Public Diplomacy is still a Face to Face Act

There were a lot of interesting topics covered at the Public Diplomacy Council panel on Thursday, but one of the key takeaways I found was the continuing importance of human interactions and exchanges between cultures in light of advancements in communications technologies. With all of the new technologies available across the world that people use to connect, such as the internet and social media sites, public diplomacy is still reliant on human interactions, and the programs that involved exchanges were always the most successful. It seemed to me like ‘The Last Three Feet’ was always accomplished by face to face contact.

The importance of human interactions and exchanges was made across the panel of experts. Ambassador Shannon spoke of the Youth Ambassador program in Brazil that promotes the exchange of 15-17yr olds from Brazil to America. It is one of the most successful programs they have, and turns influential youth into opinion leaders and promoters of productive US/Brazilian relations. In Turkey, the most successful program they ran was the Youth Filmmaker program where Turkish youth learned the art of filmmaking from a Turkish/American SUNY Professor. The youth were then brought to the US to study filmmaking and through the exchange, promote cross-cultural understanding. Last, we saw in Iraq with Aaron Snipe the importance of getting into the field and not staying behind an ‘embassy fortress.’ He would go out without body armor and build relationships with the local people.  As Aaron states, public diplomacy is not only about the content of the message, but how you transport the message. “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” He stressed the importance of being a real person behind the facebook and Twitter posts.” No one wants to speak to an administrator,” he said, so they made sure use their names and bios while using social media to create the bond that face to face contact creates.

Advancements in international communications are creating connections between people and creating avenues for sharing information, but it could be the movement of people in international travel, study abroad, migrant labor, and international business that has more of an effect on international relations than these technologies do.