Public Diplomacy or Public Glocalization? Rethinking Public Diplomacy in the Post-Truth Era

Section: Theory of Journalism and Media

Public diplomacy is the communication of state and non-state actors with foreign publics for beneficial objectives. Nowadays, in this connected world, public diplomacy activities have changed. Scholars are divided into two main groups regarding these activities: the first group rates listening as the most important dimension of public diplomacy, whereas the other group considers information management to be its main activity. The choices of both groups, however, are based on the communication period before the emergence of social media, deep mediatization, fake news and the post-truth era. Therefore, this article aims to review the hierarchical taxonomy by analysing new communication considerations. It concludes that in the post-truth era, with 4.5 billion of the world population using online platforms and with a billion messages sent every day, listening no longer serves as the main dimension of public diplomacy. Information management now serves as the main form of communication, whereas public diplomacy has become public glocalization.

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