Monday, September 24, 2007
Digital Outreach: U.S Blogging in the Middle East
The Times reports that the State Department has a "Digital Outreach Team" posting on Arab blogs and web sites. The goal is to influence public opinion in the Middle East through online public diplomacy. Two Arab-American employees of the State Department are monitoring the Middle Eastern blogosphere and posting when they see an opportunity to present the American perspective on politics and violence in the region:
"The postings, are an effort to take a more casual, varied approach to improving America’s image in the Muslim world.
Brent E. Blaschke, the project director, said the idea was to reach “swing voters,” whom he described as the silent majority of Muslims who might sympathize with Al Qaeda yet be open to information about United States government policy and American values.
Some analysts question whether the blog team will survive beyond the tenure of Karen P. Hughes, the confidante of President Bush who runs public diplomacy. The department expects to add seven more team members within the next month — four more in Arabic, two in Farsi and one in Urdu, the official language of Pakistan.
The team concentrates on about a dozen mainstream Web sites such as chat rooms set up by the BBC and Al Jazeera or charismatic Muslim figures like Amr Khaled, as well as Arab news
sites like Elaph.com. They choose them based on high traffic and a focus on United States policy, and they always identify themselves as being from the State Department."
The bloggers attempt to create a discussion, an interaction which creates an image of openness for the U.S. government. The goal is not to argue about U.S. foreign policy and the war in Iraq. The interactive nature of blogging is ideally suited for this message of openness:
By participating in an open discussion in an interactive medium like blogging the State Department is seeking to improve the image of the U.S government and portray us as an open society ready for dialogue as well as war."Analysts said they had been surprised by the positive response, with people seemingly eager to engage, although the overall impact was impossible to assess. “They are not carrying the slogans of liberalization or democratization across the region,” said Adel al-Toraifi, a Saudi political analyst. “They are talking about peace and dialogue, and I think that makes it difficult for those debating them to justify criticizing them.”
Mr. Toraifi said the postings had generated some debate in the Arab world and had been the subject of a column in an Algerian newspaper lauding the State Department for discussing policy with ordinary people, something the writer said the Algerian government would never do.
Indeed, several analysts said having State Department employees on the Web helps to counter one source of radicalization — the sense that Washington is too arrogant to listen to the grievances of ordinary Arabs, so violence is the sole means to attract attention."
