The evolving complementarity of nation-branding and public diplomacy: projecting the Canada brand through “weibo diplomacy” in China

ABSTRACT

Diplomacy is evolving at a much faster rate today than in the first 70 years of the previous century and diplomats and their foreign ministries have been forced to communicate more with publics at home and abroad. At the heart of this reboot, arguably, is a reconsideration of the value of public diplomacy and nation-branding within diplomatic practice, leading to questions about whether there is convergence of public diplomacy and nation-branding practices in support of international policy goals. The article first examines public diplomacy and nation-branding as concepts and fields of study. It then analyzes the growing complementarity of public diplomacy and nation-branding in Canada's foreign policy due, in large measure, to the growth of digital platforms in international communication. The article concludes by examining how public diplomacy and nation-branding appeared to converge online in Canada's “weibo” diplomacy with China, starting in 2011.

RÉSUMÉ

La diplomatie évolue à un rythme beaucoup plus rapide qu’au cours des 70 premières années du siècle précédent et les diplomates et leurs ministères des affaires étrangères ont été contraints de communiquer davantage avec les publics nationaux et étrangers. Au cœur de ce redémarrage, on peut dire que la diplomatie publique et la marque nationale sont reconsidérées dans la pratique diplomatique, ce qui amène à s’interroger sur la convergence de la diplomatie publique et des pratiques nationales pour soutenir les objectifs politiques internationaux. L'article examine d’abord la diplomatie publique et l’image de marque nationale en tant que concepts et domaines d’étude. Il analyse ensuite la complémentarité croissante de la diplomatie publique et de l’image de marque nationale dans la politique étrangère du Canada en raison, dans une large mesure, de la croissance des plateformes numériques dans la communication internationale. Le document conclut en examinant comment la diplomatie publique et l’image de marque nationale ont semblé converger en ligne dans la diplomatie « weibo » du Canada avec la Chine, à compter de 2011.

KEYWORDS:

• Public diplomacy
• digital diplomacy
• Web 2.0 diplomacy
• Canada
• nation-branding

Disclosure statement

The views expressed in this article are the author’s alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Global Affairs Canada or the Government of Canada.

Notes on contributor

Evan H. Potter is an associate professor, Department of Communications, University of Ottawa.

Notes

1 See Potter (2009, chapter 2), who provides a detailed analysis of how public diplomacy can be defined.

2 For a discussion of soft power, see Nye (2001).

3 For instance, the visa and immigration section of the embassy had a weekly column, and the economic section offered economic news three times a week; an “Inside the Embassy” online magazine featured stories about the embassy every Thursday with photographs and videos (the most popular item is food). Saturday's column is by the chef and Sunday's is about the Francophonie (Mark McDowell, personal communication with the author, 2012).

4 According to the 2016 Anholt-GfK Nation Index survey, one of Canada's top attributes as a nation was “Respects the rights of citizens and treats them with fairness.”

5 One Canadian diplomat with experience with Canada's social media outreach in China suggests that nine out of 10 pieces of social media content produced by foreign ministries should be soft and not directly related to policy goals.

6 Nimijean (2017) argues that an examination of the Trudeau record suggests that there may be more continuity between the governments of Justin Trudeau (2015–present) and Stephen Harper (2006–2015) than is commonly perceived.