate national and foreign publics about the existence and functions of Opinion Space, with the purpose of drawing various “opinions” to the interactive new media portal.

2. The United States government must consider what people from different states, societies and cultures see when they look at the people and values of the United States, and especially when these individuals look at the United States government and its actions and principles. I imagined, for example, that I had just emigrated from Lebanon and searched “united states government Lebanon” on Google. The below is a screen shot of the first listings of the search results, which deserve to be intellectually considered (cognizant of search optimization on search engines):

3. Recently, academics like Philip Seib and Cari Guittard have been commenting on the Obama administration’s new “strategic approach” to public diplomacy “for the 21st century,” titled Public Diplomacy: Strengthening U.S. Engagement with the World. As Seib states in U.S. Public Diplomacy’s Flimsy New Framework,

Only occasionally in the plan are there ideas that represent any change in direction from the meandering and archaic tactics that have hamstrung America’s recent relationship with much of the rest of the world.

This statement is demonstrated fully by the new framework’s statement of “Competing influences” for engagement and communication in the global space. (See below).

On the offensive side, Team DoS does make several points that have gone and – in this author’s opinion – continue to go mostly ignored to the detriment of both domestic and foreign communication by the United States government.

1. The re-vamped “roadmap for Public Diplomacy” (as the unclassified document states) is at least anattempt to reform communication and promote positive relationships with those states, societies and cultures that the United States government currently has relationships with. However, the question remains: are we really communicating with all of the various societies and cultures of the world?

2. Team DoS has truly gone on an offensive, extensively increasing its new media programming byexpanding its existing new media communication tools such as the U.S. Department of State’s blog [note the awful title] DipNote (see below), as well as creating new ones such as Opinion Space.

So there we are: Team DoS scores, but it is still being heavily scored against.

Team DoS suffers from poor sportsmanship; the United States government sees itself enthnocentrically. In other words, it sees the world through a lens that judges other groups – and their values, principles, and actions – relative to its own culture, and its own organizing principles. Essentially, the points Team DoS scores are all flawed by this poor sportsmanship, as they are all detrimented by Team Dos’s poor defense in its lack of ‘cultural literacy’ so-to-speak.

Keep scoring, Team DoS.

No team gets support without wins, and sadly “success” and “winning” have two very distinct connotations. Which takes us to the question of the day:

Can we – as an international society of human citizens – bear with our governments (i.e. China, the US, and every other state in the world…) and give them a learning curve while they perfect communicating with the people of the world’s various states, societies and communities?

Or should we not hold our breaths?