Suchergebnisse

In this article, we turn back to the 1918 influenza pandemic to throw light on the alliances of information communication technologies and technologies of mobility (such as the car) during the pandemic. We examine newspaper articles, technical publications, and other historical texts to demonstrate that, despite the fact that mobile technologies—such as cellular phones—did not exist during the 1918 pandemic, the telephone and mobility technology nonetheless formed alliances as networks in motion, or social moments in which risk and reward are calculated not simply by the ability to move, but rather the ability to move, while remaining connected, revealing insight into early cultural formations that share similarities and differences with the use of modern mobile media and mobility technologies during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

This article theorises the interplay between public diplomacy and populism. Building on Baudrillard's simulacra, we advance the hybridity approach to soft power statecraft by analysing a cultural shift in US presidential public diplomacy. Using discourse analysis, we uncover how, rather than aiding the building of relationship with foreign publics, Donald Trump has brought to the field cultural codes alien to public diplomacy, imploding the meanings central to the endogenous norms of diplomacy and turning towards an agonistic relational dynamic with foreign publics. This article reveals how digitalisation affords the expansion of Donald Trump's populist style, and makes the populist cultural shift highly visible on his Twitter. To reveal this dynamic in granular detail, we propose 'kayfabe' as an epistemic lens for the interpretation of the populist style in the conduct of Trump's 'simulated public diplomacy', a defining feature of the current US global leadership. As well as considering socialities re-shaping relational dynamics, this article unpacks tensions stemming from the expansion of populist style into presidential public diplomacy. Finally, we reflect on the epistemic crisis of US public diplomacy within the strategic landscape of political uncertainties associated with the proliferation of populism in the field.