The many different approaches to communication can both compete with and enrich other areas of communication. The combination of communication and development work, as organisations such as PANOS have done, demonstrates much from which others can learn. Equally the experience of health promotion over the years provides useful insight.
To reiterate, while many may practitioners and theorists have emphasized perceptions, asserting identity or understanding, it is the action which the target audience takes that has an impact on the international environment.
Discussions of understanding, even mutual understanding, provide convenient ways of engaging with a ‘two way’ narrative on Public Diplomacy, yet even those genuinely engaged in dialogue, collaboration or open source approaches do so for a purpose. The question is what behaviour is the practitioner trying to encourage? That behaviour may be the sharing of ideas, the development of habits of engagement, acting in a less hostile manner or taking action on climate change. In any case, it is the behaviour on which the practitioner should be focused and anything else is part of the journey to get there.
The Future Embassy Report argued that “(t)he truest test of the value to our nation of the U.S. diplomatic presence abroad is whether the people we ask to represent us effectively promote American values and interests†(p. iv). However, in many instances the PD approach does not stretch further than policy advocacy, the justification of certain actions or the rebuttal of inaccurate or unfavourable comment.
The engagement with KAP Gap, with much of the development in the field of health including HIV / AIDS, provides a useful way of breaking down PD into different component parts while focusing on an end goal. Recognising the journey and the causes for the gap between Knowledge and Practise, as highlighted in the HIV / AIDS study, can inform the refinement of an approach focused on behaviour. The overlap here with Everett Rogers work on the Diffusion of Innovations, and the importance of diffusion curves is also worth noting.
This however, begins to focus on a pressing question – how much of PD, particularly politically focused advocacy gets beyond the K of Knowledge? While attempts to ‘explain’ or ‘promote’ through advocacy are popular, PD must constantly seek more broad approaches to creating positive attitudes to certain behaviour. This means taking the impact on the environment in which you seek to communicate into account, not merely the message.
I’ll merely note at this time the tonnage of material produced on refining messages, creating message chains, brand, memes, audience analysis to test phrases, constructing echo chambers, running focus groups etc. with the comparatively small focus given to non-assertive methods of engagement. It is currently comparatively rare to find work which focuses on promoting an environment in which people can adopt certain behaviour, rather than advocating the behaviour itself. Equally, consider how often political leaders ‘Call on’ someone to do something (admittedly often they are playing to a domestic audience) when the very act of that call creates an environment in which it is harder for the individuals concerned to adopt the behaviour which that politician is trying to promote. This is particularly problematic when the ‘call’ actually strengthens the opposition’s counter-narrative by painting an individual as doing the bidding of foreign masters. For example, James Glassman’s CFR speech can be seen as creating this problem, for the dispersed networks who seek to challenge violent groups.
PD is about behaviour and a broad range of approaches should be in play. KAP Gap, diffusion curves and derivations of this type of thinking should be more frequently deployed within many of the international communications organisations which are currently focused on ‘K’ without fully understanding the blocks which are preventing movement to ‘A’ or ’P’.
A useful discussion and explanation of KAP Gap and the way information flows through an audience or network was presented by Thomas Valente in his article The Diffusion Network Game. (p. 30).
As a footnote for another day, The Diffusion Network Game also highlights the way a relatively basic network mapping exercise could be conducted to demonstrate the impact that a PD initiative which was intended to develop links between participants. This might provide a start point for engaging with data maps and dispersed networks.