5.3: Over the weekend, Jim Hoagland wrote about President Obama and social media. Here is a great quote that nicely interacts with my post about Obama and twitter (my emphasis added). H/T Mountainrunner.
. . . Macon Phillips, the affable young Internet specialist in charge of the White House’s new-media office.
He seemed unsure as well. “But I don’t think the president is the right person for this. There are better ways to engage the micro-blogging community,” he told me, explaining at another point: “We try to find the audiences where they are, and deliver the president’s message to them at the best delivery point.” That now includes Twitter, where the White House established an institutional presence last week.
The targets include audiences worldwide. Establishing direct strategic presidential communication with the populations of other countries — especially other countries ruled by hostile governments — is a top foreign policy priority for the new administration.
5,5: Over at HufPo, Sheldon Himelfarb and Tara Sonenshine of the USIP wrote a short op-ed describing both the importance and difficulty of the job facing future Undersecretary McHale. This op-ed is short on details, but it is good to see more press calling for aggressive public diplomacy.
5.4/5.5: Fred Kaplan entered the best IR film discussion and Drezner responds.
5.6: TNR’s the Plank found this fantastic ad for Schweppes featuring Nicole Kidman and Slumdog Millionaire’s Rubiana Ali. I am always fascinated to see Hollywood celebrities partake in foreign advertisements. It is interesting to view the interaction between their fame and the cultural proclivities of foreign markets.
[...] President Obama and the possibilities of engaging foreign publics via micro-blogging. Recently, I posted a link to Jim Hogland’s editorial about this very subject. Today, I discovered this [...]