Full Description
As with many spheres of public life, public diplomatic communication is being transformed by the boom of social media. More than 165 foreign governmental organisations in China have embarked on the use of Weibo (a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter in China) to engage with Chinese citizens and reach out to youth populations, one of the major goals of current public diplomacy efforts. This exciting new pivot, based on systemic research of Weibo usage by embassies in China, explores the challenges and the limits that the use of Chinese Weibo (and Chinese social media in general) poses for foreign embassies, and considers ways to use these or other tools. It offers a systematic study of the effectiveness and challenges of using Weibo for public diplomatic communication in and with China. Addressing the challenges of e-diplomacy, it considers notably the occurrence of cyber-nationalism on Weibo and encourages a critical look at its practice, arguing how it can contribute to the goals of public diplomacy.
Contents
PART One: Social media landscape differences between China and the West.- Introduction and background knowledge.- Social media context in China and global PR theory.- Part 2: Analyzing the Embassies' use of Weibo.- Scanning the foreign use of Weibo.- Foreign embassies' use of Weibo.- A close case study: Kunming terror attack & embassy's e-diplomacy via Weibo.- Part 3: Public Diplomacy and Weibo.- Weibo as a public diplomacy platform.- Implications of the Western use of Weibo and global PR theory.- Conclusion/ Open-endedness.
