The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2014

26 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL countries to grow, on this issue and many others.” Both McFaul and Kruzich emphasize that social media are merely a supplement to, not a substitute for, face-to-face meet- ings and other aspects of traditional public diplomacy. But Kru- zich views it as an advance over the slower, press-release/news conference strategy that often is ignored by, or takes longer to be mentioned in, the Russian media. For a February 2013 social media campaign to counter anti-U.S. coverage, the embassy sent tweets for 28 straight days emphasizing positive developments in bilateral relations, ranging from nuclear security to cultural exchanges. Increasingly, Russian journalists are treating such rapid-fire Twitter exchanges among diplomats as fodder for stories. Still, as Chernenko cautions, social media are “not a replacement for traditional reporting. There is so much unproven information” that needs to be fact-checked. This is particularly true when some of it comes from the Russian government’s own social media sites, which have been trying to catch up to the global “social diplomacy” trend. One of the most aggressive practitioners has been the Ministry of For- eign Affairs. After Amb. McFaul highlighted the Russian role in pressing the Kyrgyz government to order U.S. forces out of an air base there, the MFA responded by launching a Twitter offensive accusing McFaul of “meddling” in Russian affairs. In response, the ambassador used his LiveJournal blog to explain that his comments had been a side issue, and noted that he’d mainly intended his speech at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics to highlight the progress made in U.S.-Russian rela- tions on some key issues. That helped quiet the flap. After that social-media exchange, Swedish Foreign Minis- ter Carl Bildt—another member of Foreign Policy’s “Twitterati 100”—sent a tweet saying the MFA had “launched a Twitter war” against McFaul. Wrote Bildt: “That’s the new world: followers instead of nukes. Better.” The goal of most players in that new world is to recruit such virtual followers, and Embassy Moscow’s public affairs staff is looking for new ways to build its audience in 2014. That will include public diplomacy initiatives focused on two major events at the Russian resort and conference center of Sochi: the Winter Olympics in February and the Group of Eight summit there in early June. Stagnation is a no-no in social diplomacy, so building the embassy’s audience remains a priority in a country where there are millions of potential—but often fickle—followers. A pundit once called Twitter “a human seismograph.” The challenge is to move the needle in the desired direction. n