The Public Diplomacy Collaborative

"The firm’s failure underscores the broader pressures roiling the public relations industry in a whipsaw online world, where fake news, Twitterbots, gaming Google searches and revising Wikipedia pages are valuable tools for helping to shape narratives and recast reputations.

"Bell Pottinger’s collapse also highlights the eagerness of politicians, celebrities, companies and governments around the world to hire communications firms that will sometimes go to extreme lengths to influence opinion and media coverage, or to ignite activism through social networks."

Bell Pottinger, British P.R. Firm for Questionable Clients, Collapses The firm’s financial failure was hastened by a race-baiting campaign it undertook in South Africa that spiraled into a disaster.

From the New York Times:

"In China, where the government often highlights social tensions in the United States as a way of undermining democratic ideals, state-run news outlets prominently featured the violence in Charlottesville.
..
“'The world’s superpower is increasingly mired in chaos,' said an opinion piece in Global Times, a state-run publication that specializes in scathing critiques of the West. 'The source of global instability may not be North Korea’s nuclear ambitions nor Europe’s refugee crisis, but the chaos in the U.S.'

"The article added: 'The power struggle in the 21st century is not entirely about technology, the military or economy. Social stability carries more weight.'”

Angela Merkel Condemns Charlottesville Violence as ‘Racist’ and ‘Evil’ Several world leaders spoke out against the deadly episode, while others tried to exploit it to advance their own agendas.

Prof. Joe Nye on "Information Warfare vs. Soft Power"

"Information warfare can be used offensively to disempower rivals, and this could be considered 'negative soft power.' By attacking the values of others, one can reduce their attractiveness and thus their relative soft power.

"...In the nineteenth century, the outcome of contests for mastery of Europe depended primarily on whose army won; today, it also depends on whose story wins."

Information Warfare Versus Soft Power Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election, and its suspected hacking of French President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign servers, should surprise no one, given President Vladimir Putin’s (mis)understanding of soft power. Information warfare, while somewhat disruptive, has eroded, not boo...

Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action - Shorenstein Center Recent shifts in the media ecosystem raise new concerns about the vulnerability of democratic societies to fake news and the public’s limited ability to contain it.

"Diplomacy is the refined face of what would otherwise be vicious conflict. It's a pretty crucial aspect of human life."

From ‘Camp David’ to ‘Oslo,’ Forging Drama from Diplomacy We recently discussed stagecraft and statecraft with the authors of past, current and coming plays.

Prof. Matt Baum on French elections, 2017 (Boston Herald):

"And though it’s unclear how the rest of the member countries would react to a Le Pen win and a French exit from the EU, Harvard University public policy professor Matthew Baum said having a right-wing populist in power would make dramatic changes to the EU 'more likely.'

“'There’s nothing immutable about these institutions of this system,' he said. 'It’s something that rose up after World War II, and it’s something that could recede.

"A Le Pen victory in France, he said, would be a victory for nationalists everywhere and would put additional pressure on Germany to hold the union together.

“'Her winning is a leg up for the populist right-wing nationalism in a number of other countries. It can reverberate. If it does reverberate, it becomes harder for Germany to hold the line,' Baum said, 'but I wouldn’t expect an immediate cascade.'”

France’s Le Pen looks to ride outsider wave Marine Le Pen, the far-right French presidential candidate whose recent surge in the polls has analysts comparing the charismatic politician to President Trump, could ride the global populist wave that landed the New York billionaire in the White House to an upset victory.

"Quite apart from the adorable Canadian naiveté involved in passive-aggressively permitting the Kremlin to headline-hack itself out of a national spotlight that should have been shining last week on Putin’s belligerence in Ukraine and the Baltics, there are a couple of things that distinguish this particular Kremlin caper from the run-of-the-mill jobs.

"The first is that it’s a textbook case of Russian disinformation by conspiracy theory. The second is that this time around, the Russians were caught red-handed.

"Unfortunately, we’ve all spent a great deal of effort being clever in our elucidations upon how to properly distinguish between a Ukrainian patriot and a N**i collaborator in the terror time of the 1940s, and about where one might situate the boundaries of Soviet-occupied Eastern Galicia on contemporary maps of the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands, and other such boring ephemera.

"This is what Moscow wanted, and it also wanted the not-especially-bright among us to be wondering out loud and often about whether it might be true that Freeland is a Russophobic N**i sympathizer who can’t be trusted with the Foreign Affairs portfolio."

How Russia's attack on Freeland got traction in Canada - Macleans.ca Terry Glavin traces Moscow's "N**i-grandfather" calumny through a maze of cranks, propagandists and Putin fanciers—to Canada's mainstream media

"...not acceptable and needs to end."

German minister: Russia waging fake news 'propaganda war' BERLIN (AP) — Germany's finance minister says Russia is conducting a "propaganda war" through fake news to try to garner influence abroad, and it has to stop. Wolfga

Sen. Lindsey Graham on the possible 30% budget cut at the US State Dept. [nb: "decimation" refers to a 10% cut]

"It’s dead on arrival.... It’s not gonna happen. It would be a disaster. If you take soft power off the table then you’re never going to win the war. What’s most disturbing about the cut in the State Department’s budget is it shows a lack of understanding of what it takes to win the war.”

The Daily 202: Trump’s speech to Congress highlights influence of Ivanka, Bannon POTUS spurns new national security adviser by using ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ | Sponsored by UnitedHealth Group

Trump’s Chief Strategist Says News Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’ Stephen K. Bannon, one of President Trump's top advisers, gave a scathing assessment of the news media, calling it “the opposition party.”

Narratives.

Biden accuses Trump of playing 'into the Russian narrative' The vice president calls the claims of compromising information on Trump 'unsubstantiated,' but he blasts the president-elect for disparaging the intelligence community.

Prof. Joe Nye, on Bloomberg TV, re Rex Tillerson

Can’t Imagine Tillerson Being in Putin’s Pocket: Nye Joseph Nye, former dean of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, discusses President-Elect Donald Trump’s choice of Rex Tillerson to run the State Department and the Exxon Mobil chief’s relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He speaks with Scarlet Fu and Joe Weisenthal on “What’d You Miss?”…