Two thoughts while watching this video from Jess3;

… how do government numbers compare?

… PD needs to become smarter, to get beyond ‘audience’ numbers to thinking about measuring interaction, understanding networks and the connections between participants.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

The focus on collaboration in the new US National Security Strategy emphasises the need to foster the skills to convene, connect and mobilize networks. This will require a smart network of diplomats not just smart individuals.

While the Obama administration is “clear-eyed about the challenge of mobilizing collective action” those putting strategy into action will have to build smarter networks if diplomats are to collaborate effectively within complex networks of influence. Two aspects of these smart networks will be particularly important.

Read more on MountainRunner

Overview of Public Diplomacy network on Twitter

This interactive version of the map allows the network to be viewed in more detail. Click on different areas of the map to navigate around the network, or see detailed images as a slide show.

CPD Perspectives: Mapping the Great Beyond

Apr 30, 2010

In the most recent issue of CPD Perspectives, Mapping the Great Beyond: Identifying Meaningful Networks in Public Diplomacy, Dr. Ali Fisher highlights the importance of mapping social networks for the field of public diplomacy.

In part one of Mapping the Great Beyond, Fisher discusses the value social media tools bring to PD practitioners and the new tools available to identify nodes of influence and alternative ways to engage publics. Providing clear examples of the utility of these new resources for PD, the second part of his paper illustrates the value of resource mapping and information coordination at strategic level. Fisher’s concluding section discusses the use of network mapping to evaluate public diplomacy and contends that mapping networks can create new information for public diplomacy practitioners and scholars to better implement and evaluate public diplomacy strategies.

CPD Perspectives is a periodic publication from the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and highlights scholarship intended to stimulate critical thinking about the study and practice of public diplomacy.

I had the pleasure of writing this with Gerard Lemos for the USC CPD Blog:

We have been on the cusp of the network phase in Public Diplomacy for some time now, but as yet we have not fully crossed the threshold and adopted the operating model of a network based approach.

Our operating model will have to be turned upside down – the people outside the organisation would be the agents of change, not the beneficiaries of change. We would no longer have audiences or customers, but collaborators and network members instead. We would not be the suppliers of knowledge and content, but the receivers and distributors. Our staff would become network facilitators and mapmakers, not teachers and managers.

Read the full post: http://bit.ly/ca9h3n

Indra Adnan’s piece in the Huffington Post outlines the future of the Downing Street Project;

The Downing Street Project is going to shift its gaze from equal representation for women, to the much broader question of the gender dynamics of the public sphere and its effect on society… [It is hoped this will develop] a growing understanding of what the real opportunities of balanced leadership are in public life and what the benefits would be for everyone.

One comment in her article is particularly telling not just for contemporary politics, but equally contemporary Public Diplomacy:

At the moment of selection, it is those women who can demonstrate most of these macho qualities that are chosen for office. Women whose strengths might be in listening and integrating rather than performing, who have an ability to see the bigger picture over the immediate crisis, who use emotional and social intelligence as a primary tool of connecting with the people they serve – these women will be undervalued in such a political culture.

Coming just after, in Philip Seib‘s words, the flimsy new framework for Strengthening U.S. Engagement with the World, the ideas Indra highlights should have a high degree of resonance. The Strategic Framework for US PD lacked any sense of a networked approach, focusing on a hierarchical framing narratives and correcting information to ‘markets’. That might work with some of the people some of the time, but at others genuine engagement will require a different mindset. A mindset focused as Indra put it – on listening and integrating rather than performing – of understanding the importance of developing and using connections rather than a strategy based on broadcast (and micro-broadcast) of information. Public Diplomacy cannot be carried out merely on the assumption that ‘the more you know us the more you will like us’ – so lets make sure you have all the ‘correct’ information and everything will be fine.

Working with people, working alongside them and working for them is going to have a greater impact with many communities than setting up the loud speaker and setting it to transmit, however well refined the message.

While the emphasis on evaluation was a positive – that evaluation must be meaningful – not another round of half-hearted self justification. It will need to get to grips with using network analysis and data mapping, to provide those on the ground with useful and easily interpreted information alongside providing insight into how to gain benefit from engaging with different communities or networks.

This presentation, part of the the International Seminar On Network Theory, discusses approaches to measuring benefit from a network alongside measuring cost of exclusion from a network. (Thanks Intermap for the link) The argument demonstrates that those excluded from a network (either physically or because their behaviour fails to engage network members) suffer costs while members reap rewards. With this, and numerous other insights into the advantages a networked approach can bring, it makes little sense to focus almost exclusively on information, message and framing – effectively opting to exclude oneself from many networks – and incurring the resultant costs.

This starts with being able to give individuals an overview of the shape of a network, and the key connections;

But it also includes being able to map data in other ways, for example the changing attitudes toward the US.

Pew Global Attitdes – Changing Favourability to the US 2002 – 2009

(Click link to go to time-series version)

The Pew Global Attitudes Project bears no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations of the data presented here.

Or, returning us to the theme of gender and balanced leadership, the data from the WEF Gender Gap report

Map of WEF Gender Gap Data

(Click link to go to time-series version)

Ultimately Public Diplomacy is about influencing the behaviour of others, so the planning and conduct of PD should be open to those ideas most likely to influence that community – rather than focus on what the PD organisation, or their constituency, would like to be saying.

Six or seven years ago I wrote an article analysing some of different types of satirical and bad-taste images which circulated on the web following 9/11: Gramsci and the New Intellectuals

The intention was not to pass judgement on the images, but to discuss the entry of a new type of influencer – ‘the new intellectuals’  using Gramscian theory – as they took early steps in framing interpretations of and responses to significant international events. Taking advantage of low cost communication, these ‘new intellectuals’ engaged with an international audience, in a way that Public Diplomacy organisations couldn’t then, and many would still struggle now.

Circulating false information, these ‘intellectuals’ influenced large numbers of individuals to search for and discuss ideas – one favourite being that Nostrodamus predicted 9/11. While I have my reservations about the use of the phrase  ’many to many’ and what it really means in PD2.0, (it brushes over the degree of complexity and understanding of networks required to achieve serious results) these interactions fit within the ideas of influence through ‘many to many’.

Ok some of the links are now broken, and it was before the growth in social  networking, or  Twitter, and five years before PD2.0 was widely discussed but I wondered – are some of the ideas still useful?

The run-in to the Christmas break has seen the production of numerous pieces about Gov 2.0 and PD 2.0. As comments on them have got a little long I’ve attached them here rather than have an overly long blog post.

Many of these have been hot on the potential of ‘new’ tools but less clear on what they think the  ’network’ in social networks might mean and how this would influence the development of strategy. If PD 2.0 is to make serious progress attention will have to be given to understanding the networks with which PD engages, not just the tools through which that engagement takes place.

What does this video have to do with it? It is based on understanding what is likely to influence behaviour, rather than just the tools.

Ultimately, understanding different types of networks with which PD 2.0 will engage is an important part of developing strategy and understanding what does ‘many to many’ mean?

A quick map to demonstrate the variety of indivdiuals Tweeting through #16Azar to 11:08 GMT. Larger spheres are the hours, smaller ones the contributers. Interestingly a large number of individuals have only been active for one or two hours, with relatively few near the middle of the map active over a longer period of time.

Quick and rough look at Tweets using #16Azar as protests continue in Tehran.

Growing volume over the last week:

Today (to 11am GMT)

The rising volume of tweets during the day – 296 to 8174

Rising active users during the day – 85 to 261 per hour (active users counted as those who tweet in that hour).

Of those active in the 7th December data, there is a long tail of people contributing a few tweets. Highest user has contributed 607 tweets by 11am GMT.

at least 60% Tweets are using RT