Keywords

1 Introduction

Public diplomacy research in the realm of communication science has increased significantly since 2009 (Sevin et al. 2019), particularly in public relations and strategic organizational communication studies. Public diplomacy is generally conceived as a strategic communication instrument comprising different communication methods to inform and engage with foreign publics in order to advance the interests of nation-states (Gregory 2008; Snow 2009). In this regard, public diplomacy efforts seek to contribute to positive attitudes and beliefs toward a nation, its citizens, and its economic or political affairs. This may result in a positive country image (White 2015) as well as the attraction of foreign publics, for instance, through appealing policies, cultures, and values, which can be referred to as soft power (Melissen 1999; Nye 2004). While one research strand describes public diplomacy as the exclusive instrument of nation-states or governments (Signitzer and Coombs 1992; Snow 2009), a second research strand also includes non-state actors who communicate with foreign publics (Cull 2009; Gilboa 1998; L’Etang 2009; Wang 2006), thereby consciously or unconsciously contributing to (home) country interests (White 2015) or the organizational goals of other actors (Cull 2009).

Public diplomacy significantly overlaps with (international) public relationsFootnote 1 in terms of the focus on the role of public diplomacy in fostering mutual understanding between nation-states and building long-term relationships between international actors and nations and their foreign publics (Fitzpatrick 2007; Gregory 2008). In order to promote mutual interests, influence the perception of a country, or negotiate on the international level, the media, including social media and global news coverage on countries and government officials, play an essential role (Gilboa 1998, 2001). In addition to media-induced communication, public diplomacy includes communication in the context of policy decision-making, strategic communication such as communication through government official websites, and international events (Nye 2004), all aiming to inform, advocate, and engage (Fitzpatrick 2007).

In this chapter, I adapt the first research perspective and focus on research on public diplomacy as the communication efforts of a nation (including those of the government itself and institutions that speak on behalf of the government) in advancing national interests and, ultimately, affecting the perception of a nation. In this regard, previous research has examined either subjects (communicators of public diplomacy messages) or objectives of public diplomacy communication.

2 Commonly used research designs in public diplomacy research

A recent meta-analysis of public diplomacy research demonstrated the increasing prominence of public diplomacy research across various research fields, with communication studies making up the highest number of public diplomacy studies since 1965 (Sevin et al. 2019). Research in this field has mainly focused on analyzing how countries and their related entities are portrayed in newspapers or represent themselves over long periods (Metzgar and Su 2017; Golan and Lukito 2017; Rettig and Avraham 2016; Zhang et al. 2016), during political (O’Boyle 2019) or sporting (Zhou et al. 2013) events, or in times of conflict or crisis (Jungblut 2017; Sheafer et al. 2014) in order to come to conclusions about agenda-building effects and implications for the perceived country image. However, only a few scholars have actually investigated the public and their reactions to public diplomacy communication efforts, or the relationships between public diplomacy actors and their publics, to show evidence of their interactions, for instance, on social media (Park and Lim 2014; Samuel-Azran et al. 2019; Zhong and Lu 2013) and the construction of a country’s image (e.g., through Google Search, see Ingenhoff et al. 2020).

Public diplomacy research uses different research designs, including quantitative content analysis (e.g., Collins et al. 2019; Lee 2007; Zhang et al. 2018) and qualitative analysis (e.g., Avraham 2014) or, occasionally, a mixture of the two (Golan 2013; Rettig and Avraham 2016; White and Radic 2014). Although an increasing amount of potential research data, particularly social media content, has been examined using automated content analysis, to date, this method has only played a minor role in public diplomacy research (Huang and Wang 2019; Sheafer et al. 2014). Furthermore, scholars have combined content analysis with other methods, particularly network analysis, in order to further explore key influencers, opinion leaders, or alliances in public diplomacy communities as well as information flows (e.g., Park and Lim 2014; Sevin and Ingenhoff 2018; Yang and Taylor 2014). Other methods used in combination with content analysis are employed only occasionally, including surveys that allow researchers to attribute public diplomacy messaging strategies to the effects on the perceptions of a country (e.g., Ingenhoff et al. 2020; Zhang et al. 2016). Moreover, scholars have analyzed frames as a way of drawing conclusions about how particular issues related to a country are portrayed (e.g., Golan and Lukito 2017) or the extent to which a country is depicted as a friend or enemy (Golan 2013). However, previous public diplomacy research using content analysis has been dominated by descriptive quantitative research designs.

As the meta-analysis of Sevin and colleagues (2019) revealed, most researchers employ case studies of specific countries when it comes to research on public diplomacy, which has been dominated by studies on China (e.g., Golan and Lukito 2017; Huang and Wang 2019; Zhang et al. 2016). In addition to the focus on Chinese public diplomacy, scholars have frequently explored public diplomacy in Russia (e.g., Golan and Viatchaninov 2013; Simons 2014), the United States (e.g., Entman 2008), and Western European countries (mainly Germany and the United Kingdom) (e.g., Jungblut 2017; Zhou et al. 2013).

3 Main constructs employed in content analyses on public diplomacy

Previous research has often conceptualized public diplomacy as one-way communication and, therefore, mainly analyzed traditional mass media outlets as the primary senders of country-related information (Bonomi and Pan 2013; Golan 2013; Golan and Lukito 2017; Metzgar and Su 2017; Rettig and Avraham 2016; Zhou et al. 2013). Most of these studies focused on all sections of a newspaper, while a few scholars took a closer look at opinion-emphasizing newspaper sections, including the editorial and “op-ed” (i.e., opposite the editorial page). These studies sought to find out more about the valence of issues involved and recurring media frames in order to show the implications of international public opinion regarding countries or country-related events (Golan 2013; Golan and Lukito 2017).

With digitalization, new communication technologies, and new opportunities to communicate with foreign publics, research has increasingly examined public diplomacy in the context of social media and other digital communication channels. In this regard, research has been conducted on the organizational level, examining social media accounts, embassy websites (Dodd and Collins 2017; Zhong and Lu 2013), ministries of foreign affairs (Song and Bian 2016; White and Radic 2014), and official governmental agencies (Yang and Taylor 2014). On the individual level, research has explored the public diplomacy communication strategies of government officials through their websites, micro-blogs, or social media accounts (Huang and Wang 2019; O’Boyle 2019).

Based on the literature reviewed above, the research on public diplomacy is diverse in terms of research topics, objects, and methods. However, only a few constructs and variables have been similarly explored through or in combination with content analysis. Commonly used constructs are presented below.

  1. 1.

    General occurrence and salience of themes: Numerous studies have analyzed topics in the news coverage concerning foreign countries, foreign country policies, or events taking place in foreign countries (e.g., Bonomi and Pan 2013; Jungblut 2017; Zhang et al. 2018; Zhou et al. 2013). Similarly, other scholars have focused on the salience of topics that governments or government representatives discuss on their official channels when speaking to foreign publics (Zhong and Lu 2013). These studies indicate that traditional media coverage about specific countries varies significantly. Overall, the news media has often depicted countries’ culture and heritage, including sports and music (Zhou et al. 2013), along with political and economic topics (Golan and Lukito 2017), while government-led communication has focused on bilateral relations and country politics along with cultural exchanges (Zhong and Lu 2013).

  2. 2.

    Evaluation of topics: Previous studies have examined how certain country-related topics are evaluated, including issue frames and issue tone, in order to draw conclusions about the perception of the country and its representatives, which may affect diplomatic relations (Bonomi and Pan 2013; Golan and Lukito 2017; Metzgar and Su 2017). For instance, scholars have explored how issues that might be critical for international diplomatic relationships—such as corruption, bilateral differences, or political reforms—are framed in foreign news media (Bonomi and Pan 2013; Golan and Lukito 2017). Bonomi and Pan (2013) found that the negative media portrayals of the diplomatic relationship between the Venezuelan and U.S. governments remained the same over a research period of eight years. They concluded that issue frames relating to countries hardly changed over time, affecting their image in the long term (Bonomi and Pan 2013). Similarly, Golan and Lukito (2017) found that the same issue frames occurred across media outlets in the case of news coverage on China in leading U.S. media outlets (Golan and Lukito 2017).

  3. 3.

    Visibility and prominence of actors: Studies have explored important actors that are either presented in news media coverage or governments’ public diplomacy messages (Jungblut 2017; Sevin and Ingenhoff 2018; Zhang et al. 2018). Moreover, studies have examined actors serving as sources of public diplomacy messages, such as diplomats, government agencies, and non-state actors. For instance, Jungblut (2017) found that government-led communication mostly focused on actors of their own government.

  4. 4.

    Evaluation of governmental/diplomatic actors: Some studies have explored how public diplomacy actors are characterized and evaluated by foreign news media (Bonomi and Pan 2013; Zhang et al. 2018) or social media users (O’Boyle 2019). For instance, O’Boyle (2019) showed that the Twitter comments of foreign presidents during diplomatic visits differed in tone depending on the home or foreign country public. Accordingly, participants tended to comment on their home country diplomats in a more positive way and in a more neutral way on foreign diplomats. Bonomi and Pan (2013) revealed that the attribution of foreign politicians could change over time, for instance, from portraying a president as “a military man” to an enemy of a foreign country.

  5. 5.

    Networks of public diplomacy actors and their publics: In order to examine how public diplomacy actors connect with their publics, previous research has examined the relationships and networks of these actors, mostly by analyzing the social media accounts of politicians (Huang and Wang 2019; Sevin and Ingenhoff 2018; Yang and Taylor 2014). Studies have found that, in general, public diplomacy communication reaches a wide variety of other important actors, particularly on social media (Huang and Wang 2019; Sevin and Ingenhoff 2018). Yang and Taylor (2014) explored the communication networks of Chinese government officials by identifying key participants (Chinese government agencies, international and Chinese NGOs) and the structural characteristics of the public diplomacy network, measured as similarities among actors and events. They indicated that particularly international NGOs are of great relevance to the government’s public diplomacy efforts due to the perceived credibility and expertise of NGOs (Yang and Taylor 2014).

  6. 6.

    Framing of country-related themes: Analyses of frames on public diplomacy communication have been broadly utilized, with the application of different approaches to framing (Golan 2013; Jungblut 2017; Yang and Taylor 2014). Some studies have applied Entmans’ (1993) definition of frames by analyzing framing elements, including problem definition and problem solution (Golan and Lukito 2017; Jungblut 2017; Rettig and Avraham 2016). Others have used Iyengar’s (1996) framing approach and examined emerging thematic and episodic frames (Metzgar and Su 2017) to detect how certain topics are presented. Overall, prior research has found that issue frames of a certain topic or conflict differ between government-led public diplomacy and news coverage on foreign countries (Jungblut 2017) but are similar across media outlets (Golan and Lukito 2017). Moreover, media frames can change over time due to the communication efforts of external, non-governmental actors, such as the United Nations, in emphasizing the role of non-state actors in public diplomacy (Metzgar and Su 2017).

  7. 7.

    Public diplomacy modes: One study (Dodd and Collins 2017) compared the public diplomacy approaches of various embassies by analyzing the different modes of public diplomacy based on the public diplomacy model (Cull 2008): advocacy, listening, international news broadcasting, cultural diplomacy, and exchange diplomacy. Dodd and Collins (2017) found that the public diplomacy efforts of Western European embassies mostly consisted of advocating for particular country policies among foreign publics, while Central Eastern European embassies mostly engaged in the promotion of cultural goods.

  8. 8.

    Country image: Most studies have only implicitly drawn conclusions about the effects of public diplomacy on the public perception of a country by content analyzing media coverage or government-led communication. However, a few studies have explored public communication concerning countries in order to explore which dimensions of a country’s image can be identified in country-related content on Twitter (Sevin and Ingenhoff 2018) or through search engines such as Google (Ingenhoff et al. 2020). According to the existing research, when talking or thinking about a country, people mostly relate it to functional aspects such as politics and economics as well as cultural and nature-related characteristics (Ingenhoff et al. 2020; Sevin and Ingenhoff 2018), depending on geographical proximity (Ingenhoff et al. 2020).

4 Research desiderata

Although the number of studies on public diplomacy has increased considerably in the last ten years, the field is still relatively young in comparison to other subfields in the domain of communication and media studies (Sevin et al. 2019). Therefore, empirical studies and the application of content analysis are not yet as diverse as in other communication and media studies fields. This is also reflected in the small variety of actors investigated in the existing studies. The majority of studies still focus on traditional mass media or the same countries and regions. In times of increased usage of digital media for entertainment or “infotainment,” this dearth of research calls for further studies on social media and entertainment-oriented media as well as studies focusing on communication channels other than text-based ones, including audio-visual analyses on television, YouTube, and Instagram.

Moreover, future content analyses should make greater use of longitudinal data and compare different points in time in order to better understand the evolution and institutionalization of public diplomacy as well as the positive and negative developments or trends in specific public diplomacy cases. There is also a need for research on non-Western countries. In addition, as outlined earlier, previous research has not yet exhausted the social media opportunities relating to the study of public diplomacy. Content analysis, in combination with network analysis, offers various opportunities for examining the interactions and relationships between governments, international NGOs, corporations, media, individual journalists, and/or citizens on social media. Thus, future research could analyze how messages emerge, spread, and change within networks or which actors are involved in these dynamics. Therefore, future research should account for additional actors, including government and media actors (e.g., Rettig and Avraham 2016; Sevin and Ingenhoff 2018).

Finally, previous content analyses have tried to attribute the potential effects of public diplomacy communication to the public perceptions of countries. So far, only a few studies have combined content analysis with other methods, such as surveys (Ingenhoff et al. 2020; White and Radic 2014; Zhang et al. 2016), and the analysis of Google Search (Ingenhoff et al. 2020) to understand how public diplomacy communication may influence citizens’ views of government officials and entire countries. These studies have demonstrated the value of combining content analysis with other methods in public diplomacy research and call for further research applying mixed-methods designs.

Relevant Variables in DOCA—Database of Variables for Content Analysis