... (DOT DOT DOT)

The Digital Outreach Team (DOT) seems to be the manifestation of Cull's assertion that successful public diplomacy needs to include visible listening, and that the future of public diplomacy lies in re-orienting toward the modern digital age, and engaging through non-traditional platforms where people interact, like social networking and online video games. The DOT, is a team of civil servants comprised of native speakers of 'critical languages' who work on public diplomacy at the state department, engaging users on American foreign policy, notably in the Middle East. They do this through public sites like blogs and social networking sites, and identify themselves by name as representatives of the State Department, assuming transparency translates to credibility. Mark Leonard and Evgeny Morozov offer the opposing perspective that governments should be covert about to preserve credibility. According to Leonard “If a message will engender distrust simply because it is coming from a foreign government, then the government should hide that fact as much as possible." But the DOT’s policy to openly identify their posts, seems to rely on the theory that it is not about who puts out the information but rather about making connections. This is in line with Cowan and Arsenault's description of dialogue as a level of public diplomacy, as a multi-directional exchange between parties, sharing of perspectives, and most importantly building connections by the act of communicating for the sake of communicating, not necessarily with the aim of conveying specific messages.

According to a NY Times article, several analysts said having State Department employees on the Web helps counter the assumption that Washington is too arrogant to listen to the grievances of ordinary Arabs, which can lead to radicalized approach that violence is the sole means to attract attention. So my thoughts are that while transparency does not automatically beget credibility, dissidents would not know they were engaging in dialogue if the DOT operated covertly. And this show of active listening and dialogue can effectively build credibility. Whether or not the actual content of the messages is effective at swaying public opinion, is examined by Khatib, Dutton, and Thelwall in Public Diplomacy 2.0: An Exploratory Case Study of the US Digital Outreach Team, who conclude that to win hearts and minds in the Middle East, credibility needs to also come from linking words with policy actions.