Everyone has seen the photo of the little Vietnamese girl running away from the napalm, the man in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square and the death of Neda during the Iranian protests.  UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave an inspiring talk at TED and explained why these images came to symbolize and publicize a movement for the rest of the world to see.  These moving photos evoke a strong emotional response and are testaments to the power of the image to inspire action and civic participation.

As I discussed in an earlier post, technology and social media are helping to give a voice to people whose stories might otherwise not be heard.  In his talk, Brown says:

But I think what’s new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world.  We now have the capacity to find common ground with people we will never meet but who we will meet through the internet and through all the modern means of communication, that we now have the capacity to organize and take collective action together to deal with the problem or an injustice that we want to deal with, and I believe that this makes this a unique age in human history, and it is the start of what I would call the creation of a truly global society.

Brookings Fellow Cynthia Schneider has a great TED talk about how popular television shows like Afghan Idol and Poet of the Millions, which is broadcast throughout the Arab world, are changing tribal societies.  These merit-based competitions, with equal access to everyone and the winner selected via SMS voting, are reaching incredibly deep into society. People of all ages go to great lengths to watch the shows in private and public places, and become so engaged that they campaign for their favorite candidate.

These competitions have also opened up the door for women in their society.  Aydah Al Jahnani faced resistance from her tribe and family who urged her not to compete in Poet of the Millions.  But once she started to win they supported her again because, “It turns out that competition and winning is a universal human value.”  Her poetry is about women, and the fact that she is in competition with men sets an important example for young women.

These shows are also helping to build local indigenous culture and community.

Now you’d think that American Idol would introduce a measure of Americanization. But actually, just the opposite is happening.  By using this engaging popular format for traditional, local culture, it actually, in the Gulf, is precipitating a revival of interest in Nabati poetry, also in traditional dress and dance and music.  And for Afghanistan where the Taliban banned music for many years, it is reintroducing their traditional music.  They don’t sing pop songs, they sing Afghan music.  And they also have learned how to lose gracefully, without avenging the winner.  No small thing.

Mascott edits kstreetcafe.com, a blog about how technology and the Internet are changing the public affairs industry, and is managing director of the Adfero Group, a public relations firm. He highlights the Democracy Video Challenge – which we mentioned in a previous blog post – as a prime example of State’s use of social media:

The Democracy Video Challenge exemplifies a number of core American values. Its open-ended nature is the embodiment of freedom of speech.

Submissions were not censored, edited or weeded out. Provided they did not incite violence or contain profanity, videos were accepted as valid submissions. In addition, the viral nature of the contest made it easy for people to share videos with friends and engage in a real discussion about what democracy does and should mean. Hundreds of thousands of people have watched videos created by their peers.

The Democracy Video Challenge also involved the most fundamental of democratic actions: voting. After the initial submission timeframe, which lasted from September 2008 to January 2009, an independent jury narrowed the applicants to a field of finalists and then opened it up to the public for a monthlong voting period to select the ultimate winner of the contest (think “American Idol” for politics). Voting closed just a few months ago, resulting in the selection of six winners from different regions of the world.

Mascott also delves into the issue of the Smith-Mundt Act and how the increasing use of technology and social media is making the law – which prohibits the dissemination of information intended for foreigners to a domestic audience (intended to prevent the U.S. government from propagandizing to U.S. citizens) – somewhat dated.

Don’t be surprised if you didn’t read about the winners in the news. Most Americans have never heard of the Democracy Video Challenge — or of other cutting-edge initiatives by the State Department. That’s because of an obscure piece of legislation, the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which prohibits the U.S. government from distributing information intended for foreign audiences through domestic channels. For decades, the State Department has produced publications designed for consumption overseas, specifically publications that most Americans have never seen.

The Smith-Mundt Act may not be as relevant as it once was. That’s because the State Department’s approach to public diplomacy is changing. Rather than simply distributing one-directional magazines and e-journals, the agency is using modern technology and social media tools to engage in a back-and-forth dialogue with the public. This new online approach cannot be contained by geographical boundaries.

Some of the issues discussed included:

– Who do you invite? Is the conference aimed at the younger generation? What do we want people to walk away with? Should we bring other interested parties that are not U.S.-centric into this conversation?

– Identify CEOs of companies that are already doing a form of diplomacy who just don’t realize it. (Keith Reinhard’s Business for Diplomatic Action would be a logical group to collaborate with.)

– Invite some of the established community that has been working on public diplomacy initiatives, such as Harriet Fulbright, wife of the late Sen. J. William Fulbright.

– Seek out entrepreneurs. If you’re able to back it up with $, that would help generate interest too. (The Ansari X Prize held a contest with a $10 million prize to build a private spaceship, which led to the investment of $100 million.)

– Bring in people in the community of interest ahead of time to help generate new ideas before the conference even starts.

– Celebrities will be part of the conference to help attract interest and press. That may include a benefit concert.

– We should take advantage of non-commercial films by students and people living in other countries. Invite representatives from Sundance and other student film festivals.

– Create an iDiplomacy game before the conference to use it as a mechanism to get ideas and feedback. We can also use films – high budget and guerrilla, comics, exchange programs, video contests, festivals, books, music and online social networks to further interest. The content can’t just be “peas and carrots” – it has to be something people want to watch – perhaps a film or game highlighting bad foreign faux pas.

– Who should pay for the conference? The private sector should be involved, but what about money from foreign companies/countries?

– Consider allowing companies to sponsor just one aspect of the conference. For example, an organization with particular interest in the Middle East or children could sponsor a segment of the conference that addresses those issues specifically.

– The conference should have a focus and consensus around a positive objective. (For example, the most competitive university in Guatemala has the goal of bringing free market economics to the country.)

– One of the goals should be developing the elements of a national strategy for public diplomacy that incorporates the private sector.

– Discussing intellectual property and other economic issues can draw in public sector participation.

– Deconfliction – we need to make sure we’re not duplicating things that have already been done.

– Have an interagency panel at the conference to look at public diplomacy initiatives and funding, a private sector panel and a congressional panel to address some of the questions of the first two panels.

– Empowering women should be a big part of the agenda. Queen Noor of Jordan has done a variety of things to empower women and NGOs have also done work in places where the government is not.

– After the conference who will own the ideas? What kind of action can people take a week after the conference to stay involved? We need to avoid, “We’re the government, you’re the private sector – we need your help,” statements without explaining where to go and who to call. Consider “adopt a project” where an organization can take responsibility for an initiative.

– Drive traffic to iDiplomacy.org and use it as a base to build on the dialogue before and after the conference.

Group 1 presented an extensive list of suggestions:
1.) A series of video shorts called “My America is” or have a touring film festival about “my America is”. This can include particular ethnic groups and immigrants talking about their experiences.
2.) Encourage local community voting to select local development projects, whether it’s a public art center or sports center. This will give local development projects more of a feeling of local buy-in, rather than Americans coming in to push something on the local community.
3.) Foster a crowd sourced wiki of Muslim media. Relatedly, have a university-based media hub to gather media being produced by various entities and help that media become more well-known.
4.) Engage U.S. publishers. For some of these public diplomacy projects, alongside individual private-sector efforts, there needs to be some type of large-scale coordination.
5.) National Endowment for the Arts freedom fund to foster the publication, translation, and multi-platforming of media (like making audio books out of print books).
6.) Add a sentence to US passports: “Remember that when you are overseas you are an ambassador of America.”
7.) Facilitate more fruitful communication by celebrities with foreign audiences, to prevent unintended consequences.
8.) Provide free luggage carts at U.S. airports.
9.) A sister cities project for public libraries.
10.) A travel TV show that would focus on preparing Americans to be more culturally and politically astute when they are abroad.
11.) Improve the no fly list process. It’s having a negative impact on our ability as Americans to interact with foreigners.
12.) Build synergies through collaboration. If individuals are more aware of what others are doing in a particular region, there could be more idea-sharing.
13.) A giveaway or reduce the cost of pre-loaded eBooks (a kindle-type thing)
14.) Giveaway of pocket video cameras to kids in key areas to provide them a chance to show what the world looks like to them.
15.) Pen pals – e-mail has changed the importance of postal letters, but encourage some kind of one-to-one relationship with kids across cultures.

Group 2 presented one well-fleshed out idea:
Create a worldwide music contest that uses new media, bringing the drama of an American Idol or Project Runway to the rest of the world and bring in the ideas of voting, a community, and self-expression to a community of people not as well-connected to these ideas as we would like them to be.
– They assume the ubiquity of cell phones, so they propose allowing input from individuals via cell phone – it could be composing music, commenting or voting.
– The act of participating would lead to the implied message that participation, choice and voting is an expression of freedom.
– By using mobile phones people can be as public or private as they want in their participation.
–There could be national or regional as well as worldwide winners.
– Have a theme on which the participants could base their entries – such as “hope” or “peace”
– Take a song that already exists and have participants interpret the song the way they want to interpret it.
– Can create an online archive about the songs and winners.
– Let the winners come to the United States for a music internship.
– Get iTunes to highlight a song – which can allow musicians in developing countries to have access to the U.S. market. People could vote by downloading the song, thus paying the artist.
– Tap the potential of private sponsorship. Since sending texts costs money, companies could sponsor contest entries by allowing people 100 or 200 chances to participate in voting.

Group 3 had a wide range of suggestions:
– Get a clear understanding across the U.S. government of what is already happening in iDiplomacy and what our capabilities are.
– Leverage existing technologies that make transliteration possible in real time. That helps to get past the final three-foot language communication barrier when two people don’t speak the same language.
– Have a Muslim women’s series promoting moderate voices. This can happen in societies where their voices are among the mainstream as well as more radicalized environments.
– Build on existing brands, such as G.I. Joe or Transformers to get fathers to expose their sons to the action figures, etc., that they thought were cool growing up.
– Have a Peace Corps 2, where producers help local populations understand what resources are available to them.
– Aggregate government features, capabilities, content and assets, so they can be harnessed, channeled and made more available to local communities.
– Buy up media to protect it from censorship. (Saudis are buying moderate content for the purpose of keeping it from the public because they thought it was too racy.)
– Empower women in societies where their voices are not often heard to socialize and collaborate with each other online.
– Use the microloan approach to encourage women and business in emerging economies.
– Create a national ID program, where the ID will let you get government benefits.

Group 4 focused on motivating people to engage in person-to-person exchanges – and the idea of an “iDiplomat”: ordinary U.S. citizens and those in commercial enterprise participating in public diplomacy.

– They concluded there were three groups of people with different levels of potential for participating in public diplomacy. The first group included people already doing things in public diplomacy.
– The second group included those willing to support public diplomacy, who would be best helped by training and tools to participate (such as Web sites, video kiosks and other facilities).
– The third “unmotivated” group consists of people who don’t think they are capable of participating, don’t understand the needs or don’t care. They would focus on forming connections for these people using social networking or a “Rock the Vote” model.
– Involving youth is key – they are sophisticated in social networking and gaming as early as 5 and 6 years of age, and there’s an opportunity for them to be active listeners.
– One idea was to have an X-prize to revolutionize person-to-person exchanges.
– Have a public-private partnership. Government can fund it and provide gravitas.
– Use the Overseas Private Investment Corporation – allow companies to receive funding in at-risk areas where stability is paramount.
– Involve people with a profit motive. There’s a big shift in the non-profit world toward the “fourth sector” – the idea that you can do something that’s for-profit and improves the world. (An example is the Disney volunteerism project, where if you volunteer in your local community and tell Disney about it ahead of time they send you a free day pass. Disney in turn benefits because participants in the program will buy souvenirs, etc.)

The second, Ben &  Izzy, was sponsored by Layalina and produced by Rubicon, a Jordanian company. It aired last year during Ramadan throughout the Middle East and North Africa, with funding from the Hewlett Foundation. The cartoon show features two boys, one from Jordan and one from the Middle East, who travel back in time where they meet historical figures and learn about their respective cultures.

Fowler, who spoke at iDiplomacy Monday, describes the traditionally conceived portrayal of social networks as the “Robinson Crusoe” model of people living alone, as islands and without much effect on others. It was a shampoo commercial from the 1970s that led to his epiphany of how social networks should be considered. That particular commercial demonstrated how the popularity of a shampoo could spread because one woman told two friends, who each told two friends, and so on and so forth. 

Many things – including obesity, emotions and the decision to vote – are contagious, but the way they spread can differ. For example, Fowler and his Connected co-author, Nicholas A. Christakis, studied the popularity of movies among a group of interconnected college students on Facebook. They found that the movies Love Actually and Pulp Fiction – both among top 10 favorites – were “spreaders,” with their popularity showing evidence of person-to-person spread among “picture friends” (defined as those who tagged each other in pictures). Love Actually – a romantic comedy set in modern day England with Hugh Grant as prime minister – spread along the periphery (so a smart campaign would target “wallflowers” without as many social connections). Pulp Fiction, an edgy Quentin Tarantino film, meanwhile, spread center-out (so a smart campaign would have targeted people in the center of the network with many connections). 

While technology can help you maintain friendships with people living hundreds of miles away, Fowler ultimately emphasized the necessity of building upon real-world social networks. Having an enormous online network can allow you to spread information and coordinate actions, but to influence people you need to rely on a previously existing deep social bond.

Joseph Assi was born in a Christian refugee camp in Lebanon and spent his entire life there until he was chosen to be a cast member of the second season of “On the Road in America,” a documentary-reality TV series about four young Middle Easterners traveling across the U.S. by RV. (On the Road in America, Season II, will air next year.)

Traveling to the United States this summer was the first time he had been on a plane or left Lebanon. His grandfather came to the camp 64 years ago and his father was also born in the camp.

I recently sat down with Joseph to talk about some of his impressions of America and the world prior to the show and what he had learned from traveling around the United States.

His impressions of the United States were not very favorable before the show:

“America prior to the show is the enemy in disguise because our first enemy is Israel and the enemy behind that is America because America is giving money to Israel, is giving weapons to Israel . . . and supporting all kind of acts that Israel does.

During the show, Joseph befriended Guy Livneh, an Israeli Jew and one of the crew members, something he never anticipated would happen:

“I never expected to be friends with an Israeli. And I always thought that Israeli is an enemy and the only way to talk with an Israeli is through a bullet. And that changed really fast; that changed in less than a month because meeting Guy, seeing how much we are similar, seeing how nice he . . . I stopped being able to remember him as an Israeli, I started remembering him as a human, as an artist, as a friend. An Israeli wasn’t his only description; it became, it became a secondary thing.”

Watch the video for the rest of the interview.

Traditionally, the State Department has been risk averse when it comes to getting its message out, Graffy says, with off-the-record, print-centric roundtables the primary means that U.S. embassies used to communicate. But audiences in those countries were increasingly shaping their views from watching television and listening to radio.

Graffy said that Karen Hughes, who served as President Bush’s undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, understood the importance of broadcast media.

“She did so by issuing ‘Rules of the Road’ which eliminated the need for diplomatic personnel to secure clearance for appearing on in-country media. She encouraged engagement with the media and, importantly, she supported those who went out and got sucked into the undertow of media-gone-wrong—an unavoidable consequence for anyone in the spotlight. These steps reflected a basic understanding: without backing from leadership at the top for those who brave the media, State Department officials will shy away from it.”

They also created “media hubs” in Brussels, Dubai and London which helped to make broadcast more of a priority and the European and Eurasian Bureau created a “Media Matrix” tracking who was going on television and making it very clear when one consul general was doing more media than another.

Graffy says there has been some resistance by embassies to investing resources in improving websites where the internet is not widely used.

“This represents a misunderstanding of the Internet and its importance. First, it is global, hence the name “World Wide Web.” Diasporas are on the Web and communicate with their family and friends back home. Second, even though Internet use may be low, who is using it? Generally it will be key influencers—media, politicians, NGOs, business persons, educators and youth, and they are worth reaching out to. Finally, Internet connectivity and usage will only grow, and in many embassies it will take years to ramp up the staff, know-how, equipment and funding to be ready.”

Graffy’s observation about the disaspora effect reminded me of how South Korean candidates will seek the support of Los Angeles émigrés in the hopes that their support will influence the votes of friends and relatives still in South Korea. The Los Angeles Times wrote in 2007 about how South Korean presidential candidates sent their top advisors to Los Angeles – home to the highest concentration of Koreans outside of Asia – to campaign for them.

Graffy also acknowledges that the internet is not the only way to dispense informaton:

“Finally, it should not be overlooked that in numerous countries mobile phones and cell phone technology are as important, if not more important, than the Internet. Text messaging is cheaper and more prevalent in places with no or low BlackBerry connectivity or other mobile means to access e-mail. Many embassies are well aware of this, and use text distribution lists to contact journalists with breaking news or to notify them about an interview opportunity.”

Graffy also argues that public diplomacy must become better integrated into the geographic bureaus if it is to become a core component of foreign policy:

“To that end, the Secretary of State should mandate that every geographic bureau have a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Diplomacy whose sole portfolio is public diplomacy. This individual should be dual-hatted to both the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and the Assistant Secretary for the relevant geographic bureau. Without such a “front-office” presence for public diplomacy in the policy world, public diplomacy will always be relegated to second-class status, no matter how strong the R Bureau may be….
“Public Diplomacy 2.0 should mark the end of the separation of policy and public diplomacy. The operative question today is not whether public diplomacy officers are contributing to policy, but whether policymakers are contributing to public diplomacy.”

@QueenRania isn’t the only royal on the list; His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai, is #7. Some of @HHShkMohd’s topics include a federal budget meeting, inauguration the Abu Dhabi Cultural Centre and a new electronic library in Istanbul – “an excellent project supporting Islamic culture and research.”

Former Laker basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (@kaj33) makes the list as well with his pictures with other celebrities, birthday wishes for former UCLA coach John Wooden and update on former teammate Vlade Divac.

There are also politically minded ones, with “The people of Iran” (@Iranelection, @iranriggedelect and @irannewsnow) getting a mention along with TheMuslimGuy, Arsalan Iftikhar (@themuslimguy), an international human rights lawyer.

Muslim Voices (@muslimvoices), an Indiana University-affiliated site seeking to promote dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims and Reza Aslan (@aslanMedia), author of No god but God – a book about the origins and future of Islam – receive mention as well.

Comedian Aziz Asari (@azizansari), a character on the NBC show Parks and Recreation, amuses with his wry observations (“Sienna Miller didn’t stay for my interview on Letterman, but Chester from Linkin Park told me I did great. My life in a nutshell.”) while South African moms (@MuslimMums) tweet about protecting children from consumerism and “Islamic etiquette 101:Do not use abusive and shameful language in the prescence of children.”

Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) rounds out the list with its multiple daily updates.

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