to influence a foreign public with the goal of promoting and projecting its interests Even the basic
definition of public diplomacy as the active effort by a state’s government to influence a foreign
public must be complicated by the variety of actors that can be involved in the practice of public
diplomacy including “global citizens”, NGOs, businesses, and members of the media.
Regardless of the contestable definition of public diplomacy, it is hard to deny the arrival of the
new style of diplomacy.
The Edward Murrow Center at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (2009) offers
a well-cited definition of public diplomacy that contrasts public diplomacy with “traditional
diplomacy”: