User blogs

If ever there was a time for governments to get their communications right, it is now. Governments everywhere are under scrutiny for what they say, how accurately they report facts, and what actions they are proposing. COVID-19 is spreading faster than press offices can get their messages out. Thanks to the Internet, the media and members of the public are posting stories which may not show governments in their best light. People need to know will they get sick, will they receive the treatments they need, and will they lose their jobs, their homes, their lives.

How long can you leave an email unanswered without causing offence to the sender? Should you block your official email at the end of the working week, or like German car manufacturer Daimler, for the whole of your summer vacation?

As a fairly recent recruit to the ranks of Twitter, I’m still undecided when it comes to assessing the kind of tweets which are likely to be effective from a public diplomacy point of view.   What is clear is which are not.

Much hilarity has been sparked among my Romanian Facebook friends by a recent statement by the new President of the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR), academic and former Foreign Minister Andrei Marga, that Romania’s cultural diplomacy should extend to promoting Romania’s place in scientific and technological innovation [in Romanian]. He chose as his example the humble radiator which was apparently invented - who knew? -  in Romania, specifically in Transylvania.

So London 2012 has begun and finally the British public seems to have got behind the Games. Some journalists are still niggling away, although the BBC, which is covering all events 24/7, is now taking a positive, not to say positively mawkish, stand. The traffic is still awful but who expected it to be otherwise?

I’ve recently read about an enterprising project called Branding Romania, not, as one might imagine, an official nation-branding exercise but a summer school offering personal and professional training to youngsters to motivate them to contribute to transforming their own communities.  This year’s Branding Romania summer school will be the fifth in the series.

We’ve all heard the expression: ‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity’. In May, Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone laughed off the controversy over the ethics, and security risks, of holding the F1 race in Bahrain at a time of serious unrest in the country with these identical words.  But is he right?  Is some publicity, however negative, better than none at all when it comes to national image?