There’s a new kid coming to the block: Public Diplomacy 2.0, or PD20.org for short. According to the website, Public Diplomacy 2.0 seeks to
document the use of web 2.0 and social media technologies in the practice of public diplomacy. PD 2.0.org will represent opinions and present examples from a wide range of public and private institutions from around the world. Through interviews with practitioners and thought leaders, analysis of examples in practice, how-to articles, press digests and other sourced and original content, PD 2.0.org’s goal is to become a central source for information on Public Diplomacy 2.0.
I’m excited about the launch of this site, and not just because Darren Krape, the one of the project’s masterminds, notes they are using my operational definition of public diplomacy:
Public diplomacy 2.0 is the use of new media (web 2.0, social media) to listen, engage and influence foreign publics, either by a government (public diplomacy) or by citizens (citizen diplomacy) in order to create a favorable environment for achieving national security, political, cultural and economic objectives. (Liberally
stolenborrowed from http://mountainrunner.us/2008/11/defining_public_diplomacy.html)
This should shape up to be a significant node in the discourse about the role and utility of social media in what we often call public diplomacy.
This center for discourse would do well to model itself on the community-based Small Wars Journal website and provide fora for discussions, news analysis, knowledge sharing, posting of articles ranging from editorial to journal-length and format, and classifieds.
Check out the working document for the project’s roadmap, including possible interviews, features, partnership possibilities, initial taxonomy, etc.
Follow PD20 on the web or on Twitter.
See also this follow up post:
Matt,Thanks for the post!
First off, I am far from the mastermind on this project – indeed, it wasn’t even my idea. We’ve already got a small, but growing, team of public diplomacy practitioners and researchers and are actively looking for contributors.
We definitely hope that this site will become the hub for PD 2.0 type content, and are working toward both creating new content but also congregating the fantastic material already out there. To do this, we hope to be as “2.0” as possible, so, in the end, the loose central team will really just be facilitators and the larger community will drive the growth of this project.
To that end, send us a message on Twitter: twitter.com/pd20 or contribute to our wiki: http://publicdiplomacy.pbwiki.com/Public-Diplomacy-20-Working-Document