Israeli diplomats using social media to launch Gaza PR offensive

As Israel launched a military response to halt Hamas rocket attacks on civilian areas, the Israeli Consulate General in New York also moved aggressively to make Israel's case for military action in a very untraditional way. In a "first" for public diplomacy, David Saranga, the consul for media and public affairs, hosted a "citizens' press conference" to answer questions about Israel's actions— using the microblogging/text messaging web site known as Twitter. The Consulate is also using Facebook, MySpace, and other social media technologies to communicate its message.

Public diplomacy, the communications outreach by a country's diplomatic corps, normally provides economic, cultural, and other information about a country through traditional news media to citizens of the country hosting the diplomats. U.S. embassies also engage in public diplomacy.

In December, James K. Glassman, U.S. under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, embraced the use of social media technologies in public diplomacy. In a speech to the New America Foundation, he said, "We have arrived at the view that the best way to achieve our goals in public diplomacy is through a new approach to communicating, an approach that is made far easier because of the emergence of Web 2.0, or social networking, technologies. We call our new approach 'Public Diplomacy 2.0.'" (http://tinyurl.com/5rpr3x.)

For Israel, using Twitter to speak directly with a global audience was an opportunity to engage in a two-way conversation with people interested in hearing from the Jewish state, said Saranga.

"We saw that there is a huge interest on Twitter regarding the events in Gaza," he explained. "We saw that there is also a very vivid debate on Twitter" about Israeli actions.

While it's important for Israel to combat misperceptions about its goals in the Gaza military action by responding to questions from the public, younger audiences are less interested in the historical background to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, Saranga said. "They want to get short answers, to the point, that are going to answer their interest."

Twitter (twitter.com) users communicate in short text messages of 140 characters or less that can be monitored or created on the website, using different software applications, or cell phone text-messaging capabilities. Twitter users are mostly exchanging details of their daily activities. Twitter users call these messages "tweets," and connecting with friends on the service is called "following" someone, or being "followed."

Saranga and his public diplomacy staff of seven sat in a conference room at the NY Consulate and reviewed each question that came from Twitter users, debating the best way to answer in the cramped 140 character limit. He has posted a transcript of the Citizen Press Conference conversation on his political blog, Israelpolitik.org. Saranga and his team also prepared answers to questions that they couldn't get to during the live Q&A period. (http://tinyurl.com/7p6g46)

Many journalists and bloggers were complimentary of the outreach effort, according to Saranga who stayed awake until two the next morning reading blogs and news coverage of the initiative. "We were asked quite difficult questions, and we didn't disappoint them, we answered them," he said. "We answered questions of people who were critical of Israel, and we answered questions of people who were supportive of Israel."

Saranga believes that the open access of a social media network is essential in spreading Israel's message successfully. Israel's future Twitter outreach is not going to be limited to conversations about conflict in the Middle East, he promised. "We are going to communicate with our followers about different topics, like culture in Israel, technology in Israel, things that Israel has to offer. That's the reality of Israel, not the conflict."

Listen to my podcast interview with Saranga at http://tinyurl.com/9ccqun. steve@compuschmooze.com