by Steven R. Corman A new study of public opinion in Muslim countries was released this week by  WorldPublicOpinion.org.  The study was conducted between July and September of 2008, using in-home interviews of around 1100 people in each of Egypt, Indonesia, and Pakistan, plus “supplemental polling” of 500-1000 people in each of Jordan, the Palestinian [...]

by Steven R. Corman In November of last year I published an op-ed piece expressing my hope that President Barack Obama would follow-through with his campaign pledges to use humility to help repair the country’s image with Muslims abroad. In his first week in office, Obama has made two important moves in this direction.  First, [...]

by Steven R. Corman At his final news conference yesterday President Bush responded to a question about whether the nation’s image needs repairing given the “damage that Gitmo, that harsh interrogation tactics that  [members of the incoming administration] consider torture, how going to war in Iraq without a UN mandate have damaged America’s moral standing [...]

by Steven R. Corman With the end of the year, it’s time for some shout-outs to five individuals who made significant achievements in strategic communication during 2008.  They are (in alphabetical order): Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who had the good sense to put some serious money into social science research through the Minerva project.  [...]

by Steven R. Corman Pakistani public opinion about the U.S. and its war against extremists is a matter of  considerable concern given the tenuous situation in that country.  As we know, the public is quite unhappy about cross-border missile strikes the U.S. has been conducting this year. Even if the U.S. and Pakistani governments have [...]

by Steven R. Corman With news that the Hillary Clinton pick for Secretary of State is final, I thought it might be useful to summarize what she had to say one year ago in her essay for Foreign Affairs (subscription link).  Of course, these were her priorities as an erstwhile president, and the Secretary of [...]

by Steven R. Corman The GAO has just released a report on the 2009 Congressional and Presidential Transition.  Number five on the hit parade of urgent issues is improving he U.S image abroad (good beat, but it’s kind of hard to dance to). The GAO says that to accomplish this, policy makers must “improve their [...]

by Steven R. Corman In a widely-read white paper published last year, my colleagues and I pointed out that strategic communication operates in a complex worldwide system.  One feature of such systems is that they can develop inertia, stubbornly insisting on interpreting messages in standard ways, practically no matter what the message is.  Such is [...]

by Bud Goodall A recent report in The Huffington Post showed once again how much trouble foreign journalists can have in translating colloquial Americanisms: That problem faced Al Jazeera reporter Abderrahim Foukara when he wrestled with how to describe “maverick.” The world’s most watched Arab network finally decided to define the American colloquialism as “a [...]

by Steven R. Corman You would think that any presidential debate on foreign policy would have to spend a lot of time talking about how American policy is perceived and how its perception influences our ability to project power, pursue our strategies, and achieve our goals. You would be wrong. In the entire 90 minute [...]