The Foreign Service Journal, December 2011

schizophrenic approach to social media would be comical if it weren’t so seri- ous. During the Arab Spring, as au- thoritarian regimes in the Middle East andNorth Africa pulled the plug on the Internet, the U.S. government was the most vocal champion of the right of the people of the region to communicate and severely upbraided the regimes of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for clipping Twitter’s wings and masking Facebook. At the same time, State is so nerv- ous about the relatively unregulated use of social media by its own employ- ees that it has created an official blog, “DipNote,” and a Facebook knock-off for employees called “The Corridor,” in an attempt to co-opt the phenomena. (DipNote, in my view, is excellent, by the way. I haven’t found “The Corri- dor” particularly useful.) Official social media outlets serve a purpose — as far as they go. But no one who wants the real skinny on a company goes to its monthly newslet- ter. Instead, they grab a beer with a few of the employees. Not only is the feedback there more candid, but it covers subjects that are simply inap- propriate for official communication. This is the type of benefit private Foreign Service blogs offer, one that the department itself has done a woe- fully inadequate job of providing to date: communicating to the American people what it is we actually do and why it matters, thus putting a human face on the diplomatic corps. No won- der Overseas Comparability Pay is so difficult to secure. The average Amer- ican doesn’t have the first clue of who we are or what we do. Social media are here to stay, and the generation of officers who have grown up with Twitter, Facebook, Blogger and Wordpress are not going to abandon what they see as a First Amendment right. Not the Enemy State should embrace this reality and work robustly and actively to en- sure that the Foreign Affairs Manual contains specific, practical guidance to officers on how public speaking and communication regulations apply to private blogs — and spells out what is inappropriate, and why. The current guidance found in the 5 FAM 700 se- ries and its myriad cross-references is neither effectively codified nor well understood. I also urge the department to es- tablish a high-level committee that can formulate firm, specific guidelines on private use of social media by State personnel. That committee should in- vite and welcome current bloggers and AFSA into the discussion. Then, based on the findings and recommendations of that committee, the department should incorporate a short seminar on the use of social media into the A-100 curriculum. This course should in- clude real-life examples of Web pages from past and current Foreign Service blogs that cross the line. Foreign Service bloggers and users of social media should not be left cow- ering in fear, bewildered as to what might get them into trouble, and made to feel like dissidents. Instead, their creativity should be harnessed, and the adversarial relationship between blog- gers and department management should be mended. Foreign Service blogging isn’t a problem to be managed. It is an op- portunity to be seized. Matt Keene, a Foreign Service consular officer since 1999, is currently a special assistant in the Bureau of Human Re- sources. In addition to overseas assign- ments in Jerusalem, Dubai and Sofia, he was deputy director of the Office of Maghreb Affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs from 2009 to 2011. State is so nervous about the use of social media by its own employees that it has created an official blog and a Facebook knock-off. 14 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 1 S P E A K I N G O U T Dear Readers: In order to produce a high- quality product, the FSJ depends on the revenue it earns from advertising. You can help with this. Please let us know the names of companies that have provide d good service to you — a hotel, insurance company, auto dealership, or other concern. A referral from our readers is the best entrée! You Are Our Eyes & Ears! Ed Miltenberger Advertising & Circulation Manager Tel: (202) 944-5507 E-mail: miltenberger@afsa.org