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This article examines how qualitative approaches to human-centered inquiry benefit public diplomacy (PD) scholarship. It argues that rigorous qualitative methods improve the frameworks guiding PD research. Tendencies for miscommunication permeate the encoding and decoding communication processes in international/intercultural contexts, with PD often transcending cultural boundaries and national borders. This article cautions against assuming conceptual, measurement, and semiotic equivalence of constructs and variables, based on influences from culture and language. Furthermore, the article advocates mixed methods, explicating how rigorous qualitative methods can better contextualize the statistics of quantitative methods, leading to more comprehensive understandings of PD.

Corporate diplomacy research suggests US executives display little interest in supporting government diplomacy and promoting national culture; rather, corporate strategy focuses on profit. The corporate diplomacy phenomenon, however, needs additional examination in the more collectivistic East Asia context. This study investigates a public–private partnership in which a corporation sponsors a cultural exchange project in Japan, specifically how Japanese business leaders perceive and integrate promoting national interests and country image into corporate strategy. This research analyzes the New Tohoku program that brings foreign students, businesspersons, and social media influencers to Tohoku, a region undergoing reconstruction since the 2011 tsunami, to learn about Japan’s economy, history, climate, and culture. Interviews with executives and managers and documentary information from corporate webpages, news releases, and promotional brochures reveal motivations for engaging to (1) promote Japan’s culture, (2) stimulate economic growth, and (3) generate awareness about Pasona through publicity. While unrelated to Pasona’s business model, New Tohoku reflects the “Japanese mindset” of helping Japan; the founder, employees, and shareholders ensure this remains a strategic objective regardless of profits. This research has implications for multinational corporations’ role in cultural diplomacy as a component of public diplomacy.

This study proposes alternative measures of infotainment’s effects on audience perception and reception of news on social media, focusing on infotainment coverage of North Korea. We determine the elements of framing strategies and narrative styles in facilitating public attention, positive and negative responses, and engagement in news content. We used the YouTube application programming interface to collect data from VideoMug, Korea’s most popular YouTube channel, run by the Seoul Broadcasting System. We examined 23,774 replies commenting on North Korea-related video clips from July 1, 2018, to May 17, 2019. The findings show that entertainment and human interest frames were effective in drawing public attention to news coverage about North Korea. Using humor and colloquial language facilitated public attention (both positive and negative) and public engagement. Over half (59.55%) of the comments generated positive emotions; less than one-third generated negative emotions (31.41%); and a few generated neutral ones (9.03%). The infotainment approach helped make South Koreans’ attitudes toward North Korea and inter-Korean relations more positive. A small number of users who served as top authorities were extremely partisan and conducted intense debates about infotainment practices. This study’s hybrid analytical framework using computerized text mining techniques offers both theoretical and methodological insights into the function of infotainment in the context of social media.

This study explored the concept and practice of corporate diplomacy from the perspective of multinational corporate communication executives. It sought to assess corporate views on, and motivations for, engaging in diplomatic activities abroad and to gauge levels of interest among corporate leaders in participating in government-sponsored public diplomacy activities aimed at advancing national goals and interests. Semi-structured interviews with corporate communication executives revealed a lack of familiarity with the concept of corporate diplomacy and the types of activities corporate diplomacy might entail. While recognizing reciprocal impacts of company and country of origin images and reputations, communication officers, especially those representing corporations with the United States as the home country, expressed little interest in engaging in efforts to promote national culture and values among foreign publics, and they did not perceive an obligation to actively support government efforts in public diplomacy. Rather, corporate communication activities abroad are motivated primarily by economic self-interest perceived to be advanced through the creation of global—rather than national—corporate identities and brands and the development of supportive host-country operating environments. However, the interviews identified the potential for state and non-state corporate actors to work together through collaborations on issue-oriented diplomatic initiatives that serve common goals.

During the 1976 presidential campaign, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter could not avoid the \"unfinished business of the [Vietnam] war,\" specifically the fate of the United States' war resisters, the million or so draft evaders and military deserters. To heal the domestic wounds of the Vietnam War, Carter promised to enact a \"blanket pardon\" for draft evaders during the first week of his presidency and thereafter to offer conditional, case-by-case pardons for military deserters. This article analyzes the domestic legacy of the Vietnam War in the 1976 election, most notably how, after considering media coverage, alternative news sources, and polling data, Carter and his campaign staff addressed the controversial campaign issue in an effort to \"get the Vietnam war over with.\" Although magazines and television broadcasts provided important campaign information in 1976, newspapers remained a prominent news source. Thus, this article explores the negotiation over the meaning of the war resister issue among the Carter campaign, the press, and the public, and the structure of feeling that emerged in the analysis of archival documents at the Carter Library and in a census of a sample of news articles, feature stories, house editorials, columns, and letters to the editor in the top six circulating U.S. dailies.