Eytan Gilboa

Searching for a Theory of Public Diplomacy

This work presents and critically evaluates attempts to theorize and conceptualize public diplomacy within several disciplines, including international relations, strategic studies, diplomatic studies, public relations, and communication. It also examines research methods used to investigate public diplomacy, including models, paradigms, case studies, and comparative analysis. The work identifies promising directions as well as weaknesses and gaps in existing knowledge and methodology and outlines a new research agenda. The presented analysis and examples suggest that only a systematic multidisciplinary effort and close collaboration between researchers and practitioners can lead to a coherent theory of public diplomacy.

The CNN Effect: The Search for a Communication Theory of International Relations

This study investigates the decade long effort to construct and validate a communications theory of international relations that asserts that global television networks, such as CNN and BBC World, have become a decisive actor in determining policies and outcomes of significant events. It systematically and critically analyzes major works published on this theory, known also as the CNN effect, both in professional and academic outlets. These publications include theoretical and comparative works, specific case studies, and even new paradigms. The study reveals an ongoing debate on the validity of this theory and concludes that studies have yet to present sufficient evidence validating the CNN effect, that many works have exaggerated this effect, and that the focus on this theory has deflected attention from other ways global television affects mass communication, journalism, and international relations. The article also proposes a new agenda for research on the various effects of global television networks.

Diplomacy in the media age: Three models of uses and effects

This study offers three conceptual models to promote systematic research into uses of the media as a major instrument of foreign policy and international negotiations: public diplomacy, where state and nonstate actors use the media and other channels of communication to influence public opinion in foreign societies; media diplomacy, where officials use the media to communicate with actors and to promote conflict resolution; and media‐broker diplomacy, where journalists temporarily assume the role of diplomats and serve as mediators in international negotiations. The first two models, while previously defined, undergo serious revision in this study. The third model is new. This article demonstrates the analytical usefulness of the models through applications to various examples and case studies of significant contemporary diplomatic processes.

Public Diplomacy: The Missing Component in Israel's Foreign Policy

Israel maintained a positive image and reputation abroad from 1948 to 1967 and during the few periods of constructive negotiations in the Arab– Israeli conflict, including the 1977–1979 Israeli–Egyptian peace process and the 1993–1994 Oslo negotiations. During the 1991 Gulf War, Israel also garnered sympathy in the international community because it refrained from retaliating against Iraqi missile attacks on its major cities. However, since the outbreak the second intifada or the Palestinian–Israeli war (PIW) in September 2000, Israel’s reputation abroad has dramatically deteriorated. Israel is the only nation in the world whose right to exist is constantly being challenged, and whose ancient capital, Jerusalem, is unrecognized by all but a few states. Israeli leaders are often compared to leaders of Nazi Germany, and Israeli actions against the Palestinians are often described as Nazi-like policies. Conditions in Israel and the Palestinian territories are often compared with those that existed in apartheid South Africa. The main goal of these comparisons is to demonize, dehumanize and de-legitimize Israel. The UN, and most other international organizations, has systematically discriminated against Israel and disproportionately attacked its policies. NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, frequently criticize Israel while ignoring serious human rights violations on the part of Arabs and Palestinians. States and national and international organizations have boycotted trade and academic relations with the Jewish state and have initiated divestment campaigns. Enemies, opponents and critics—some of whom are Jews and Israelis—portray Israel as the world’s worst violator of human rights, UN resolutions and international law. Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians are often

Media Diplomacy Conceptual Divergence and Applications

This article contends that the use of media diplomacy as a theoretical concept has been highly confusing and misleading. It substantially revises and restricts the concept to one particular and distinctive relationship between the media and diplomacy. The article expands and adds two more conceptual models, public diplomacy and media-broker diplomacy, to investigate the other relationships. Each model exists only when certain characteristics or conditions are present, and each has different professional and ethical ramifications for the three main factors involved in diplomacy: the government, the media, and public opinion. The article demonstrates the analytical usefulness of the models through applications to various examples and case studies of significant contemporary diplomatic processes.

Television News and U.S. Foreign Policy: Constraints of Real-Time Coverage

This study argues that the main approaches used to investigate the impact of television news on U.S. foreign policy making including the “CNN effect” and “news management” have missed several significant effects. This work employs an approach that views the media impact in terms of constraints real-time television coverage imposes on the policy-making process. These include shortening of the time available for policy making and demanding immediate response to crises and events, excluding experts and diplomats, facilitating diplomatic manipulations, creating high expectations, broadcasting deficient reports, and making instant judgments. The work presents a few actual examples to demonstrate each constraint. The constraints have created challenges and dilemmas for political leaders and government officials, and the article suggests several ways policymakers can use to cope with them.

Media-Broker Diplomacy: When Journalists Become Mediators

This analysis of the involvement of journalists in international conflict resolution presents a conceptual model that applies theories and models from both negotiation and communication. Each variant of the model—direct intervention, bridging, and secret mediation—has contributed to conflict resolution in a different way. The model also includes three parameters: action, initiation, and consequences. Findings from eight case studies raise difficult professional, practical, and ethical questions for negotiators, policymakers, and journalists.

Secret Diplomacy in the Television Age

The article offers three conceptual models to explore various interactions between media and diplomacy within various secret settings. In the secret diplomacy model, the media and the public are totally excluded from negotiations, while in closed-door diplomacy they are partially excluded. In secret media-broker diplomacy, a journalist assumes the role of a diplomat and is secretly engaged in mediation. The models help to investigate fundamental professional and ethical implications of secret diplomacy for government officials, journalists and public opinion. The article demonstrates the analytical usefulness of the conceptual models by applications to several case studies of contemporary secret diplomacy, including the breakthroughs in American-Chinese and Arab-Israeli relations.

The Public Diplomacy of Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera is one of the most important news organizations in the world today. This chapter suggests that the Arab network also functions as a significant political actor in the international sphere with a clear agenda and means to accomplish it. Moreover, the study further argues that Al Jazeera has adopted two discreet roles: internal and external. The internal is exemplified by the network’s initiation of discussion on controversial and taboo topics in the Arab and Muslim public sphere, as well as by its continued scrutiny of Arab regimes. The external role is exemplified by Al Jazeera’s claims to represent to the world Arab and Muslim perspectives on regional and international events. It manages the images and representations that much of the West draws on when thinking of the Muslim world, as well as its coverage of political events of geopolitical importance to Western nations, such as the war in Iraq and the Palestinian-Israeli violent confrontation (Second Intifada). Al Jazeera’s self-adopted dual roles have won considerable support for the network in the Arab street, but also severe criticism from many circles.

The Panama invasion revisited: lessons for the use of force in the post Cold War era

The 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama was the first American use of force since 1945 that was unrelated to the cold war. It was also the first large-scale use of American troops abroad since Vietnam and the most violent event in Panamanian history. It ended with the unusual capture of Manuel Antonio Noriega, Panamas head of state, who was then brought to the United States and tried for criminal drug operations. Despite the end of the cold war, dictators such as Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and Serbian leaders Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic will continue to exist and to challenge the international order. How should the United States, the only remaining superpower, deal with these kinds of authoritarian leaders? What lessons can we learn from the Noriega challenge and the means employed by the United States to handle him? Noriega was a corrupt dictator heading an efficient narcomilitaristic regime in Panama. He was involved in drug trafficking, arms smuggling, money laundering, and the ruthless oppression of his people. He also systematically violated the American-Panamanian Canal treaties and harassed U.S. forces and institutions in Panama. But were all these violations sufficient to justify a massive military intervention to remove Noriega from power? In the last forty years, the United States intervened in Latin American countries but always in connection with perceived communist threats and the cold war. Noriega was not a communist and did not plan to move Panama into the Soviet sphere of influence. On the contrary, he played a key role in American efforts to contain the spread of