The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2014

22 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL diplomats are being encour- aged by the State Department to use both local and global social media tools, with hundreds of embassy Twitter feeds and Facebook accounts now attracting millions of fol- lowers worldwide. “The role of new media in public diplomacy has gone from virtually non-existent to standard practice,” says a State Depart- ment description of the “21st-Century Statecraft” initiative launched by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The “social diplomacy” approach has proven to be especially important in countries like Russia, where government control of most broadcast media often distorts the message fromWash- ington and news coverage about U.S. events and policies. Even though tweets are mere 140-character bursts of information— one might call them policy haikus—they can offer a platform for clear, concise messages that reach a target audience without passing through the restrictive and distorting filters of govern- ment-controlled media. Amb. McFaul, who speaks Russian well, is mindful of how important it is to communicate primarily in a nation’s own language. Diplomats Join the “Twitterati” When he became ambas- sador to Russia in January 2012, McFaul—a Stanford University professor who had never before tweeted or blogged—moved quickly to adopt social media. Having served as the National Security Council’s Russia specialist from 2009 to 2011, McFaul set out to implement cutting-edge White House communications tech- niques as part of the “21st-Century Statecraft” approach. During his first country team meeting in Moscow, Amb. McFaul—only the second non-career diplomat in three decades to serve in that position—told the section heads gath- ered in the embassy’s chancery that “this post is going to be focused on public diplomacy.” With more and more Russians turning to social media for news and commentary, McFaul argues that social media offers “a fast way to get out informa- tion, correct the record and engage Russians.” In less than two years, he has attracted more than 55,000 Ambassador Michael McFaul (center) talks with young Russian social media leaders and bloggers on the patio during a June 2013 session at his Moscow residence. Vitaly Ragulin