The Policy of Cultural Diplomacy as a Mechanism for Implementing Strategic Communications of the State

Abstract

This article analyzes the place of cultural diplomacy in state’s system of strategic communications. Strategic communications today are defined as the main tool to response to the Russian Federation’s destructive propaganda against Ukraine and the other countries. The central element of the system of strategic communications is the introduction of state’s strategic narrative to target audiences. A strategic narrative proposed to consider in paradigm of the J.-F.Liotar. One of the basic elements of public diplomacy is cultural diplomacy (in this case there is still no coherent research of interdependence of the concepts of «public» and «cultural» diplomacy). Cultural diplomacy is though not a new concept, but poorly studied from a theoretical point of view. In spite of the thousand-year experience of the practical implementation of cultural diplomacy and the beginning of the institutionalization of the phenomenon in the late 19 th century, but as a holistic concept, it appears only after the Second World War. In general, cultural diplomacy is defined as a method of achieving the state’s foreign policy goals through cultural communication or other diplomatic action related to culture. It is emphasized that it is impossible to implement cultural diplomacy solely by public authorities and it requires a synergistic joining forces with non-state actors. In the state’s system of strategic communications cultural diplomacy performs a dual role. On the one hand, culture diplomacy helping strategic narratives gain a certain shape (in the form of cultural product - the content), as well as to adapt the content to the different cultural traditions of the target audiences. On the other hand cultural diplomacy not only helps the content to reach target audiences (who are representatives of the cultural community of foreign countries), but also to engage target groups in the process of further spread of this content to other target audiences. Today in Ukraine practical work on the implementation of cultural diplomacy enhanced. But the process is facing with a shortage of financial resources, insufficient government attention, as well as problems with a holistic understanding of how these activities should be carried out.

Keywords

• strategic communications, public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, training of personnel, national interests.