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.  Despite a [...]

by Steven R. Corman
Yesterday that the DoD Office of Inspector General released a report with the unparsimonious title “Organizational Structure and Managers’ Internal Control Program for the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) and American Forces Information Service” (H/T WaPo).
It’s main conclusion has to do with the “Managers’ Internal Control Program established at the Office [...]

by Monika Maslikowski
For Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s communication strategy, its been a year full of ups and downs. Individually, the mishaps seem like minor blips in an otherwise burgeoning online presence, but when combined, they could point to Zawahiri’s diminishing abilities as a skilled communicator and principal figure of al-Qaeda’s online media strategy.
Earlier this [...]

by Steven R. Corman
The Advanced Research and Assessment Group of the Defense Academy of the United Kingdom has just released a new primer on Strategic Communication.  The executive summary says:
This paper attempts to address a perceived gap in UK defence thinking which currently has little documentation, on the emerging and cross governmental art of Strategic [...]

by Nicholas Brody
This is the fourth part of a five part series on about the one-year anniversary of the State Department’s Dipnote blog. In Part 1 we focused on reviewing DipNote management and processes. In Part 2 we looked at what the State Department bloggers were writing about. In Part 3 we conducted [...]

By Edward T. Palazzolo and Dawn Gilpin (With analysis support from Nick Brody, Jesse Herrera, Krista McNaughton, and Jordan Wolff)
This is the third post in a series about the one-year anniversary of the State Department’s Dipnote blog. In Part 1 we focused on reviewing DipNote management and processes. In Part 2 we looked [...]

by ZS Justus

A recent audio recording from al-Qaeda #2 Zawahiri sends a series of “messages” to President-elect Barack Obama. News outlets have quickly grabbed one of the more provocative excerpts from the recording, Zawahiri’s labeling of Obama as a “house negro.” Several blogs have followed suit including hotair, gateway pundit, commentary magazine, the moderate voice, [...]

by Bud Goodall
The headlines from WatchAmerica show worldwide optimism and support for President-Elect Obama.  Yet, despite this large and welcoming window of public diplomacy opportunity, there are still 10 weeks to go before President Obama is sworn in and can officially represent America.  In the meantime, we have a world waiting to see if we [...]

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 strategic planning, coordination, [...]

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 the [...]