Public diplomacy, multimodality and the world-wide web

Giuliana Garzone, Chiara Degano POLITICAL COMMUNICATION ON THE WEB: THE CASE OF PUBLIC DIPLOMACY In recent times, the Web has qualified as a powerful strategic resource in political communication. In particular, in foreign policy it is central to any effort aimed at reaching foreign audiences pervasively, also in areas of the world which – for various reasons – are otherwise problematic to access. The paper focuses on the use of web-mediated resources in public diplomacy and nation branding, and is essentially guided by questions concerning the effectiveness of the strategies enacted to exploit hypermedia computer-mediated communication (Hoffman/Novak 1996) and its affordances for political purposes. It uses the website of the US State Department as the main case study, looking also for reasons of comparison at the websites of some other countries engaged in a world-level public diplomacy effort (China, Australia, Canada). In light of the findings of a previous preliminary study (Garzone/Degano 2010), it will discuss choices regarding technical options, and in particular the layout and the semiotic organization of websites, i.e. those aspects that materially condition the way users can explore them (subdivision into sections, links, pre-established inner navigation paths, the selection of moves and semiotic resources - text, pictures, video, interactive options, web 2.0 applications). The weight and importance of these factors for the success of public diplomacy and nation branding efforts will be evaluated as there are reasons to believe that they affect crucially a country’s capacity to open a dialogue with foreign audiences and foreign cultures (cf., among others, Zaharna, 2004; Peterson et al. 2002), above all those that are most distant from Western culture and therefore more attractive for public diplomacy efforts. The basic methodological framework of this study is in the area of critical discourse analysis, which provides instruments to identify and highlight the discursive – and often ideological – relevance of linguistic choices at all levels, including the microstructural one. The exploration of the use of hypermedia web-mediated resources will mainly rely on principles put forth in recent studies applying discourse analysis to multimodality, usually grouped under the denomination “multimodal analysis” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001, 1996/2006; O’Halloran, 2004; LeVine & Scollon, 2004; Iedema 2003; Garzone 2007). Some useful tools will also be drawn from the sociological and political literature on public diplomacy (e.g. Leonard 2004; Blankey, Dale & Horn, 2008; Gilboa, 2008) and nation branding (Anholt & Hildreth, 2004; d’Hoghe 2007; van Ham, 2008; Potter forth.).