Nice Try, Dipnote

The U.S. Department of State has started its own blog, "Dipnote," which it describes as an "opportunity for participants to discuss important foreign policy issues with senior Department officials." Although blogger Wonkette thinks the name is "sort of begging to be mocked," Craig Hayden at the University of Southern California's Center for Public Diplomacy thinks the blog "has the potential to be a positive development as far as advocates of dialogue-based public diplomacy are concerned," because comment postings from outside the U.S. might give State Department officials a "healthy exposure to life outside the United States, the bubble of U.S. news coverage, and the rhetorically truncated world-view of the Bush administration's talking point." Hayden has studied which topics on the blog actually draw the most comments from readers. "While short postings from Karen Hughes or updates on official diplomatic activities yield scant interest," he writes, "provocative topics like 'Should the United States play a role in the creation of a Palestinian State?' or a discussion of how to convince nations to stop the violence in Burma draw in the most respondents. These kinds of posts are not only a way to invite more participation in the foreign policy conversation; they are a means for the State Department to gauge global public opinion in a way that moves beyond polling."