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Using the theoretical frameworks of public diplomacy and public relations, we mapped how the Chinese government has used panda imagery to build its national brand on Twitter and how this ‘panda diplomacy’ has facilitated its para-diplomatic actions. Our findings uncover new attempts by the Chinese government to engage in digital diplomacy. Mobilizing panda imagery on Twitter enhanced friendly relations with foreign political leaders and people and established a friendly and peaceful image of China on Twitter.

The European External Action Service (EEAS) is a relatively new diplomatic service established in 2010. In previous analyses, the authors noted a dominance of security and foreign policy messages emanating from the EEAS, demonstrating the European Union (EU)'s negotiating power. It was clear it had discovered the benefits of public diplomacy, but rather practised traditional diplomacy on public diplomacy specific platforms. The authors aim to pursue the monitoring of the EEAS’ strategy, covering 2019 and 2020, to understand how the use of Twitter supports the evolution of the EU foreign policy.

Questioning if the EEAS is entering the second phase of its life cycle (launched in 2010, its introduction phase was under Katherine Ashton, 2009–2014, followed by Federica Mogherini, 2014–2019, and Josep Borrell, 2019–2024), the authors carried out a content analysis on 765 tweets. The authors used the MARPE Diplo methodological framework to compare how the EU uses public diplomacy through its EEAS to negotiate its own interests with non-EU parties under the presidency of Federica Mogherini (period 1), during the transition period (period 2) and under the presidency of Joseph Borrell (period 3).

Based on the comparison with their previous studies, the authors demonstrate that, over the years, the overall discourse of the EEAS is much more oriented towards public diplomacy.

The present study has two limitations. The first refers to the sampling of the participants involved in the citizen science experiment: they belong to a homogeneous age category and similar education level which might have biased their analysis. Second, the authors acknowledge the usual limitations linked to citizen science. However, the authors acknowledge a growing emphasis on the outcomes for society involving citizens and including partnerships between the public and scientists as well as an increased public engagement in policy processes.

The research leads into new insights regarding the European-centred translation of the EEAS messages, compared to the off-centred view of non-European contributors.

The citizen science approach allows to integrate the targeted public to apply public diplomacy content analysis.

This case study is based on the principles of citizen science and demonstrates the importance of an off-centred approach in the analysis of the practices of public diplomacy.

Stakeholder relations has been largely based upon a two-way public relations model. Along with this change, business diplomacy emerged as a proposal to renew stakeholder management. It is still uncertain if this proposal adds value to stakeholder management, which this study seeks to clarify.

Corporate representatives in charge of stakeholder management were invited to participate in an online survey measuring both public relations and business diplomacy activities. With a sample of 104 companies, factorial analyses were conducted on public relations and business diplomacy activities comparing model quality.

This study finds that public relations and business diplomacy activities share identity but not to the point of being fused and are thus different in nature. The best model showed three overarching functions (communication, influence and intelligence) implying that stakeholder management needs both public relations and business diplomacy.

Findings suggest both public relations and business diplomacy research should be included in advanced stakeholder management studies.

By acknowledging the role that business diplomacy plays in stakeholder management, companies may place influence at the core of the renewed stakeholder management strategy to better deal with the increasingly complex business environment.

This study adds clarity to the role of public relations and business diplomacy in stakeholder management based on actual activities developed in organizations and reveals the underlying dimensions of communication, influence and intelligence.

While propaganda was central to U.S. public diplomacy in earlier times, and remains central today, the United States must now practice true public diplomacy, which should rely, not only on political theory and the theories of international relations, but also on theories and models of public relations that are based on two‐way symmetrical communication and community‐building. A propaganda model centers the United States at the hub of the global milieu in its relationships with other nations, i.e., a diplomatic worldview in which the ‘spokes’ of America's communication and relationships radiate outward to satellites of stakeholders; in contrast, the United States is not centered so self‐importantly in a community‐building model. Rather, this model recognizes that America is only one part of a global social system. America's public diplomacy must recognize that the United States' global constituents are ‘publics,’ not ‘markets,’ and that an effective public diplomacy model must be one that is not propaganda or market‐oriented advocacy, but one that is based on two‐way symmetrical communication and community‐building.

In recent years, expectations for demonstrating the impact of public diplomacy programs have dramatically increased. Despite increased calls for enhanced monitoring and evaluation, what texts exist on the subject suggest the state of practice is grim. However, while the current debate is based mostly on practice reports, conceptual work from academics or anecdotal evidence, we are missing empirical insights on current views of monitoring and evaluation from practitioners. Such a practice-level perspective is central for better understanding factors that may actually drive or hamper performance evaluation in day-to-day public diplomacy work. The purpose of this paper is to update knowledge on the state of evaluation practice within public diplomacy from the perspectives of practitioners themselves.

This study assesses the state of evaluation in public diplomacy through qualitative interviews with public diplomacy officers working for the US Department of State – a method heretofore unused in studies of the topic. In total, 25 in-depth interviews were conducted with officers in Washington, DC and at posts around the world.

The interviews suggest that practitioners see evaluation as underfunded despite increased demands for accountability. Further, the results show a previously not discussed tension between diplomacy practitioners in Washington, DC and those in the field. Practitioners are also unclear about the goals of public diplomacy, which has implications for the enactment of targeted evaluations.

The research uncovers the perceptions of evaluation from the voices of those who must practice it, and elaborates on the common obstacles in the enactment of public diplomacy, the influence of multiple actors and stakeholders on evaluation practice, as well as the perceived goals of public diplomacy programming. No empirical research has considered the state of evaluation practice. Moreover, the study uses qualitative interview data from public diplomacy officers themselves, an under-used method in public diplomacy research. The findings provide insights that contribute to future public diplomacy strategy and performance management.

A number of scholars including Benno Signitzer and Jacquie L'Etang have proposed public diplomacy as an alternative model to describe and/or inform the practices of public relations. However, international relations and political science scholars claim major differences between public diplomacy and PR, and few studies have sought to reconcile these claims and counter‐claims. The purpose of this paper is to report a comparative analysis of key concepts and principles of public diplomacy.

This article reports a comparative analysis of key concepts and principles of public diplomacy and the “new diplomacy” as described by Shaun Riordan and public relations (PR) as defined in Excellence theory and other contemporary models of PR to identify commonalties as well as divergences, and discusses how these can inform PR theory and practice.

This analysis shows similarities between these fields of practice, as well as six unique concepts and principles of public diplomacy and “new diplomacy” that inform corporate diplomacy and organisational diplomacy as an alternative paradigm to “public relations”.

Reconceptualising PR as corporate and organisational diplomacy involves much more than a name change. It recasts PR within alternative theoretical frameworks that are significantly different to those of dominant paradigms of PR and informs new and refined approaches to practice.

Adopting the concepts and principles of public diplomacy and “new diplomacy” also would provide a more ethical and societally‐orientated approach to PR.

Most studies comparing public diplomacy and PR have focussed on commonalities with a view to expanding PR's territorial claim or gaining validation of PR. This analysis takes the opposite approach, identifying concepts and principles of public diplomacy and “new diplomacy” that contribute to an alternative paradigm of PR that is more effective, more societally‐orientated, more ethical, and ultimately more publicly accepted.

The aim of this study was to examine the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak and the international communication management of Chinese diplomats as a case for extending the definition of intermestic public diplomacy. The goal was to reveal how Beijing subtly used both domestic and foreign social media to organize a network for communication about COVID-19 and purposefully soften the highly centralized and hierarchical political propaganda of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Based on the literature on digital public diplomacy, the authors applied the existing concept of intermestic to Chinese politics in order to demonstrate the digitalization of public diplomacy, along with its forms and strategies under an authoritarian regime. A hybrid methodology combining quantitative network analysis and qualitative discourse analysis permits examination of China's intermestic online communication network dynamics, shedding light on how such an intermestic practice promoted Chinese values and power to international publics in the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis.

The authors’ findings extend the implications of intermestic public diplomacy from a democratic context to an authoritarian one. By analyzing the content of public diplomacy and para-diplomatic social media accounts in China and abroad at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, the authors outlined China's early crisis management, explaining its intermestic public diplomacy transmission modes and strategies. Moreover, the authors identified changes in the narrative strategies of Chinese diplomats and journalists during this process.

The findings of this study underline that Beijing established a narrative-making virtual communication structure for disseminating favorable Chinese strategic narratives and voices through differentiated communication on domestic and foreign social media platforms. Such intermestic communication strategies were particularly evident and even further weaponized by Beijing in its large-scale Wolf Warrior diplomacy in the spring of 2020. Thus, the study’s findings help readers understand how China digitalized its public diplomacy, its digital communication patterns and strategies.

On the one hand, geopolitical uncertainty and the popularity of social media have contributed to the evolution of the intermestic model of public diplomacy. This model allows actors to coordinate homogenous and differentiated communication practices to deploy their influence. On the other hand, the authors did not examine how intermestic audiences perceive and receive public diplomacy practices. In future studies, scholars should measure the agenda-setting capacity of diplomatic actors by examining the effects of such intermestic communication efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the growing public diplomacy literature as it focuses on the crucial, but so far largely unnoticed negative dimension of public diplomacy by analyzing information campaigns targeting unwanted people as one instrument of public diplomacy.

Using the cases of Australia and Germany this paper analyses the public diplomacy narratives of these two countries and contrasts those with the messages both countries communicate to potential migrants/refuges through a number of information campaigns. Based on this assessment the paper highlights the negative dimension of public diplomacy and discusses how this negative dimension influences the conduct of public diplomacy.

Both cases clearly exemplify that public diplomacy is no altruistic affair and that public diplomacy is facing new challenges due to this concurrence of opposing images it aims to communicate. It further illustrates that this negative dimension not only challenges the understanding of public diplomacy, but at the same time exemplifies a communicative predicament which, it is argued, cannot be solved satisfactory and requires a trade-off between deterrence and attraction. The predicament arises from the dichotomy of presenting a positive image of a country to produce endorsement and sympathy as well as to attract tourists and investment, while at the same time communicating a negative image to deter uninvited people from entering the country.

Referring to this communicative predicament, the paper suggests that those campaigns are unrewarding for two reasons: first, they apparently do not achieve their objectives and at the same time undermine other public diplomacy initiatives.

The paper highlights the normally neglected fact that public diplomacy is not only concerned with presenting a positive image of a country and winning hearts and minds, but that public diplomacy also has a negative dimension which needs more academic analysis and practitioner’s attention.

The purpose of this article is to compare the American and British approaches to public diplomacy and the impact that has on the role of business.

Since the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, both the UK and US governments have been examining their public diplomacy activities with a view to a more effective use of their resources as well as the involvement of other parties. Given the strength of the economic relationship between these two countries, it is instructive to compare their resulting definitions of public diplomacy to attitudes found in the transatlantic business community. To that end, their current definitions of public diplomacy will be examined in light of data gathered from business survey of transatlantic companies conducted by UK Trade and Investment and BritishAmerican Business Inc. as well as views from those working in public diplomacy.

The US has increasingly taken a view of public diplomacy that conflates its political diplomatic agenda concerned with national interest and security with its general outreach in terms of information and dialogue. This makes it more difficult for business to effectively support broader public diplomacy objectives.

This paper provides a different view of US public diplomacy activities that may be a useful guide in revising their approach so as to make it more similar to the UK version which values more of a separation between political and public diplomacy.

The purpose of the article is to set the broader conceptual context for the exploration of the role of business in public diplomacy in this special issue of the Journal of Business Strategy.

This article reviews the development of the public diplomacy concept, and point out its current gaps in light of the profound transformation in the global society. The article then discusses the linkage and relevance to the business community.

The article highlights that public diplomacy is not a unitary but a multi‐dimensional concept, and argues for selective engagement by the private sector, that is not only desirable but also feasible. The value propositions global business can bring to the process include a global world‐view, managerial practice, and communication competence and other resources. It also explains areas of public diplomacy that they may play a part in.

This paper provides the theoretical grounding for businesses' involvement in public diplomacy.