Albany Blog

Having just read the twitter guide from the UK Government, I’m reminded of how frustrated teenagers feel when their parents adopt something they feel is their domain.

So twitter has been embraced by the establishment stretching an explanation of how to use twitter to 20 pages (!); is this not a little irritating? (..no less than 2 and no more than 10 tweets per day..unless you’re re-tweeting..) Certainly, many commercial companies now incorporate micro blogging into their publicity and marketing campaigns, perhaps they also have produced reams of guidelines for their staff on ‘how to use’, but surely common sense takes over with Sun Microsystems simple but effective approach of ‘don’t do anything stupid’?

But that Twitter has been deconstructed so carefully for use by government departments suggests that it is now (finally) okay to tweet. Once the preserve of celebrities stuck in lifts, it’s now an acceptable tool of communication in the execution of ‘Public Diplomacy’; twitter has truly come of age! Although a survey on LinkedIn recently concluded that in the US, ‘advertisers believe much more highly in the importance of Twitter than the average consumer, of the 2,025 U.S. adults surveyed, 69% said they didn’t know enough about Twitter to comment on the service.’ Contrast this with Congress near obsession with it!

But surely when the UN Secretary General, the US President and organisations such as the UK Cabinet Office and the FCO ‘tweet’, Public Diplomacy 2.0 has definitely arrived. Yes, it’s a daft name for a micro blog and yes I still feel slightly awkward ‘tweeting’, (I wonder if Ban and Barak still do?) but like a lot of digital diplomacy, it’s very simple and highly effective. To have to engage in no more than 140 characters is a test in itself. Users are faced with the daily challenge of having to compress their thoughts into a tight sentence that both articulates their point but also reflects their character. Because, never forget that one of the unspoken rules of tweeting is to ‘be human’. How do you achieve that in Digital Diplomacy? The “twitterati”, that self appointed soul of this communications medium, fiercely oppose the notion of their medium being hijacked by the Corporate and ‘them’: the system. In their eyes, to de-humanise twitter is to turn it into another corporate toy or a public service information platform; something to avoided!

So how will the establishment cope, how can digital diplomacy be effective in so few words? Could it be the reach and speed of the message, and not so much the content itself? Is it the fact that it’s participating in the conversation, trying to fill that informational space that was once the preserve of the media? It may not be the right message – or even the one we want to hear – but at least it is participating and targeting a demographic of society that is furiously communicating on-line.

Whatever the results of the Government’s guidelines, it can’t be faulted for not trying at digital diplomacy. Be it a domestic or international audience, politics is about communications and all politics is local, it now happens to be 140 characters and on-line..!

Paul Gibbins is Albany’s Senior Project Manager. 

A few days ago South-Central Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government desperately asked its neighbours to send troops to help prevent the capital, Mogadishu, from falling to Al-Shabab forces. The SOS came after a series of attacks killing the minister of security and head of police. The brief hope the appointment of a new government last January offered is quickly vanishing in the same violence that has haunted the country for the past 18 years.

But why is Somalia, whose political turmoil is accompanied by one of the worst humanitarian crisis in recent history, is still largely absent from international media? Why Darfur continues to capture the attention of ordinary people, foreign offices and Hollywood celebrities, despite a dramatic drop of violence in the region, and the raising killings in Somalia pass largely unnoticed?  One obvious answer lies in the reluctance of big powers to engage with yet another crisis in the Islamic world. Another, more subtle, reason has to be found in the way the humanitarian and political mayhem in Somalia have been framed so far.

In the past years, together with a team of international and local researchers, I have been conducting research on the perception of the conflict in Darfur among Darfuris as well as in the international media. The results can be found here (http://www.stanhopecentre.org/2007/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=146&Itemid=1)/ .  This research has helped provide insight on how the narratives constructed around the conflict have dramatically affected the willingness and capacity of the international community to respond to the crisis. I will use these findings, coupled with the sharp insights of Mahmood Mamdani’s recent work on the Darfur crisis and the role of the Save Darfur Coalition, to understand if and how the emergency in Somalia can be framed in a way that has the power to attract the attention it needs.

Since 2005 the Save Darfur Coalition, a group of faith based organizations and NGOs, has advocated a greater involvement of the US and other governments in the conflict in the Western region of Sudan. The coalition has been very successful in gaining international attention.  It has, however, come at the expense of a counter-productive framing the conflict and its actors. This narrative has created victims and villains, forgetting that in too many cases the victims are in the villains’ camp. It has given the opportunity for inexperienced and self-righteous individuals to behave like heroes, just because they were siding with those that were said to be the “good guys”. At the same time, this strategy has been exceptionally capable in putting Darfur on the global map. For Somalia, the challenge that presents itself is: are there ways to construct a narrative of a conflict, as to attract greater attention towards it, without creating a simple story of villains, victims and heroes?

Three aspects of the international media’s coverage of the Darfur crisis suggest possible insights for Somalia.

First. Numbers. In the case of the reporting on the conflict in Darfur, a striking feature was the persistence and consistence of the number of casualties. In our research we analyzed the local and international press and in almost every article about Darfur on the BBC or CNN, even those about recent events, there was a background note with the number of casualties. This is a way to hammer a common and recursive narrative into the head of the reader.

The number of casualties did change over time, but it did it through a sharp and dramatic increase and not incrementally. Until 2007 the official figure commonly cited by the news was 200,000. Staring from 2008 this figure suddenly jumped to 300,000 despite that there were no major clashes in Darfur. Following Mamdani’s argument, the reason of this increase has to be found in the ‘politics of attention’ rather than in the real dynamics of the conflict.   So-called ‘experts’ such as those gravitating around the Save Darfur coalition consistently fed the news media with easy numbers and put pressure on international bodies to use their figures.

In contrast, a brief examination of reports on Somalia (sampling around 200 pieces between May 2008 and May 2009 on google news) I could not find any consistence and clarity among the reported numbers of casualties and displacements. There obviously was coverage of the number of deaths during singular events, and in many cases they were high and striking, 119, 45, 34, but there was hardly ever the background note we could encounter in Darfur. To an occasional reader what was going on in Somalia could be easily interpreted as just a dramatic event in a chaotic region of the world. And thus, nothing to act upon.

A lesson is, simple numbers, repeated with consistence and persistence, are a way to alert readers that the whole story goes beyond the single episodes. This story has to be repeated over and over again, always the same, to reach its tipping point. In the era where blogs constantly increase while foreign correspondents disappear, having the ‘right’ numbers circulating in the blogosphere may make the difference.

A second, and much more problematic, aspect of constructing a narrative depends on how the actors in the conflict are framed. The Save Darfur Coalition decided to play the racism card framing the war as one between Arab Muslims and African Muslims. It created a polarization that was easy to interpret, especially by American audiences that already used to the “war on terror” rhetoric where the Arabs are seen as the enemy. Mamdani, as well as Alex DeWaal, illustrated how this division was more fabricated than real.  Just as large, consistently repeated numbers are important for garnering attention, this dichotomy has also allowed the conflict to be framed as a “genocide”.  This word has been successful in creating a sense of urgency.

I am not arguing for the use of this or similarly powerful words, especially when they camouflage reality for the benefit of a partisan campaign. At the same time, however, I think it is vital to be aware of the mechanisms that are used to construct specific narratives. And it is legitimate to ask if it is possible to produce some that do not fall under the paradox of criminalizing people as to be able to help them.

This task is much more daunting than using simple and recurrent numbers. But there are cases when framing an issue with different words without dramatizing it too heavily has still produced a remarkable change. An example is offered by the campaign against Female Genital Mutilation. For a long time this practice was known only in medical circles as female circumcision or infibulation. Circumcision evoked the image of ancestral practices that could not be judged in the name of an apparently legitimate cultural relativism.  But in 1974 a new campaign begun to re-name the practice “mutilation”, creating a new image in the mind of the people the campaign was targeting. An image strong enough to justify the right to intervene and stop FGM, independently from the latitude where the mutilation was taking place.

Somalia does not yet have a powerful narrative. But if it did, what should it look like? If possible, the narrative would come from those affected by the conflict and would not be built over the heads of those who have been the its victims, but through their personal stories. A narrative that, if possible, has the courage of moving beyond black and white. The US president Barack Obama has demonstrated a commitment to a more nuanced foreign policy. Somalia could greatly benefit from it in the future. Any narrative should take into consideration the effects that it will produce in the future, if it succeeds. In Darfur today it is still difficult to assist the Arab nomads, because for many humanitarian organizations they still are regarded as the aggressors or ‘bad guys’.

A final point concerns the narratives that are not constructed, but emerge through the sufferance displayed by images. What is also known as the CNN effect and had in the Somali crisis of the early 1990s one of the most notable examples. It was images of dying children that in 1992 shocked Western public opinion and convinced the US and the UN to intervene in Somalia to stop the famine and the war that caused it. It was images of an American soldier dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 to force president Clinton to withdraw the American contingent from the country. These events exemplify the power of images and world wide coverage, with little context and understanding, to reach audiences’ attention as well as their hearts and pockets. As the example of Somalia illustrates, however, this power is difficult to control, makes foreign policy less thoughtful than what it already is, and condemn local populations to rely to a worrying extent on foreign perceptions. 

Any future UN intervention will certainly be made in these shadows but an early recognition of the importance of appropriately framing the conflict and engaging with the local and international media will have far-reaching and long-lasting implications.

Iginio Gagliardone, Centre for Global Communications Studies.

Hi there. My name’s Daniel Bennett. I write a blog for the Frontline Club on new media and conflict and I’ve been invited to temporarily take over this blogging space to crosspost a few thoughts on the key points coming out of Albany’s Strategic Communications conference.

We’re under the Chatham House Rule so the observations will be general rather than specific.

This morning we’ve been hearing about how the new media landscape has profound implications for the area of strategic communications. ‘Citizen journalists’ can produce and distribute information with a speed that cannot be matched by the lumbering bureaucracies of complex organisations.

Most recently, graphic images of the crisis in Iran have found their way to millions of viewers across the world despite the best efforts of the Iranian regime to control information.

The new speed and flexibility of communication networks also have implications for Western democratic governments and institutions. Organisations are struggling to find the right balance between the time pressures of filling the information space and the sometimes painstakingly slow task of verifying the facts on the ground.  

Difficulties are compounded in areas where public policy is being carried out by a variety of departments, countries or international organisations. ‘Turf wars’, egos, and departmental independence hinder effective communication. It was noted that in the UK there is no coherent national communications strategy, while in Afghanistan countless parties are responsible for distributing messages about the conflict and reconstruction efforts. 

Military, international and non-governmental organisations acknowledged that they have plenty to learn from communications failures in the past and as participants in a media arena that is undergoing profound change.

But it’s perhaps straightforward to identify the problems in theory, far more difficult to implement them in practice. Especially when it seems that what is required is a wholesale change in the communications culture within, and across, sprawling hierarchical and bureaucratic organisations.

Jacob Zuma. Seems like everybody has an opinion about South Africa’s new president – even those who have never set foot in South Africa, let alone the continent.

I don’t know if he’ll be good, bad or mediocre as president. Dare I say nobody knows; it’s too early to tell – he’s had the top job for less than a week. What I do know however is that he’s not likely to be worse than his predecessors, with the notable exception of course of Nelson Mandela.

The bottom line is that, unlike all of the presidents and prime ministers who came before Mr. Mandela, Mr Zuma is the preferred choice of the vast majority of South Africans.

Yes, Mr. Zuma has what some see as a chequered past – as head of intelligence for the African National Congress’ armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, Mr. Zuma either presided over or condoned interrogation and disciplinary measures that were not in compliance with the Geneva Convention – violations which the world’s great bastion of human rights, the United States, has also continued to perpetrate in its bid to protect its national security. Okay – two wrongs don’t make a right, but at the time, South Africa was involved in a low-level civil war, and the ANC’s opponents were using similar methods – just ask the family of the late South African activist Steve Biko.

There’s also a cloud hanging over Mr. Zuma’s head regarding corruption and fraud charges related to alleged bribery and pay-offs in an arms deal scandal involving a French arms manufacturer. Perhaps South Africans will never know the exact circumstances or the exact amount of money that changed hands in order to finalise the deal and keep Mr. Zuma living the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed. Does it really matter? The Labour Party is still in power in the UK after what appear to have been rather questionable arms deals with the Saudis during the reign of Tony Blair.

These are details, and while I admit they are important, they are probably not as important as the big picture: most South Africans like Mr. Zuma very much and they like his party, the ANC, even more. The reason is extremely simple- only 16 years ago not only could most South Africans not vote – they could not live where they wanted, they could not aspire to many professional positions and they could not offer their children a quality education. They also could not look a white person in the face and tell him honestly what they thought of the humiliation which they, and generations before them, had had to endure.

The ANC changed that. Yes, there was President FW de Klerk who did his part on behalf of the ruling white Nationalist Party to negotiate a path towards majority rule, but does any white South African, in his heart-of-hearts really believe Mr. de Klerk would have made the first move, unprompted by the political pressure of the black majority?

I first travelled to South Africa, from Zimbabwe, in the early 1980’s. Zimbabwe was newly independent and most Zimbabweans were extremely pleased about this (apart from the Ndebele minority in Matabeleland who had to bear the brunt of a new kind of oppression brought about by Robert Mugabe’s Fifth Brigade). Crossing the border at Beitbridge from Zimbabwe to South Africa was like moving abruptly from sunshine to cloud cover. Yes, the roads were some of the best in the world, and the shops were filled with food and other products that could be found nowhere else on the continent, but what I remember most from those days is that black South Africans, for the most part, looked at their shoes when they spoke with or were spoken to by whites. I don’t think most whites noticed that. It was part of what, in local terms, appeared normal.

The ANC allowed black South Africans to raise their gaze and look anybody and everybody in the eye.

Do I think the ANC is perfect? Of course not. There is a risk of corruption, which took hold in the last administration, growing to greater levels. But then again, maybe it won’t. Mr. Zuma’s new cabinet includes a minister responsible for ensuring that senior politicians and civil servants stay on the straight and narrow. Will it work? Who knows! But what we certainly do not know is whether the plan is doomed to fail.

In what I see as a remarkable move, Mr. Zuma has brought the leader of the most right-wing white political party in parliament, Pieter Mulder, into his cabinet as deputy agriculture minister. The agriculture sector in South Africa has been under pressure and in a state of some crisis lately. A combination of unresolved land-reform issues and a former Agriculture minister perceived to be hostile to white farmers has led to a drop in production. Mr. Zuma knows that Afrikaners, some of whom are represented by Mr. Mulder, form an important skills base in the farming world. Without them, South Africa could, like Zimbabwe, move from being an exporter to an importer of food.

South African nay-sayers expected the currency, the Rand, to plummet if Mr. Zuma became president. It didn’t. Mr. Zuma may not have a post-graduate degree in economics, but he does have street smarts. He knows the importance of keeping strong people in his administration. The world’s longest serving finance minister, Trevor Manuel, is still in government. He’s not the finance minister any more but he has been given wide-ranging powers as head of a new planning commission. The man credited with bringing in more tax revenue to public coffers than all his predecessors, Pravin Gordhan, has taken over the finance portfolio. These appointments don’t sound to me like the work of a man who has no interest in keeping the economy on the right track.

South Africa’s economy has been doing very well since the ANC came to power. Of course, removing the stigma of pariah state has certainly helped. Sanctions are gone, disinvestment has become investment, and Johannesburg has become the shopping mall for the entire continent! While Europeans are taking lovely vacations in Cape Town and returning home with a carved wooden giraffe, Angolans, Congolese and Zimbabweans are returning home with pallet-loads of refrigerators and television sets.

The number of people who want to move to South Africa dramatically exceeds the number of people who want to leave. Africa knows that it has a treasure in South Africa. South Africa has to work, and Mr. Zuma knows this. While in the previous administration under former president Thabo Mbeki, Mr. Zuma mediated peace negotiations in Burundi. He knows what’s at stake.

The coming years are not likely to be easy nor are they likely to be trouble and scandal-free. But let’s not forget that Mr. Zuma and the ANC came to power in a truly free and fair election. Mr. Zuma, unlike his predecessor, has time for the grass roots and seems to understand the need for faster service delivery to those still without running water and electricity.

Barring some unforeseen disaster, the ANC is likely to win the next election five years from now. As long as most South Africans remember what they had prior to 1994, expecting the electorate to try something else is akin to asking Indonesians to vote for a return to Dutch rule.

David Smith
Director – Okapi Consulting
Johannesburg, South Africa

“Strategic Communications” - only two words, but two that are often misunderstood. They’ve been touted around aplenty of late, in relation to Afghanistan in particular (in light of the Obama administration’s review of the Afghan situation), as well as, a decade on from these interventions, Kosovo and East Timor. What does the expression “strategic communications” mean? And why does it matter that governments and international organisations get it right?

Strategic communications matters because it’s essential to the success, or otherwise, of conflict or post-conflict interventions and stabilisation operations by the so-called “international community”. While Governments usually go to great lengths to explain new domestic policy ideas and their implications to their electorates, similar efforts to win consensus at home and overseas for interventions abroad have traditionally fallen short of the mark.

Why, for example, are we in Afghanistan? How many American or British citizens can answer this? And how many different, and probably conflicting, answers would we get? What reasons would the numerous ‘internationals’ working for any number of organisations and NGOs in Afghanistan provide? And, most importantly, what about the Afghans? Have we successfully explained our presence, our aim, and our objectives to them? It’s probably now generally accepted that, in relation to Afghanistan and Iraq, strategic communications was given neither the time nor the resources that were necessary. Instead it was an afterthought, an add-on, rather than at the heart of both the planning and implementation of operations where it should have been… right at centre…an essential part of policy formulation….a top priority.

Top priority it was afforded a few months ago, however, when strategic communications was given a central role on a UK cross-government civilian-military training exercise. Practising strategic communications was one of the exercise’s key aims and objectives, and Albany Associates was hired to advise.  The fictitious scenario was as follows: a made-up country, on the verge of collapse (rebellion and war, humanitarian disaster) and surrounded by unstable neighbours, asks the international community to intervene. Under a UN mandate, the UK leads an international military-civilian intervention to stabilise the country and the region.  Some more details: the fictitious country has little home-grown media (and what little exists is widely distrusted); the population is largely illiterate; the country is ethnically and linguistically extremely diverse; the diaspora is influential; there are tens of thousands of refugees and IDPs on the move; there are various rebel groups; and regional neighbours are prone to trouble-making. As the storyline unfolded in the host country, the wider region, the UK, EU member states, the US, and at the UN, cross-government strategic communications was put to the test. 

If strategic communications can be defined as creating benign and enabling environments for the effective implementation of policy and programmes, how did we do during this fictitious stabilisation operation? Was public opinion and behaviour encouraged to support and contribute to the UN-mandated UK-led intervention? And, if so, how was this done in such a complex and complicated environment, with so many actors, audiences, grievous parties, languages and cultures? And, crucially, what strategic communications lessons were identified for the future? What still needs more work?

Albany Consultant, Sarah Fradgley, directing one of many 'exercise' press conferences.

Here are some thoughts (and if the obvious is being stated, it’s because the obvious doesn’t always get practised): It is vital to establish and dominate the narrative from the outset. Someone else will if you don’t. At the centre of the cross-government (MOD, FCO, DfID and Cabinet Office) influencing strategy for this exercise was a ‘core script’, agreed by HMG departments before the exercise began and continually updated in theatre as circumstances changed. The building and sustaining of a credible narrative, one that understands the context and culture of the host environment, is essential to any stabilisation operation. A core script enables the co-ordination and agreement of messages between HMG departments, and can help prevent the emergence of mixed and inconsistent messages that will damage credibility. So-called golden hours at the beginning of a stabilisation operation can be extended if things go well, but they can also be curtailed if things go wrong.

There is a strategic communications aspect to anything and everything. Each and every contact with any target audience is a conduit, and every action has a positive or negative communications impact. A disconnect between public messages and actions on the ground must be avoided. Strategic Communications Working Groups, comprising military and civilian representatives from HMG, were established during the exercise. They met every other day and provided a constructive forum for cross-government discussion on substantive issues. All departments engaged positively, took direction and even changed direction to realign themselves with strategic guidance.

Albany Director, Simon Haselock observes the proceedings.

There are always many different audiences with whom to engage. Concurrent and multi-level activities need to take place within an overall strategic plan. Public diplomacy, media relations, grassroots communications and media development are all vital to foster understanding and support from UK and international audiences (donors, other troop contributing nations), regional neighbours and, most importantly, the various and varied audiences in the host country.

Know before you start a stabilisation operation how people get their information. Reliable research and opinion polling at an early stage is extremely useful. Local traditional methods of communication are key. Forget about the press releases and media facilities: go grassroots. Street theatre, taxi drivers taking radio cassettes to villages in places you can’t always get to, festivals and gatherings which bring together tribal leaders and elders…these are the methods of disseminating information, encouraging dialogue and the exchange of ideas. But new media technologies can also play an essential role in grassroots communications… …  what was one way to get messages to refugee and IDP camps that were, for a time, largely inaccessible? Mobile phones and text messaging. The information will spread.  Local ownership is essential. If there isn’t a home-grown radio station or several, start one. Developing the capacity of the host country’s media is a medium-term goal, but it needs to start early on. As does technical assistance, if it’s needed, to the host country’s government information service. 

Foreign Office Diplomat, Nick Astbury, conducting a joint press conference with the Lt Gen Graham Lamb from the UK's Permanent Joint Headquarters.

Strategic communications needs to be resourced properly. On this point, lessons can be learnt from UN missions where the need for coherent departments of press and public information is largely understood. Flexible funding, adequate staffing and/or expertise readily available (spokesperson, press officers, a writing team, radio, TV, web and new media, print and design teams, polling, outreach and influencing), equipment, and translation and interpretation capacity are all essential.

But perhaps the most important point of all is this: strategic communications needs to be directed from a high level as a strategic issue. It is not just a question of tactics on the ground. The importance of strategic communications to the stabilisation operation in our fictitious country became very much understood during the course of exercise. The priority now is to pass on the lessons learned, establish doctrine and encourage the development of a formal system of training and knowledge transfer.

Sarah Fradgley is an independent Communications Consultant.