Who are the targets of public diplomacy?

What is it about?

While traditional diplomacy is about governments enacting relations with each other, public diplomacy is about governmental outreach to (foreign) publics. Both in theory and practice, public diplomacy is usually modelled after an 'opinion leaders'-approach, meaning that it exclusively targets another country's powerful and wealthy individuals. However, in applying cognitive psychological knowledge on human encounters with strangers, one can map out a much broader typology of potential public diplomacy targets. This typology makes visible that a large number of 'publics' are neglected by public diplomats.

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Why is it important?

The application of cognitive psychological knowledge allows for a deeper and more holistic theorization of the targets ('strategic publics') of public diplomacy. In addition, this paper highlights that there are categories of 'forgotten publics' to whom more attention should be paid. It calls to illuminate various categories of publics more closely in order to develop theoretical and practical knowledge.