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ABSTRACT
This article provides a reflection on the communication phase in a narrative’s cycle. It explores and compares NATO narratives communicated by influential press in NATO’s five Asia-Pacific strategic partners (16 media outlets observed on a daily basis between February–July 2015). The analysis traces NATO narratives communicated to broader society on the system, identity, and policy-issue levels. Innovatively linking strategic narrative theory by Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, and Roselle and the cascading activation framing theory by Entman, the article explores a range of narratives and assesses what narratives enjoyed higher visibility, stronger local resonance, and more pronounced emotive charge while communicating NATO as a capable IR actor. The article operationalizes and modifies elements of Entman’s theory (visibility, local resonance, and emotive charge, adding a category of capability), and then tests hypotheses based on this, using the inferential statistics Rasch Measurement Model. The article ends with a set of policy recommendations to NATO’s public diplomacy on how to capitalize on opportunities these narratives present and how to tackle challenges (specifically low local resonance and limited media visibility of the narratives).
Notes
1. Nicholas Valentino and Yioryos Nardis, “Political Communication: Form and Consequence of the Information Environment,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, edited by Leonie Huddy, David Sears, and Jack Levy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 559–590, 563.
2. A.Miskimmon, B. O’Loughlin, and L. Roselle, Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order (New York: Routledge, 2013).
3. Ibid.
4. Helbig, Robert, “Defining its Future, Engaging its Public: NATO’s New Strategic Concept as a Tool for Survival,” Critique: A Worldwide Journal of Politics, School of International Service American University, Washington, DC, 2011,
5. Peter van Ham “Place Branding: The State of the Art,” The ANNALS of the AAPSS 616, no.1 (2008): 126–149.
6. edited by Mladen Andrlić and Andrea Gustović-Ercegovac, 13th CEI Dubrovnik Diplomatic Forum: Strategic Public Diplomacy (Zagreb: Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, 2012), 6.
7. Ibid.
8. Bruce Gregory, “Public Diplomacy: Sunrise of an Academic Field,” The ANNALS of the AAPSS 616, no. 1 (2008): 274–90, 276.
9. Dov Lynch, “Communicating Europe to the World: What Public Diplomacy for the EU?” (European Policy Center, Working Paper No.21, November, 2005), https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/16968/EPC_WP_21.pdf, accessed 26 August 2017 .
10. Ibid. 24.
11. Helbig, “Defining its Future, Engaging its Public,” citing Stephanie Babst, “Reinventing NATO’s Public Diplomacy,” (NATO Defense College, Research Division Research Papers 41, 2008).
12. Babst, “Reinventing NATO’s Public Diplomacy.”
13. NATO Strategic Communication Centre of Excellence, http://www.stratcomcoe.org/, accessed 28 August 2017.
14. Helbig, “Defining its Future, Engaging its Public.”
15. cf. Geoffrey Cowan and Amelia Arsenault, “Moving from Monologue to Dialogue to Collaboration: The Three Layers of Public Diplomacy,” The ANNALS of the AAPSS 616, no.1 (2008): 10–30; Nicholas Cull, “Public Diplomacy, Taxonomies and Histories,” The ANNALS of the AAPSS 616, no.1 (2008): 31–54.
16. Miskimmon et al., Strategic Narratives.
17. Robert Entman, “Cascading Activation: Contesting the White House’s Frame after 9/11,” Political Communication 20, no. 4 (2003): 415–32; Robert Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
18. Entman, “Cascading Activation,” 417.
19. Roland Dannreuther, “Russian Perceptions of the Atlantic Alliance,” Final Report for the NATO Fellowship - 1995-1997, http://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/95-97/dannreut.pdf, accessed 28 August 2017.
20. Federico Casprini, Sonia Lucarelli, and Alessandro Marrone, “Exploring Regional Security Challenges,” in Flexible Frameworks, Beyond Borders – Understanding Regional Dynamics to Enhance Cooperative Security, edited by Federico Casprini, Sonia Lucarelli, and Alessandro Marrone (Brussels: NATO HQ, 2014), 8.
21. Charles Cooper and Benjamin Zycher, “Perceptions of NATO Burden-Sharing,” 1989, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2009/R3750.pdf.
22. Ibid., vi-vii.
23. Luis Nuno Rodrigues and Volodymyr Dubovyk, eds., Perceptions of NATO and the New Strategic Concept (Amsterdam/Berlin/Tokyo/Washington, DC: IOS Press, 2011).
24. Guillaume de Rougé, “The Future of the Alliance: Towards a Transatlanntic ‘Hub’?” in Perceptions of NATO and the New Strategic Concept, edited by Luis Nuno Rodrigues and Volodymyr Dubovyk (Amsterdam/Berlin/Tokyo/Washington, DC: IOS Press, 2011), 49–53.
25. de Rougé, “The Future of the Alliance,” 51.
26. Bram Boxhoorn, “United States and Europe: in Unequal Partnership,” in Perceptions of NATO and the New Strategic Concept, edited by Luis Nuno Rodrigues and Volodymyr Dubovyk (Amsterdam/Berlin/Tokyo/Washington, DC: IOS Press, 2011), 59.
27. Sebastian Reyn, Allies or Aliens? Georg W. Bush and the Transatlantic Crisis in Historical Perspective (The Hague: Netherlands Atlantic Association, 2007), 83.
28. Katie Simmons, Bruce Stokes and Jacob Poushter, “NATO Public Opinion: Wary of Russia, Leery of Action on Ukraine”, http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/06/10/1-nato-public-opinion-wary-of-russia-leary-of-action-on-ukraine/, accessed 28 August 2017.
29. Simmons et al. “NATO Public Opinion: Wary of Russia, Leery of Action on Ukraine.”
30. Mohammed Moustaf Orfy, NATO and the Middle East: The Geopolitical Context Post-9/11 (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011).
31. Vojtech Mastny, “NATO in the Beholder's Eye: Soviet Perceptions and Policies, 1949 -56” (Working Paper No.35, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2002), https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/ACFB01.pdf, accessed 28 August 2017.
32. Dannreuthe, “Russian Perceptions of the Atlantic Alliance.”
33. Andrej Makarychev, “Russia, NATO and the International Societies: Models, Policies, Strategies,” in Perceptions of NATO and the New Strategic Concept, edited by Luís Nuno Rodrigues, and Volodymyr Dubovyk (Amsterdam/Berlin/Tokyo/Washington, DC: IOS Press, 2011), 75–84.
34. Polina Sokolova, “Russia-NATO Partnership at the Crossroads,” in Perceptions of NATO and the New Strategic Concept, edited by Luís Nuno Rodrigues and Volodymyr Dubovyk (Amsterdam/Berlin/Tokyo/Washington, DC: IOS Press, 2011), 85–91.
35. Ibid., 89.
36. Robert Pszczel, “How NATO is Perceived in Russia (or lessons in optimism),” http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2011/NATO_Russia/lessons-optimism/EN/index.htm, accessed 28 August 2017.
37. summarized by Michael Smith, “Most NATO Members in Eastern Europe See It as Protection,” Gallup Institute, February 10, 2017, http://www.gallup.com/poll/203819/nato-members-eastern-europe-protection.aspx.
38. Ibid.
39. J. Peter de Vreese Claes and Holly Semetko, “Framing Politics at the Launch of the Euro: A Cross-National Comparative Study of Frames in the News,” Political Communication 18, no. 2 (2001): 108.
40. H. Denis Wu, “Systemic Determinants of International News Coverage: A Comparison of 38 Countries,” Journal of Communication 50, no. 2 (2000): 110–30.
41. Entman, “Cascading Activation”; Projections of Power.
42. Robert Entman, “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Journal of Communication 43, no. 4 (1993): 52.
43. Entman, “Cascading Activation,” 417.
44. Ibid., 421.
45. Ibid., 417.
46. Entman, “Cascading Activation.”
47. G.Rasch, Probabilistic Models for some Intelligence and Attainment Tests (Copenhagen, Denmark: Danmarks Paedagogiske Institute, 1960).
48. J. M. Linacre, Winsteps® Rasch Measurement Computer Program (Beaverton, OR: Winsteps, 2016).
49. Valentino and Nardis, “Political Communication.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Natalia Chaban
Professor Natalia Chaban is co-head of the Department of Global, Cultural and Language Studies (heading European and European Union Studies and European Languages) at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. She is also a Jean Monnet Chair and Deputy Director of the National Centre for Research on Europe at the same university. Professor Chaban publishes widely on the topic of external perceptions, political communication, and political psychology in international relations and foreign policy. She has published 93 articles and book chapters, and her work has appeared in high impact peer reviewed journals such as the Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Integration, Cooperation and Conflict, Foreign Policy Analysis, Mobilities, Comparative European Politics). She has also produced eight co-authored and co-edited volumes, and four guest-edited special issues of refereed journals.
Svetlana Beltyukova
Svetlana Beltyukova is a professor in Research, Measurement, and Statistics at the University of Toledo, where she teaches graduate courses in research design, statistics, and measurement. She has published in top tier journals (e.g., JAMA, JSLHR, JPAE) advocating for increasing the rigor of research with psychometric evidence from the use of the Rasch measurement model and has been instrumental in introducing the Rasch method in a variety of disciplines nationally and internationally.
Christine Fox
Christine Fox is a professor in Research and Measurement at the University of Toledo, where she teaches graduate courses in statistics, measurement, and survey design. Her research focuses on constructing meaningful measures in the social sciences, and she is best known for her co-authored book entitled Applying the Rasch Model: Fundamental Measurement in the Human Sciences, which was recently published in its third edition. Cited over 4,600 times, this text has served to aid in developing statistically defensible and meaningful measure construction across a wide variety of disciplines.