Public Communication in International Politics: Analyzing Capacities, Strategies, and Impact

Domestic governments as well as NGOs, interest groups and IOs are now deemed important actors in public debates on and as parts of international politics. Consequently, we see an increasing output of studies about how such actors build (a) communication capacities, (b) choose strategies to communicate and (c) affect the way public debates and opinions evolve. However, we note a considerable gap in communication between studies of different intellectual origins although they share a common interest in public communication in international politics. The workshop seeks to (re)connect respective debates in IR, political communication and sociology that all share an interest in the role of strategic communication in international politics and its impact on how relevant publics think and (inter)act. It wants to shed light on questions such as: – How do international organizations communicate their policies to the public? How successful are they in shaping public and elite opinion across the world? – How do governmental actors and other domestic elites react to shock events in IR in order to secure or gain domestic support? How successful are they in doing so? And under which conditions are they successful or not? – How do NGOs and interest groups seek support for their position toward international policies such as the TTIP or the fight against Islamic Terror? How successful are they in shaping public and elite opinion across the world? – How and to what extent do the different communication strategies by different actors collide or coincide? Under which conditions does one strategy ‘win’ over another one? We are interested mainly in empirical research which confronts such or related questions by using a quantitative and/or qualitative design, without per se excluding theoretical research.