Defining Strategic Publics in a Networked World: Public Diplomacy’s Challenge at Home and Abroad
In: The Hague Journal of DiplomacySearch for other papers by Kathy R. Fitzpatrick in
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Summary
This article addresses the issue of how strategic publics should be defined in public diplomacy. The article first reviews widely accepted theories of stakeholders and publics in business and public relations that help to explain the role and value of publics to organizations and provide alternatives for the conceptualization of strategic publics. It applies these concepts to public diplomacy in an effort to demonstrate their potential usefulness in identifying and prioritizing strategic publics at home and abroad. The article then suggests that although stakeholder theory and situational theory are useful tools for conceptualizing strategic publics in public diplomacy, these theories must be expanded to capture fully the complex nature of the contemporary diplomatic environment. An expanded framework that is based on networks of influence is suggested as an alternative for defining public diplomacy publics in a networked world.
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4)
Jeong-Nam Kim, Lan Ni and Bey-Ling Sha, ‘Breaking Down the Stakeholder Environment: Explicating Approaches to the Segmentation of Publics for Public Relations Research’, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 85 no. 4, 2008, pp. 751-768.
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5)
Kim, Ni and Sha, ‘Breaking Down the Stakeholder Environment’, pp. 751-768.
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6)
Brad L. Rawlins, Prioritizing Stakeholders for Public Relations (New York: Institute for Public Rela-tions, 2006), p. 13.
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Eytan Gilboa, ‘Searching for a Theory of Public Diplomacy’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, vol. 616, 2008, pp. 55-77.
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R. Edward Freeman, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 25.
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Ruairi Brugha and Zsuzsa Varvasovszky, ‘Stakeholder Analysis: A Review’, Health Policy and Plan-ning, vol. 15, no. 3, 2000, pp. 239-246, at p. 239.
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R. Edward Freeman and David L. Reed, ‘Stockholders and Stakeholders: A New Perspective on Corporate Governance’, California Management Review, vol. 25, no. 3, 1983, pp. 88-106.
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Kim, Ni and Sha, ‘Breaking Down the Stakeholder Environment’, p. 52.
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Grunig and Repper, ‘Strategic Management, Publics, and Issues’, p. 128.
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Rawlins, Prioritizing Stakeholders for Public Relations, p. 3.
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18)
Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, The Future of US Public Diplomacy: An Uncertain Fate (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2010), p. 120.
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See, for example, J. Edward Freeman, ‘Stakeholder Influence Strategies’, Academy of Management Review, vol. 24, no. 2, 1999, pp. 191-205.
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James E. Grunig and Todd Hunt, Managing Public Relations (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984).
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James E. Grunig, ‘Situational Theory of Publics’, Encyclopedia of Public Relations (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), 778-780; see also James E. Grunig and Fred C. Repper, ‘Strategic Management, Publics and Issues’, in James E. Grunig (ed.) Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992), pp. 117-157, at p. 125.
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Jeong-Nam Kim and James E. Grunig, ‘Problem Solving and Communicative Action: A Situational Theory of Problem Solving’, Journal of Communication, vol. 61, no. 1, 2011, pp. 120-149.
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Grunig and Repper, ‘Strategic Management, Publics and Issues’, p. 138.
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Kirk Hallahan, ‘Inactive Publics: The Forgotten Publics in Public Relations’, Public Relations Review, vol. 26, no. 4, 2000, pp. 499-515.
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Rawlins, Prioritizing Stakeholders for Public Relations, p. 7.
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Rawlins, Prioritizing Stakeholders for Public Relations, p. 8.
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Rawlins, Prioritizing Stakeholders for Public Relations, pp. 8-9.
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Rawlins, Prioritizing Stakeholders for Public Relations, p. 9.
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Rawlins, Prioritizing Stakeholders for Public Relations, p. 11.
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Timothy J. Rowley, ‘Moving Beyond Dyadic Ties: A Network Theory of Stakeholder Influences’, The Academy of Management Review, vol. 22, no. 4, 1997, pp. 887-910, at p. 890.
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Springston, Keyton, Leichty and Metzger, ‘Field Dynamics and Public Relations Theory’, p. 83.
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John A Ledingham, ‘Explicating Relationship Management as a General Theory of Public Relations’, Journal of Public Relations Research, vol. 15, no. 2, 2003, p. 182.
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For exceptions, see Ellen Huijgh, ‘Changing Tunes for Public Diplomacy: Exploring the Domestic Dimension’, Exchange: The Journal of Public Diplomacy, vol. 2, 2011, pp. 62-73; Evan Potter, Branding Canada: Projecting Canada’s Soft Power through Public Diplomacy (Montreal, QC and Kingston, ON: McGill–Queens University Press, 2009), p. 55.
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Fitzpatrick, US Public Diplomacy’s Neglected Domestic Mandate, p. 15.
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Nigel de Bussy and Lorissa Kelly, ‘Stakeholders, Politics and Power: Towards an Understanding of Stakeholder Identification and Salience in Government’, Journal of Communication Management, vol. 14, no. 4, 2010, pp. 289-305, at p. 289.
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De Bussy and Kelly, ‘Stakeholders, Politics and Power’, p. 301.
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De Bussy and Kelly, ‘Stakeholders, Politics and Power’, p. 301.
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Potter, Branding Canada, p. 56; see also Fitzpatrick, US Public Diplomacy’s Neglected Domestic Mandate.
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Brian Hocking, ‘Reconfiguring Public Diplomacy: From Competition to Collaboration’, in Engagement: Public Diplomacy in a Globalised World (London: Foreign Commonwealth Office, 2008), p. 71.
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Anne Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
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Anne Marie Slaughter, ‘A New Theory for the Foreign Policy Frontier: Collaborative Power’, The Atlantic online, 30 November 2011, accessed online at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/a-new-theory-for-the-foreign-policy-frontier-collaborative-power/249260/.
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Jan Melissen, Beyond the New Public Diplomacy, Clingendael Paper No. 3 (The Hague: Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’, 2011), p. 22.
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See, for example, John A. Ledingham, ‘Explicating Relationship Management as a General Theory of Public Relations’, Journal of Public Relations Research, vol. 15, no. 2, 2003, pp. 181-198, at p. 182.
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Manuel Castells, ‘The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication, Networks, and Global Governance’, The ANNALS of the American Political Science Association, vol. 616, pp. 78-93, 2008.
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Charles C. Self, ‘Hegel, Habermas, and Community: The Public in the New Media Era’, International Journal of Strategic Communication, vol. 4, pp. 78-92, 2010.
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116)
Jim Murphy, ‘Engagement’, in Engagement: Public Diplomacy in a Globalized World (London: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 2008), p. 11.
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Defining Strategic Publics in a Networked World: Public Diplomacy’s Challenge at Home and Abroad
In: The Hague Journal of DiplomacySearch for other papers by Kathy R. Fitzpatrick in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Summary
This article addresses the issue of how strategic publics should be defined in public diplomacy. The article first reviews widely accepted theories of stakeholders and publics in business and public relations that help to explain the role and value of publics to organizations and provide alternatives for the conceptualization of strategic publics. It applies these concepts to public diplomacy in an effort to demonstrate their potential usefulness in identifying and prioritizing strategic publics at home and abroad. The article then suggests that although stakeholder theory and situational theory are useful tools for conceptualizing strategic publics in public diplomacy, these theories must be expanded to capture fully the complex nature of the contemporary diplomatic environment. An expanded framework that is based on networks of influence is suggested as an alternative for defining public diplomacy publics in a networked world.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1693 | 339 | 23 |
| Full Text Views | 356 | 51 | 4 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 379 | 71 | 9 |
