Roundtable on Metodological Approaches to Public Diplomacy

Roundtable on Methodological Approaches to Public Diplomacy

This roundtable builds on the special issue published in Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, entitled Methodological Approaches to Public Diplomacy, guest edited by Kadir Jun Ayhan (Ewha Womans University) and Efe Sevin (Towson University).

You can register for the event using this link: https://tinyurl.com/ RoundtablePDMethodology

Here are the links for the Special Issue and the articles:

Special Issue: https://doi.org/10.1057/ s41254-022-00263-5
Articles: https://doi.org/10.1057/ s41254-021-00228-0
https://doi.org/10.1057/ s41254-021-00227-1
https://doi.org/10.1057/ s41254-021-00232-4
https://doi.org/10.1057/ s41254-021-00229-z
https://doi.org/10.1057/ s41254-022-00261-7
https://doi.org/10.1057/ s41254-021-00246-y
https://doi.org/10.1057/ s41254-021-00248-w
https://doi.org/10.1057/ s41254-021-00240-4

The following are the abstracts of the article published in this special issue:

Moving public diplomacy research forward: methodological approaches

Kadir Jun Ayhan & Efe Sevin
"What led to this special issue has been a shared assumption of the guest editors: the next obstacle to overcome in our field is the need for more consolidation in terms of methodological approaches. Methodology obstacles have been less frequently addressed—and even when addressed, attempts were limited to empirical work based on anecdotes or limited quantitative data. The questions of how we study public diplomacy scientifically or critically, and how we evaluate the goals and outcomes of public diplomacy initiatives can help our field to produce more rigorous works. ... We asked special issue authors what, in their views, would it mean for public diplomacy research to be more rigorous. Furthermore, we asked authors to focus on the methodological discussions, and use case studies only as illustrative examples without the empirical depth. We have a very diverse set of articles in this special issue: historical analysis, robust qualitative analysis, importing mainstream research methods including mixed methods, and impact evaluation."

Bringing history back in: a qualitative longitudinal approach to public diplomacy

Seckin Baris Gulmez, Miray Ates

This paper offers a novel methodological perspective to public diplomacy studies discussing how to apply Qualitative Longitudinal Research (QLR) into public diplomacy. Accordingly, the paper first discusses the existing academic literature on longitudinal research in social sciences and highlights the necessity to use QLR in public diplomacy studies. Second, it offers a research design on how to conduct QLR in public diplomacy. Third, the paper discusses the historical evolution of German public diplomacy over a period of 70 years as viable case study comparing three global sports events, namely the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the 1972 Munich Olympics and the 2006 World Cup. Overall, the paper argues that QLR has an important potential to advance public diplomacy studies since it enables researcher to trace continuity and change in public engagement policies over extended periods and explain whether historical legacies are reproduced or erased over time and how this resonates with international audience.

The method of comparative-historical analysis: a tailor-made approach to public diplomacy research
Hendrik W. Ohnesorge

In view of the major methodological challenges which confront researchers in public diplomacy (PD), the paper recognizes the method of comparative-historical analysis (CHA) as an eminently suitable approach for robust empirical studies. The paper starts by exploring different conceptualizations and operationalizations of public diplomacy. Subsequently, four defining characteristics of CHA are identified: (1) CHA starts from a positivist epistemological perspective; (2) CHA-based research usually is concerned with “big questions;” (3) comparative methods are applied in CHA, either across different cases or within cases across time, allowing for in-depth analyses; (4) by considering respective starting points, specific historical developments, and cultural particulars, CHA is committed to methods drawn from historical research, including process tracing and causal narrative. The paper demonstrates that CHA, in view of these characteristics and with its highly interdisciplinary pedigree and methodological eclecticism, is eminently suited for studies exploring PD practices and outcomes. To provide a tailor-made approach for such endeavors, CHA is innovatively combined with the method of structured, focused comparison. Finally, drawing on both the different operationalizations of PD and the requirements of CHA, a comprehensive matrix for CHA-based PD research is presented, offering a tangible framework for future empirical analyses.

Cultural considerations and rigorous qualitative methods in public diplomacy research

Phillip Arceneaux
This article examines how qualitative approaches to human-centered inquiry benefit public diplomacy (PD) scholarship. It argues that rigorous qualitative methods improve the frameworks guiding PD research. Tendencies for miscommunication permeate the encoding and decoding communication processes in international/intercultural contexts, with PD often transcending cultural boundaries and national borders. This article cautions against assuming conceptual, measurement, and semiotic equivalence of constructs and variables, based on influences from culture and language. Furthermore, the article advocates mixed methods, explicating how rigorous qualitative methods can better contextualize the statistics of quantitative methods, leading to more comprehensive understandings of PD.

Using Q methodology to augment evaluation of public diplomacy programs

Steven L. Pike

The evaluation of public diplomacy programs presents complicated challenges. Discernment of impact is complicated by statistical and practical issues: the nature of individualized personal experiences; the large number of factors that can influence an individual’s response to any experience; the long time horizon required for impact to develop; the influence of politics on defining desired outcomes; and a longrunning debate within the discipline over the proper objectives of exchange programs (mutual understanding for its own sake or the pursuit of foreign policy agendas). Researcher asked current and former participants in the Hubert H. Humphrey Exchange Program at Syracuse University for opinions on the outcomes, benefits, and attributes they expect of exchange programs, and used Q methodology, a scientific method for the study of subjectivity, to discern and describe differing perspectives. Results obtained revealed distinct differences in the opinion patterns of different groups of participants, including identifying participants who valued more agenda- and policy-driven objectives. Demographic information obtained was insufficient to identify the drivers of those groups and additional research, including expansion of the respondent pool and analysis of individual participants, is needed to refine the precise drivers.

Experimental methods in public diplomacy

Imran Hasnat, Glenn Leshner
Public diplomacy (PD) as a field of study lacks both theoretical and methodological depth. Although a wide range of methodology is used to study the field, case studies, surveys, and content analyses are the most frequently used. While these methods are necessary to study PD, they lack the ability to establish a causal relationship between variables. A lot of attention in PD scholarship is now on digitalization and the use of social media in PD. Similarly, a significant portion of scholarship is devoted to analyzing PD messages. This article argues that experimental methodology is an important but under-utilized tool for scholars in the field. Controlled experiments are believed to be the best method to determine cause-and-effect relationships among variables. The article aims to help scholars of the discipline conduct controlled experiments that further their understanding of PD campaigns and messages. It does so by detailing experiments as a methodology, indicating what type of research questions can be answered by this approach and how to carry out an experiment.

A historical–discursive analytical method for studying the formulation of public diplomacy institutions

Zhao Alexandre Huang

The aim of this study was to present a method of interpretative sociology for studying the formation and development of national public diplomacy institutions. Our goal was to apply cognitive analysis to public policy and to use a historical-discursive method to interpret the institutionalization of public diplomacy by a government. For us, cognitive analysis of public policy coordinates new perspectives and methods, especially the fruits of historical and discursive institutionalism, both to identify the cognitive and normative frames of policy formulation and to outline the dynamic relationships among institutions and political actors. By conducting an illustrative case study of China’s public diplomacy institutionalization, we demonstrated the potential of historical–discursive analysis to shed light on public diplomacy institutional change and various social and rhetorical phenomena related to Beijing’s efforts to rationalize and legitimize its foreign policy.

Large data and small stories: A triangulation approach to evaluating digital diplomacy

Damien Spry, Kerrilee Lockyer
This article outlines how data-driven and computational methods can be integrated with traditional forms of discourse and linguistic analysis to examine and evaluate online public diplomacy activities (‘digital diplomacy’) and the publics’ engagement with these artefacts. Combined with reviews of strategy and policy documents, the three techniques – large data, small stories and policy analysis – offer a triangulation of combined approaches to create a rigorous approach to evaluation. We aim to provide an adaptable methodological template for replicable studies, with the underlying premise being that combining three lines of inquiry – document review, large data sets and computational analyses, and close, contextual reading – can triangulate to produce nuanced, robust evaluations with both granularity and generalisability. If, as one UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) report argues, evaluation efforts can seem “like a forester going out to measure how fast his trees have grown overnight without a ruler” (Vitner and Knox in Engagement: Public diplomacy in a globalised world. UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London, 2008), in our triangulated approach, one line of analysis uses distant reading to map the ‘forest’, another uses close reading to examine the ‘trees’, and a third references policy and strategy to determine the seemingly absent ‘ruler’.

Assessing impact in global media: methods, innovations, and challenges

Yelena Osipova-Stocker, Eulynn Shiu, Thomas Layou & Shawn Powers

International broadcasting, defined as “the use of electronic media by one society to shape the opinion of the people and leaders of another,” is an area of public diplomacy research ripe for scholarly attention (Price in Media and sovereignty: the global information revolution and its challenge to state power, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2002). The primary agent for U.S. international broadcasting is the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which operates in 62 languages in over 100 countries. While there is broad consensus in the literature that evaluation in public diplomacy is extremely difficult, USAGM has a unique challenge of assessing impact across such a broad and diverse geography of audiences and media environments. Moreover, as an independent public service media agency, USAGM is often called upon to show it is a responsible steward of resources by demonstrating the effectiveness of its programs to policymakers and key stakeholders (Metzgar in Seventy years of the Smith-Mundt Act and U.S. International broadcasting: Back to the future? CPD perspectives in public diplomacy, 2018). This paper describes and assesses USAGM’s Impact Model, which serves as the conceptual framework for aggregating, understanding, and communicating the Agency’s research. It illustrates the research-strategy-evaluation loop examining the case of Voice of America in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and discusses some of the challenges that USAGM faces in both research as well as implementation of the recommendations proposed based on that research.

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