Place Branding and Public Diplomacy最新文献

This article explores the question of whether place branding should be considered a public policy. While place branding has gained attention in the fields of marketing and related disciplines, its connection to various public policy areas highlights its broader implications. This study aims to provide conceptual clarity on the matter, arguing for the inclusion of place branding within the public policy discourse. The article employs a conceptual framework to assess the alignment of place branding with the key attributes of public policy. A comparative case study of nation branding practices in seven European countries—Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, and Slovakia—is conducted to assess the applicability of the conceptual framework of public policy to studying nation branding. The case study demonstrates the potential of such approach, highlighting gaps and challenges in the current practices of nation branding. The article concludes by discussing the implications of applying the policy approach to place branding and exploring future research opportunities.

The aim of this study was to demonstrate the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) bias and digital public diplomacy based on terminology use in three ChatGPT dialogues we initiated. AI bias is discursively constructed through rhetoric and narrative, presenting how users and algorithm designers perceive social reality. These elements of language then spread through Internet technology. This study examined the potential threat of AI bias in constructing knowledge in the digital age. Indeed, AI bias arising from terminology use can shake up the decision-making and communication practices of public diplomacy, especially the formulation and implementation of advocacy. We identified two potential types of bias: (a) the content provided by ChatGPT reflects a set of opinions with a particular orientation that does not account for the multiplicity of viewpoints on complex geopolitical issues, and (b) the answers given by generative AI tools tend to be affirmative views that are not subject to argumentation, justification, and reflection.

Large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 have the potential to dramatically change the landscape of influence operations. They can generate persuasive, tailored content at scale, making campaigns using falsified content, such as disinformation and fake accounts, easier to produce. Advances in self-hosted open-source models have meant that adversaries can evade content moderation and security checks built into large commercial models such as those commercialised by Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. New multi-lingual models make it easier than ever for foreign adversaries to pose as local actors. This article examines the heightened threats posed by synthetic media, as well as the potential that these tools hold for creating effective countermeasures. It begins with assessing the challenges posed by a toxic combination of automated bots, human-controlled troll accounts, and more targeted social engineering operations. However, the second part of the article assesses the potential for these same tools to improve detection. Promising countermeasures include running internal generative models to bolster training data for internal classifiers, detecting statistical anomalies, identifying output from common prompts, and building specialised classifiers optimised for specific monitoring needs.

In this article, we employ the prism of technological acceleration to consider how Generative AI may impact the spatial–temporal dimensions of diplomacy, and what ramifications this transformation may hold for its practice. To do so, we distinguish between Horizontal Acceleration, which relates to the number of diplomatic domains that are progressively impacted by the introduction of a new digital technology, and Vertical Acceleration, which relates to how ripple effects reverberate within the diplomatic domain and how deeply. Next, we outline three possible scenarios in which Generative AI leads to minimal or maximal horizontal and vertical acceleration. In the Dedalus scenario, Generative AI’s impact is confined to a few domains, predominantly influencing diplomats’ daily routines. In the Heracles scenario, Generative AI systems interact with one another rendering human diplomats as mere messengers. We coin this outcome as ‘the end of diplomacy.’ Finally, we anticipate that many MFAs may position themselves between these two poles in the Pygmalion scenario.

Coolness is a socially constructed positive trait that is attributed to people, brands, products, etc. It is subjective, dynamic, and attained by the beholder. Despite the extensive research on city branding, city brand coolness is neglected in the literature. There is only one study on cool cities. This research aims to deepen the knowledge of city brand coolness, extend its conceptualization, develop an insight into its dimensions, and add to the generalizability of the city brand coolness concept by reflecting the perceptions of a more diverse segment. On that basis, an inductive qualitative approach is employed for defining the characteristics of cool cities and for developing dimensions of city brand coolness rather than adopting coolness dimensions deductively from brand coolness. The data is collected from individual Instagram accounts without geographical restrictions. In total, this research has covered 435 contents (including photos, captions, comments, hashtags, etc.) and 155 cool cities through the eyes of the beholder. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. As a result, cool cities were found to be distinctive, bold, aesthetic, energetic, artistic, and authentic. Individuals, mostly tourists, perceive a city as cool when it possesses several of these characteristics. The findings were discussed in detail.

Public diplomacy scholarship is multifaceted, eclectic, and accelerating at a tremendous rate. The purpose of this article is to conduct a semi-systematic framework-based literature review of the 200 most cited articles in public diplomacy with the aim of synthetizing and organizing the literature on public diplomacy into a structured and holistic framework and contribute to the advancement of future research. The organizing framework of the literature review is based on a combination of Lasswell’s 5W construct and the TCM (Theory-Context-Methods) framework (Paul et al. 2017). Using Lasswell’s 5W framework, the paper reports on the actors, audiences, strategies, instruments, and effects found in the public diplomacy literature, which enables the paper to explain what we know about public diplomacy. Next, using the TCM framework, the paper reports on the theories, contexts, and methods used by public diplomacy scholars to uncover past findings, thereby answering the question how we know what we know about public diplomacy. Finally, the paper proposes a potentially fruitful agenda for decentering future public diplomacy research.