King Canute versus the tide

By Gary Rawnsley, Professor of Public Diplomacy and Director of the Global Communications Research Centre, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University 



The Global Communications Research Centre (GCRC), hosted by the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, is committed to understanding how the media, information, culture and communications interacts with, shape, and are shaped by the political environment. The Centre reflects a century's tradition in the Department - the oldest Department of International Politics in the world - of developing new research and teaching agendas, of pushing boundaries, and engaging with policy-makers around the world.

Twenty-five years ago when I was a naive but ambitious 23 year old second-year student in the final stages of my PhD, I embarked on the hunt for my first academic position. Since being a teenager besotted by the world of shortwave radio and international broadcasting my work has always been located at the intersection of international politics and communications. I was convinced then, and I remain so today, that it is impossible to discuss politics and international politics in any meaningful way without also understanding the role of communications, information and the media. Despite the war against Iraq in 1991 and the advent of 24/7 broadcasting from the front which had a profound impact on how the war played out - and introduced discussions around the so-called CNN Effect that suggests foreign policy can be driven by media coverage and public opinion - I still met a shocking amount of resistance in reputable politics departments where earnest academics dismissed my work as Mickey Mouse Studies.

Fast forward twenty years. Despite the Internet and social media having transformed political processes and empowered millions of people across the world; despite the acceptance by all governments that public diplomacy and the generation of soft power are essential tools of statecraft; despite militaries begging us to teach them how to adapt to, and survive in the information age; despite governments trying to find innovative ways to manage public and private conversations, while some are resorting to good old-fashioned techniques of censorship to control access to information; and despite communications panels almost taking over the major academic conferences in politics and international relations, we are still facing denigration by academics who refuse to see the essential impact that communications have on political events, institutions, agents and processes.  Satellite broadcasting, the rise of pan-regional media organisations like Al-Jazeera, citizen journalism, tweets, blogs, Facebook and social networking have all transformed the way governments and militaries speak to journalists and audiences, and how publics speak to each other.

It is sad that the ignorance I encountered a quarter of a century ago persists.  I recall being told in 2012 that my work is not considered 'mainstream', whatever that means anymore. I also remember my intervention during a conference in the same year when I realised how my work on communication can undermine the more militaristic approach to international relations that prefers to kill and main humans rather than persuade them that there may be alternatives to hard power (A not so subtle reminder ...). As Joseph Nye wrote in 2011, militaries (and too many academics working in IR and security studies) prefer 'something that could be dropped on your foot or on your cities, rather than something that might change your mind about wanting to drop anything in the first place.'

The events of 9/11 - the terrorist attacks themselves and the news coverage of them - confirmed that the media, communications and information landscape had changed beyond recognition, and they continue to change. Consider how the inappropriately named 'War on Terror' was as much a conflict of competing narratives, an information war, as it was about hard power in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2007, US Secretary of State for Defense, Robert Gates, noted, 'It is just plain embarrassing that Al-Qaeda is better at communication its message on the Internet than America'. Now compare AQ's propaganda capacity with that of  Islamic State, the latter far surpassing its predecessor in terms of reach, its embrace of new communications technologies, and in inspiring outrage. Try to understand the so-called Arab Spring or Hong Kong's Umbrella protests without thinking about social media. Consider our current obsession with cybersecurity, 'fake news' and Donald Trump's Twitter habits: Is the President capable of starting a nuclear war with North Korea over an ill-advised tweet in the early hours of the morning? Are the news media devoting far too much attention to Trump and Twitter, thus diverting attention from more substantive issues? Do the social media inspire the democratisation of political communication, or are they echo chambers which encourage or reflect dangerous levels of political polarisation among their users? And then there are new debates about China's influence and what is now called "sharp power". As I write, the British news media are discussing 'cultural diplomacy' as the President of France promised to lend the Bayeux Tapestry to the UK, while American soft power and the communication of American values are facing new challenges at the end of Donald Trump's first year in the White House.  

Moreover, we are compelled to think about and test the boundaries of what is and is not permissible in the new communications ecology: What do we mean by freedom of speech? Who has responsibility for what is posted on the internet and the consequences of doing so? Who decides what is and is not acceptable, why, and by what criteria?

In short, the modern communications landscape calls on us to to revisit the most fundamental political questions: What is power, and how is power distributed and exercised? Surely these are the most 'mainstream' issues discussed in political science (?)   

Academics who continue to deny that communications and the media are at the heart of modern 'mainstream' debates about politics are like King Canute trying to hold back the tide. The GCRC reflects the progress of both the study and practice of international politics, and I look forward to the thoughts of my colleagues on how communications affect their approach to, and understanding of the subject.