Center for Strategic Communication

My previous post on the US Adivsory Commission’s “PD-MAP” assessment too was admittedly long, drawing in a number of tangental thoughts and complaints regarding the study of public diplomacy. I guess I’ve got a lot of pent up ideas I wanted to get out. But amidst the competing arguments, there is one that I want to clarify. I do not suggest in my skepticism of the PD-MAP assessment tool that A) public diplomacy measurement of effectiveness is impossible and B) we can’t have public diplomacy-centric scholarship to support such analysis.

The latter clarification is largely academic – but important to make. Masters programs in public diplomacy

Will there by a theory of public diplomacy? Right now, we have a variety of theories and related perspectives that are appropriate and applicable to public diplomacy scholarship. From micro-level theories of communication, such as agenda setting, priming, framing, and a slew of persuasion theories…. to critical perspectives from social theory that force us to consider how public diplomacy practices reinforce or convey ideological messags