Its practitioners use a variety of instruments and methods ranging from personal contact and media interviews to the internet and educational exchanges.
[2]Public diplomacy that traditionally represents actions of governments to influence overseas publics within the foreign policy process has expanded today—by accident and design—beyond the realm of governments to include the media, multinational corporations, NGO's and faith-based organizations as active participants in the field.– Crocker Snow Jr., Acting Director Edward R. Murrow Center, May 2005.
Public diplomacy, by contrast focuses on the ways in which a country (or multilateral organization such as the United Nations) communicates with citizens in other societies.
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the term has come back into vogue as the United States government works to improve their reputation abroad, particularly in the Middle East and among those in the Islamic world.
William Hybl is the current chair, and other members include former Ambassadors Lyndon Olson and Penne Percy Korth Peacock, as well as Jay Snyder, John E. Osborn and Lezlee Westine.
Since people, not just states, are of global importance in a world where technology and migration increasingly face everyone, an entire new door of policy is opened.
[7]: 9 People's diplomacy with the capitalist countries sought to cultivate informal, non-state ties in the hope of developing "foreign friends" who would lobby their governments to improve relations with China.
[7]: 9 China's approach to keeping these exchanges unofficial and conduct them through non-governmental agencies was generally well-received by U.S. civil society groups and academics.
[10] During the 1970s, the Kuomintang during the tenure of Executive Yuan Premier Chiang Ching-kuo organized a people's diplomacy campaign in the United States in an effort to mobilize American political sentiment in opposition to the PRC through mass demonstrations and petitions.
[17] Methods such as personal contact, broadcasters such as the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty[18] exchange programs such as Fulbright and the International Visitor Leadership Program, American arts and performances in foreign countries, and the use of the Internet are all instruments used for practicing public diplomacy depending on the audience to be communicated with and the message to be conveyed.