1st Edition
Communicating Statehood Public Relations Strategies in Promoting Palestine
The book argues that the Palestinian response to the challenge of promoting their cause is to extend their repertoire of public relations communication tactics. It explores the discursive strategies employed by Palestinian communication strategists, across the range of political allegiances, via public relations techniques to advance the cause of statehood. It also explores how the growing number of professional communicators use strategic communication to position key ‘national’ issues.
These tactics have emerged not only as the result of planned strategy but also through improvisation and informal responses to outside pressures. Whether this increasing coherence and confidence arises from the growing availability of professional communication planning expertise, or the decreasing cost barriers associated with digital media, the outcome has been greater international political recognition for Palestine.
By illustrating this effectiveness and symbolic coherence in the face of both poor internal mass media structures and political constraints, the Palestinian example may offer insights for other aspiring national movements and for public diplomacy.
1. Strategic Action Through Discourse 1.1 Public diplomacy and the Middle Eastern perspective 1.2 Current practice in Middle East public relations 1.3 The challenge of multiple publics 2. International Stances in the Literature of Public Diplomacy and Public Relations 2.1 Getting to the 21st Century: Brief chronology of the current situation (19th -21st Centuries) 2.2 Representation: The eastern voice in public relations 2.3 Official channels 2.4 Enter the digital age 2.5 Implications of multiple audiences 3. The Media War 3.1 The politics of representation 3.2 The power of voice 3.3 Strategies and impacts 4. The Voices 4.1 The faces of Palestine 4.2 Articulating different positions 4.3 Political shifts in the landscape of discourse 5. The Imperative of Advocacy 5.1 An eastern approach to public diplomacy 5.2 Palestinian public relations and capacity building 5.3 Leveraging technology for reach and authenticity 6. Ethical Issues and the Public Voice 6.1 Handling hate 6.2 Confronting hasbara 6.3 Media bias 6.4 Demonisation and the issue of incitement 7. The Future in a Marketplace of Ideas 7.1 The value of the Palestinian experience 7.2 Eastern expertise and its contribution to the academy 7.3 Challenges emerging from the mediatisation of politics Appendix: Framework for a model of public diplomacy for aspiring nations
Biography
Palestinian born Professor Ibtisam Abu-Duhou is a specialist in the field of Education Economics at the University of Melbourne, Adjunct Professor at Birzeit University, Palestine and advisor to the Palestinian Minister for Education. She became the inaugural Ian Potter Foundation Senior Research Fellow at Charles Darwin University in 2004, and in 2007 she joined the Regional Office of UNESCO-Bangkok. Travelling and living in both Australia and Palestine her work with international organizations includes extensive involvement with AusAID, the World Bank; UNESCO; International Institute of Education Planning (IIEP); UNICEF and the European Union. Professor Abu-Duhou’s publications draw extensively on her research for the Office of Multicultural Affairs and Bureau of Immigration and Population, dealing with immigration policies, education, training, employment and settlement of Arabic-speaking and African communities in Australia.
Dr Jeannie Fletcher is an ethnographer and discourse analyst, based at Massey University Wellington, New Zealand. She is an associate of Victoria University’s Wellington Language in the Workplace project and her interdisciplinary research focuses on organisational communication including: communicative contexts that support/inhibit an organisation’s knowledge creating capabilities; the role of management in creating the organisation’s communicative context; the management of interpersonal rapport in the social communities that comprise organisations; and the impact of social media and emerging technologies on communication in organisational and political contexts. Dr Fletcher is is guest editor of a special edition of the Communication Journal of New Zealand (forthcoming May, 2014) and serves on the editorial boards of PRism and the Communication Journal of New Zealand.
Dr Chris Galloway is a public relations scholar with special interests in issues, risk and crisis communication, particularly reputation management. He teaches at Massey University’s campus in Auckland, New Zealand, and has previously undertaken several voluntary teaching assignments in the West Bank. The co-editor of Public Relations Issues and Crisis Management (2005), his work has been published in journals such as Public Relations Review, the Journal of Communication Management (where in 2005 he published on the Israel-Palestine "media war"), Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal and Prism.
