Place Branding and Public Diplomacy最新文献

This qualitative research explores the intricate relationship between city branding and vernacular architecture within the context of indigenous villages, focusing on sustaining city identity. Leveraging data from various tourism sources, traveler blogs, and big social media data, the study identifies the most sought-after indigenous village destinations and corroborates visitor experiences. In-depth interviews further enrich and verify the collected data, incorporating research from 19 indigenous villages across Indonesia, with a specific focus on two case studies: Indigenous villages Trusmi in Cirebon, West Java, and Kajang in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The research uncovers a novel substantive theory in city branding, highlighting the profound connection between vernacular architecture and the perception of a city's identity. Indigenous villages, renowned for their rich cultural heritage, offer a unique lens through which to examine this symbiotic relationship. By reviewing the architectural elements of these villages and understanding how they contribute to the city's overall image, this study sheds light on innovative approaches to city branding. One of the significant findings of this research is the development of the "vernacular branding" theory, which elucidates how indigenous vernacular architecture plays a pivotal role in shaping a city's brand identity. Through an interdisciplinary lens that merges architecture, tourism, and cultural preservation, this research informs urban planners, policymakers, and city marketers about the potential of incorporating vernacular architecture as a cornerstone of city branding strategies. The findings the importance of nurturing indigenous villages as authentic cultural assets that sustain their identity and contribute significantly to the broader narrative of urban branding and city development.

Using the case of Louisville’s “Compassionate City” brand, the paper shows that city branding can produce discourses that can influence local politics. In 2011, Louisville became a signatory of the Charter of Compassion and began its journey of branding itself as the “Compassionate City”. The branding process created and popularized a discourse of “compassion” with the premise that acts of individual benevolence are honorable, apolitical and can solve the socio-economic issues of Louisville. The discourse of compassion gained popularity in Louisville and became the narrative of political claim-making, contestations, policy rationale, and everyday politics. The discourse reverberated in Louisville’s formal political debates, including fiscal policy, minimum wage, public safety, and neighborhood development. Additionally, it was actively used by citizens to make political claims on a wide range of issues, including LGBTQ, racial justice, homelessness, immigrant rights, and abortion. The narrative of compassion gained such momentum that it was being strategically used by various groups in Louisville, including politicians, city officials, religious organizations, activists, non-profits, and businesses. The paper also takes a critical jab at the popularity of the discourse of compassion, citing that it could be contentious with right-based politics.

Place branding studies and practices have gained much attention in the last decades. Specifically in the globalized world, we are witnessing where both economic and marketing strategies transcend geographical boundaries. Nations, countries, and regions usually compete to attract more people to boost their economy. Similarly, districts within a city are also in intense competition with each other. However, this intimate scale has not met much attention from scholars. There seems to be a recognizable gap in the literature addressing the district scale in place branding theories. The objective of this literature review paper is to shed the light on the importance of district branding, and extract dimensions for guidance for future studies and empirical applications on this scale of branding. The research aims to answer the following questions: Why is place branding important on the district level? How is district branding addressed in literature? What are the branding dimensions related to the district level? Possible answers to these questions are given throughout the paper through a content analysis of place branding literature. Content analysis was used to elicit distinct scale place brand approaches within various articles, dissertations, books, and conference proceedings published in different disciplines. Findings confirm the significant effect of district branding on both the individual and the city. The paper also proposes dimensions for district branding that involves social and functional aspects. Future studies should aim to integrate this theoretical approach to the practice of place branding.

Employing Johannesburg as a case, this paper explores the intersections of place branding with pervasive, often taken-for-granted phenomena, including culture, democracy, urban governance, gender and public diplomacy. The paper argues that these intersections are seldom the subject of place branding scholarship, even in the global North, where the discipline receives considerable inquiry. The paper undertakes a multidisciplinary review of the literature to situate place branding and its relation to culture, democracy, urban governance and public diplomacy. Delving deeper into the literature surrounding place branding and its relation to culture, democracy, urban governance and public diplomacy reveals the need for a more comprehensive and nuanced approach to understanding the impact of place branding. By situating place branding within these broader contexts, the paper opens new avenues for inquiry and challenges the predominant lenses through which place branding has been traditionally studied. Through delving deeper into place branding scholarship, the paper introduces a new term, “mentrification”, to enhance descriptions of placeholder disengagement and to add to the emerging lexicon of place branding. Ultimately, this paper serves as a valuable contribution by offering a new outlook on the complexities of place branding, moving beyond traditional efficacy measurements and definitional issues to delve into the deeper layers of its impact on society.

In this forum piece, we argue that the widespread heraldry regarding artificial intelligence (AI) as a panacea in diplomacy and articulating research agendas on the changes it might bring are potentially clouding the future hardships of diplomacy. With all its subfields, International Relations (IR) has gone through numerous “turns”, especially during the last two decades which made encounters poised to change the nature of foreign policy—such as new actors, ideas, or technologies—a familiar experience. While these discussions enriched the discipline of IR, hardly any of these turns lived up to their promises. Certainly, we have an increasingly challenging and complex multipolar world ahead of us. This manifests that a broader network of actors, interests, and technologies needs to be considered. AI, indeed, has the potential capacity to assist and disrupt the ways diplomacy works. Yet heralding an anticipatory practice and study of diplomacy based on AI’s socio-technical imaginaries and calculations rather than as a participatory process centered on immediate human interaction, resources, intelligence, and rapport bears the potential of obscuring the analytical clarity needed. In short, we argue that the rise of AI should not be discussed as yet another new turn poised to cure diplomacy and international relations. We conclude our piece by reminding scholars to bring analytical focus on what lies at the heart of diplomacy.

The paper offers an analytical approach to map and analyze the role of public actors in the digital constitution of place brands. By tracking how different public actors contribute to the shaping of brand publics—specifically via the constitution of brand intangibles—this study examines how digitalization can challenge the traditional public–private dichotomy in administrative entities like municipalities, regions, and cities in creating specific social media brand publics. Within the contours of the study, digitalization refers to the shift of communication channels used by place-based public authorities, institutions, and organizations to digital venues as these actors follow the emergence of brand publics on these newer platforms. Additionally, the approach makes it possible to discuss the networked public brands as mechanisms to manage the numerous stakeholders creating branding messages within geographical associations. To demonstrate the characteristics of the analytical approach its potential, the study uses as illustrative example the Swedish county of Östergötland, and its two municipalities, Linköping and Norrköping. Following an actor-related approach to Social Media Analytics (SMA), 939,758 publicly posted contents generated in blogs, Facebook, forums, and Twitter are used as the empirical dataset. In addition to its analytical contributions, the approach also presents practical and conceptual implications by operationalizing how place-based public institutions, organizations, and sectors can use brand publics not only to influence reputation but also to promote specific brand publics for places in their daily communication in digital spheres.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning is opening up new possibilities for diplomatic intelligence by refining and enhancing processes of gathering, analyzing, and leveraging information through digital means. AI tools can automate tasks, identify patterns more efficiently, and provide real-time insights, enhancing the effectiveness of diplomatic decision-making. In light of these technological developments, we advance the concept of digital diplomatic intelligence (DDI) which we define as the use of Big Data and digital analytical methods to mitigate geopolitical uncertainty and provide informed and timely guidance for diplomatic decision-making. In this article, we examine how harnessing the power of data and algorithms effectively will require overcoming significant technical and organizational challenges.

The ancient origins of diplomacy can be traced back to the first encounters between bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers and the emergence of the Other in prehistory. The character of diplomacy (how it is made) should not be confused with its nature: person-to-person interactions and how to conduct peaceful relations among foreign and/or separate political communities. Language was critical for behavioral modernity in Homo Sapiens evolution. ChatGPT seemingly mastering language was a tipping point. As AI systems increasingly generate alien, non-human outputs, and encroach upon cognitive tasks that once were a monopoly of our biological brains, seeing the Other in the machine will become more common. Human intellectual supremacy will likely be challenged in several narrow domains, raising long-term anthropological questions as well. This is why the AI conundrum is better understood by making a distinction between foreignness (Us-Them) and alienness (Us-It). Although technological disruption has been changing the landscape where diplomats work, the very nature of their profession remains the same. However, considering the risks involved, caution is advised while deploying new AI tools, particularly in sensitive diplomatic decision-making. Human–machine collaboration will be key to successfully dealing with the inherent alienness of AI.

Some have heralded generative AI models as an opportunity to inform diplomacy and support diplomats’ communication campaigns. Others have argued that generative AI is inherently untrustworthy because it simply manages probabilities and doesn’t consider the truth value of statements. In this article, we examine how AI applications are built to smooth over uncertainty by providing a single answer among multiple possible answers and by presenting information in a tone and form that demands authority. We contrast this with the practices of public diplomacy professionals who must grapple with both epistemic and aleatory uncertainty head on to effectively manage complexities through negotiation. We argue that the rise of generative AI and its “operationalization of truth” invites us to reflect on the possible shortcoming of AI’s application to public diplomacy practices and to recognize how prominent uncertainty is in public diplomacy practices.

Nation branding plays a critical role in attracting foreign businesses and, by extension, sustaining countries’ economic development and global competitiveness. Using Qatar as a lens for investigation, this research applied the single, embedded case study method. Purposive sampling with key decision makers in Qatar-based foreign companies representing diverse geographies and industries were used to understand the influence of nation branding on their investment location decision. The findings revealed five key thematic features of Qatar’s nation brand as an investment destination: socioeconomic prosperity, integrated global hub, activist engagement, collectivist culture, and high-end lifestyle. These brand characteristics were compared in relation to the Eclectic Paradigm’s locational advantage and the Anholt Ipsos NBI’s dimensions of exports, governance, culture/heritage, people, tourism, and investment/immigration. The dimensions exerted a strong effect on Qatar’s nation brand and varying levels of influence on FDI attraction. This research contributes to the nexus between nation branding and the FDI literature. Importantly, the results of the study provide useful guidance to government officials, policymakers, and public and private agencies involved in investment promotion. The findings will also prove relevant to foreign investors with regard to their international expansion and location choice.