The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2014 21 Utilizing new media in public diplomacy is vital in countries like Russia, where government control of most broadcast media often distorts the message from Washington. BY ROBERT KOEN I G USING “SOCIAL DIPLOMACY” TO REACH RUSSIANS FOCUS A lmost as soon as a Russian court convicted activist Alexei Navalny of embezzlement, on highly dubious grounds, in July 2013, U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul tweeted his disappoint- ment at the “apparent political motiva- tions in this trial.” Within minutes that comment echoed across Russia’s social media landscape, eventually generating nearly 1,000 retweets and getting picked up by numerous media outlets. “Everyone was checking McFaul’s Twitter account and quoting what he said,” recalls Elena Chernenko, a foreign desk correspondent for Kom- mersant , one of Moscow’s major daily newspapers. In recent years, Twitter and other social media have emerged as a lightning-fast, pointed alternative to traditional tactics of public diplomacy. Supplementing their usual portfolios, U.S. Robert L. Koenig was a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Information Agency from 1980 to 1981, serving in Germany. He then left the Service to return to journalism, covering various national and international events including the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. (The next year, the National Press Club honored him for his reporting on that seminal event.) He continued to work as a journalist during the posting of his FSO wife, Mary Ellen Koenig, in Germany, Switzerland and South Africa. Now an Eligible Family Member, he works as an assistant infor- mation officer in Moscow, where she is cultural affairs officer. SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE FOREIGN SERVICE