Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Data-Driven Public Diplomacy: A Critical And Reflexive Assessment, Hamilton Bean, Edward Comor

FIMS Publications

This essay presents a critical and reflexive assessment of contemporary efforts

to innovate the measurement and evaluation of public diplomacy. Analyzing a

recent and pivotal report called “Data-Driven Public Diplomacy,” it explains

how the institutional and ideological residue of the Cold War underwrites

these initiatives in the context of American activities in its contemporary “War

on Terror.” Inspired by Marx’s concept of the fetish—n under-represented

conceptual approach to public diplomacy research—he authors critique

the thinking of public diplomacy scholars and officials, arguing that both an

omnipresent past and a powerful form of technological fetishism are discernible

in the “Data-Driven Public …

Technological Fetishism And Us Foreign Policy: The Mediating Role Of Digital Icts, Edward Comor

FIMS Publications

This article looks back at an Obama administration foreign policy initiative called Internet freedom and discusses US responses to anti-American extremism involving digital communications technologies. It does this by using Marx’s concept of the fetish to argue that technological fetishism played a constitutive and mediating role in policymaking. Through this analysis – relating international relations with political economy and Marxist theory – the empowering implications of these technologies for American state interests are shown to be also disempowering. Most US officials were likely to be aware that digital communications technologies did not have the inherent powers that their policies implied …