- Main
Does Authoritarian Public Diplomacy Work?
- Pan, Chaohong
- Advisor(s): Huang, Haifeng HH
Abstract
Having power is having the ability to control others and influence their actions. A nation with soft power has the ability to be appealing to distant audiences, promote its values, and finally influence foreign audiences by placing its influence (Nye, 2004, 2008; Tuch, 1990). In order to enhance and implement soft power, governments have made efforts to influence international public opinion through public diplomacy (Gilboa, 2008), an instrument employed by both governmental and non-governmental roles to communicate with foreign citizens by mobilizing any available resources in order to influence overseas citizens’ longterm attitudes and preferences (Nye, 1990, 2004, 2008).
There have been significant efforts made to understand how public diplomacy is conducted, especially on social media platforms such as on Facebook and Twitter (Kampf et al., 2015). Those works usually focus on Russia and the US, the two countries with significant experience in influencing overseas public opinion (Fisher, 2020). Particularly, the US, the democratic country that has engaged in public diplomacy the most successfully, has promoted its political culture throughout the world. How about the public diplomacy practiced by authoritarian nations? China, the world’s largest authoritarian nation, has received less attention as a new player in public diplomacy. Recently, China’s international favorability has reached a historically low level. The Pew Research Center reported that China’s unfavorability in the US increased from 42% 1 to 76%2 . Does this mean that the public diplomacy conducted by the authoritarian country failed?
Furthermore, previous studies on public diplomacy are comprised largely of descriptive studies examining the originators and content of public diplomacy messages with only scant attention paid to the recipients and the actual effects of those messages. Moreover, existing research tends to focus on government-sponsored media networks and educational programs, such as the Confucius Institute (Hartig, 2012) and English-language graduate programs (Metzgar, 2016), whereas the effects of nongovernmental roles have been underexplored.
I intend to fill the gaps in the field of research with my dissertation composing of three separate studies that center around a research question: Does authoritarian public diplomacy work? Under the current context of China’s aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomacy, my first chapter, Chinese “Wolf Warrior” Diplomacy and Foreign Public Opinion, investigates the effects of tweets of Chinese diplomats and Chinese statecontrolled media by using 2 × 2 online survey experiments. I found that the Chinese diplomats' tweets can positively influence Americans' attitudes toward China, but the Chinese media's tweets do not. Among the Chinese diplomats' tweets, positive tweets about China can influence Americans' attitudes toward China in a positive way, whereas negative tweets about the US have litter effects on their opinion. Furthermore, positive-China tweets may be effective only on China-related issues, which indicates that public diplomacy messages have limited effects on shaping a foreign audience's attitudes toward their own country. Lastly, I find that labels largely have no impact on a diplomatic tweet's effect.
The second chapter, Do Authoritarian Mega-events Affect International Public Opinion? Evidence from the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, explores the potential of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics to reshape China's international image through public diplomacy efforts. Mega-events like the Olympics offer opportunities for nations to improve their favorability and boost product sales. The paper aims to understand the effects of the Olympics and the underlying mechanism of how newly gained knowledge about China affects foreign public opinion. Specifically, using a two-round panel survey, the paper investigates the effects of the Olympics on foreign perceptions of China and which types of knowledge have the most significant impact on public opinion. Results indicate that the Olympics have limited ability to change public views of China, and in some cases, may have a backfired effect. In other hand, people gained significantly more positive knowledge about China after the Olympics, which positively correlated with increased curiosity about Chinese culture and a stronger desire to foster peaceful relations with China. Overall, the paper provides insights into the actual impact of public diplomacy strategies in the context of mega-events like the Olympics.
This first two chapters discusses the effects of public diplomacy efforts made by the government. In contrast to traditional diplomacy, both governmental and nongovernmental actors can take part in public diplomacy. The third chapter, How NonGovernmental Diplomacy Affects International Public Opinion: Evidence from a Cultural Social Media Influencer, looking at the effects of nongovernmental actors. In China, considerable resources have been allocated to government-driven public diplomacy initiatives, such as Confucius Institutes and internationalizing state-controlled news channels. However, these efforts have demonstrated limited success. In contrast, the global popularity of Chinese content creators such as Li Ziqi highlights the potential effectiveness of nongovernmental public diplomacy focusing on Chinese culture. Existing research largely focuses on government-led digital public diplomacy, neglecting the role of nongovernmental actors. This paper fills this gap by employing a survey experiment to examine the impact of Li Ziqi's Twitter content on American participants and whether official endorsement from the Chinese local government influences their perceptions. The study reveals that Li Ziqi's content positively influenced participants' general view of China and their feelings towards Chinese people, but not in specific issue topics such as China's international roles. Second, official endorsement from Sichuan government did not significantly affect the persuasiveness of her content. Furthermore, the study finds that international orientation (hawkish vs. dovish) is not a crucial factor in determining the effects of public diplomacy messages. This research offers valuable insights into the effectiveness of diverse public diplomacy strategies in shaping foreign perceptions.
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