Mediated Public Diplomacy: A Strategic Contest over International Agenda Building and Frame Building

Abstract

This study focuses on the competition over international agenda building and frame building as one central strategic activity of public diplomacy processes. It is the first analysis of a multi-actor contest over agenda and frame building in foreign media focusing on two strategic acts with evident mediated public diplomacy objectives and implications: Israel's disengagement from Gaza and the general elections in the Palestinian Authority. The success of the actors in promoting their agenda and frames in the U.S. and British news media is analyzed, revealing a complex media arena that includes the antagonists, foreign governments, and the media themselves as actors, each trying to promote its own agenda and frames. Cultural and political congruence between a foreign country and an adversary gives that antagonist an advantage over its rival actor. However, the antagonist actor still has to compete with the agenda and frames of foreign governments and media organizations.

Keywords:

• agenda building
• frame building
• framing contest
• public diplomacy
• strategic framing

This research was supported by the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations and by the Shaine Center for Research in Social Sciences, both at the Hebrew University, and by a grant generously provided by the American Friends of the Hebrew University. We would like to thank Gadi Wolfsfeld, Ken Goldstein, and the reviewers for their comments and advice on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

1. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's address to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on February 20, 2005.

2. It is important to note, though, that both measures are almost inherently different in their cost to the actor. Game theorists differentiate the costly strategic action from the communication action, which is deemed as cheap (e.g., Farrell & Rabin, 1996; Johnson, 1993). In addition, literature on international crisis management suggests that although actions cost more than verbal communication in the short run, they can offer better opportunities to signal intent and commitment clearly, thus increasing actors' credibility (e.g., Arquilla, 1992; Downs & Rocke, 1990).

3. According to the CIA Factbook (http://www.cia.gov), 2.7% of British citizens are Muslims, while the Jewish community is too small to be reported. In the U.S., the Jewish community (1.7%) is almost three times larger than the Muslim community (0.6%).

4. The UK data are based on UK national statistics (http://www.statistics.gov.uk). The U.S. data are based on the U.S. Social Security Administration (http://www.ssa.gov).

5. See, for example, A Six-Day War: Its Aftermath in American Public Opinion (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/491/six-day-war).

6. See, for example, Pew Global Projects, 2002–2007 (http://pewglobal.org).

7. See http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA and http://www.pmo.gov.il/Eng

8. See http://www.pna.gov.ps/ http://www.p-p-o.com, http://www.minfo.gov.ps and http://www.wafa.ps/english

9. See http://www.whitehouse.gov, http://www.state.gov, http://www.senate.gov, http://www.house.gov, http://www.number-10.gov.uk and http://www.fco.gov.uk.

10. Selection decisions were based on national readership and on different types of newspapers. For example, the New York Times is a broadsheet, while the USA Today is a popular paper. As can be seen from the findings below, these two newspapers present quite similar positions. The British newspapers represent a different political agenda.

11. See http://www.blinkx.com

12. The distance between (x ₁, y ₁) and (x ₂, y ₂) (Euclidean distance) is √ [(x ₁ − x ₂)² + (y ₁ − y ₂₎²].

13. The dates of the four stages were based upon the main events taking place during the duration of the research. The disengagement started with the Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip on August 15, 2005, and ended with the pullout from parts of the West Bank on August 22. The main process of the Palestinian general election (January 25, 2006) began shortly after the end of the fourth round of the Palestinian municipal elections on August 19.

14. From hereon Fox and the U.S. Congress/Senate were not considered when tabulating data related to the U.S. and U.S. media, as they tend to overwhelmingly support Israel's position (see Figure 4 for a demonstration of this fact). Note that calculating the mean U.S. government and media positions with Fox and Congress in the analyses would result in better support for the hypotheses, which predict that Israel will have more success in the U.S. compared with the UK. Therefore, by excluding these two actors we created a more difficult test of the hypotheses.

15. A one-way ANOVA was conducted with the factor being the four periods of time. Results in almost all cases were found to be significant (p < .05), indicating significant differences between the percentage of elite appearance in each time period, as well as significant differences in levels of support shown by the media in each period. Results were not found to be significant in the case of support for the Palestinian position by the UK media (results not presented).

16. See http://www.america.gov