Benaissa, Amal
(2011)
BLOG.GOV: winning digital hearts and minds?: professionalization, personalization and ideology in foreign policy communication.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
Discussions of blogging as a form of political communication have mainly
centred on the context of election campaigns, national domestic issues, citizen
political blogging and mainstream media blogs. The rise of government
blogging as an alternative news source in the aftermath of the 2003 war in
Iraq, however, is much less addressed by scholars.
This thesis examines the case of the US State Department blog Dipnote in
order to study the dynamics of blogging as foreign policy communication and
public diplomacy. The focus of the analysis is on posts relating to the Middle
East, towards which US foreign policy attention was primarily geared after
9/11. The broader research question of this thesis attempts to determine the
relative importance of professionalization, personalization and ideology in
influencing the content on the official foreign policy blog of the U.S.
government, in order to advance the theoretical understanding of blogging in
the context of foreign policy communication and public diplomacy.
A content analysis of blog posts was conducted between the period of
September 2007, when the blog was launched, and March 2010. In addition
to this, several interviews were conducted with the management of the blog
at the State Department. Furthermore, by comparing the blog content under
the Bush and Obama administrations, this study was able to trace patterns of
continuities and discontinuities over time. The analytical framework is
adapted from Farrell and Webb’s (2002) professionalization framework, and
as such it breaks down the blog’s elements into technical, resource, and
thematic developments.
First, it is argued that the utilization of the blog as a cultural space is a new
interpretation for foreign policy communication not previously considered
in studies of government blogging in political communication or public
diplomacy research. Second, blogging enables a new form of official yet
casual communication which serves to legitimize American activities and
presence in the Middle East through personalization and de-ideologization of
content that make the blog a source of soft power. Third, the blog is a
“protected space” (adapted from Gumbrecht, 2004) where the government
maintains editorial control, low immediacy, low interactivity and low
engagement.
Overall, the findings point to the classic contradictions that the government
faces both offline and online in the digital era; between openness and
control, as well as secrecy and transparency, especially in the foreign policy
context. In conclusion, the analysis suggests that blogging is part of an
evolution and does not amount to a revolution in political communication
and public diplomacy. I thus argue that in their adoption of new technology,
the government moves from a new technology experimental phase to a new
technology consolidation phase.
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