Selling America: U.S. Public Diplomacy Programs in the Middle East and South Asia in a Post 9/11 Environment
Abstract
Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, foreign policy experts and U.S.
government officials have emphasized the importance of public diplomacy in combating
terrorism and ensuring national security. In the current climate of anti-American
sentiment, “the war of ideas is more challenging than ever” and strong negative public
opinion about the United States is pervasive (Pilon).
Public diplomacy attempts to combat anti-American sentiment, focusing on Arab and
Muslim populations where attitudes about America are particularly negative. Public
diplomacy, “the promotion of America’s interests, culture and policies by informing
and influencing foreign populations,” includes three categories of activities: international
information programs, educational and cultural exchanges, and international nonmilitary
broadcasting.
While there is disagreement among foreign policy experts and government officials
about how to best structure and improve public diplomacy programs, there is a general
consensus that effective public diplomacy is essential to national security. Nevertheless,
although many critics cite public opinion polls as evidence for the inefficacy of
public diplomacy programs, it is not possible to know whether or not these programs
are accomplishing their goals without proper evaluation methods that tie measurable
results directly to programs. Therefore, determining whether or not there are effective
evaluation techniques in place to measure the results of these programs is the necessary
first step to assessing whether or not the programs accomplish their goals.
There have been various programs, strategies and messages used since the September
11th attacks in 2001, in U.S. public diplomacy efforts in predominantly Muslim countries
in the Middle East and South Asia. I analyzed evaluations of four public diplomacy
programs in this region to address the following question: How are public diplomacy
programs evaluated and do evaluations of these programs accurately reflect the quality
of the programs? I chose these programs because they fit into the scope of my research,
as far as geographic region and time frame, and because complete evaluations of these
programs were publically-available. Since my research focuses on the quality of the
evaluations and not the efficacy of the programs themselves, I needed to choose programs
for which complete, thorough evaluations were available.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
Public Policy StudiesPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/1671Citation
Berger, Elana (2009). Selling America: U.S. Public Diplomacy Programs in the Middle East and South Asia
in a Post 9/11 Environment. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/1671.Collections
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