Sample Solution

he Elitist perspective on media and Foreign Policy postulates that since media sources largely controlled by large corporations closely linked to the State, information and the way it is framed in the public eye are state-controlled. (Smith, Hadfield and Dunne 2008) In the age of New Media, the vast majority of Social Media outlets are controlled by US-based companies, but often these companies are reluctant to regulate or control content. This is not to say that the US Government doesn’t have access to information on companies such as Facebook. From January to June 2018 there were 42,466 instances of the US Government requesting various forms of data from Facebook. While the vast majority were labelled as “Legal Process”, approximately 3,000 of the requests were labelled “Emergency Requests”. (Facebook.com 2018) About half of the requested content was released under a non-disclosure agreement with the US Government blocking Facebook from notifying the users the data was taken from. (Russell 2018) If governments are able to control New Media sources in a similar way that traditional print and radio media was controlled in the past, it is likely that it will significantly aid State’s and enhance their ability to conduct Public diplomacy.

Public Diplomacy, both domestic and foreign, has been greatly enhanced by the advent of New Media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. States can use these platforms to disseminate a myriad of audio-visual as well as textual information in large quantities and over very short spans of time. The speed aspect is especially important due to the raised expectations of the public for State governments and diplomats to provide information on political events. (Dale 2009) Alternatively, due to the large quantities of information provided, the importance of each piece of information may be diminished. The main appeal of social media lies mostly in its unregulated and individualised nature. (Dale 2009) Namely, New Media interactions are not just about disseminating formal information, rather it is about creating information relevant to the individual. (Dale 2009) Therefore, government bodies that publish critical information via New Media platforms must often carefully consider the quantity and quality of what they are posting.

The untapped potential of New Media utilisation by governments was highlighted by a paper published in the US Heritage Foundation’s journal “Backgrounder”. They asserted that the Obama administration was the first to truly push forward with Public Diplomacy using New Media. The use