ABSTRACT
Public diplomacy (PD) may be defined as how governments manage their presence abroad. The University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy defines PD as traditionally including “government-sponsored cultural, educational and informational programs, citizen exchanges and broadcasts used to promote the national interest of a country through understanding, informing, and influencing foreign audiences.” The Center reminds us not to disregard a nation’s “soft” power-its oblique yet powerful foreign influence through movies, music, popular culture, and business advertising.1 It’s no secret that the United States is not the most popular team in town in most of the rest of the world-Europeans sneer at us, Islamists condemn us. So American PD may be viewed as the formal effort by the U.S. government to polish its scuffed-up image overseas: to change how foreigners see and understand us.
