U.S. State Department maximising use of social media
LOCAL journalists and Internet bloggers had the unique opportunity on Tuesday of joining their counterparts worldwide, in a live United States (U.S.) State Department interactive webchat. The featured speaker was Mr. Alec Ross, Senior Adviser for Innovation in the Office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose topic was `Social media and its Impact and Implications on U.S. Foreign Policy’.
Participants in the discourse were allowed to ask questions of Ross, by posting them on screen and have them posed to him by presenter Holly Jensen.
The proceedings, viewed live in the auditorium of the U.S. Embassy, Duke Street, Kingston, Georgetown, were all part of a month-long series on 21st Century statecraft to be hosted this month by the Bureau of Public Affairs.
It is a different form of outreach embarked on by the U.S. State Department, using new technology and innovation to engage international media across the globe on U.S. foreign policy.
Social media is defined by the U.S. State Department as Internet-based for social interaction in a variety of forms, including networking, content sharing and blogging.
Major advances were made in the development of social media in the early 2000s and, while social media have existed since the late 1990s, early sites did not amass large groups of users because most people did not have large extended online networks of friends at that time and many users found the functionality of these sites limited.
The U.S. State Department, having declared January as ‘21st Century Statecraft Month’, Ross was the first participant of the innovative series which aims, as well, too, at combining the use of social media and the Internet with more traditional foreign policy tools to connect people and achieve diplomatic goals.
Amongst the wide array of questioners were Kosovo Times News Portal, the American School of Kosovo, Guyana, Luna Radio, Republic of Indonesia; IDG News Service; Senegal; Andes News Agency and Radio Slovakia.

Questions
Some of the questions were what it means to be in charge of innovation at the State Department; what influence social media has in world politics; does the State Department deal or control organisations that use social media to be negative the same way it uses social media to bring positive change; in what ways is the social media complementary to U.S. democracy and how important is it to monitor U.S. Governments’ use of social media, particularly those who are not digital natives, to ensure the information disseminated is in keeping with the Government’s policy and does not compromise the Government’s message and agenda.
Ross was also asked whether social media improve and, if so, how is the communication between the Government and the people; how does social media and technology give advantages to diplomats and does he think that social media bring positive changes in the social, political and cultural life of people living in poor, non-democratic and Third World countries; what does he think of the European Union’s plans to distribute new software to help human rights activists and descendants in authoritarian regimes circumvent censorship; does he think that people will be losing their ability to act to go out into the streets and will become passive social media users only?
In his introduction, the official said the State Department has been using social media to help connect people in natural emergencies or to encourage entrepreneurship in the developing world. Also, individual ambassadors have used digital tools to connect with locals and spread knowledge about the U.S. and its work around the world.
He acknowledged that the traditional way in which the State Department got its message out was by spokespersons standing behind a podium and communicating the policy.
“We still do that and it’s the right thing to do. But part of what Hillary Clinton has empowered our diplomats to do is to have literally hundreds of other people out there communicating and having conversations and I think that this is a good thing. Of course, we all have to operate and communicate within the parameters of U.S. policy but one of the things that we know is because of the hyper-transparency that comes with all of this social media, if anybody steps out of it for a minute, we hear about it,” Ross explained.
But he said he thinks that that actually happens far less often than one would think. “And I think that now that we’ve been doing this for three years, I think that what we can see is that, by and large, our diplomats get this right. By and large, they understand our policies. By and large, they represent us well on social media. So I think we should be doing more of this rather than less,“ Ross added.

Prospect
He emphasised that with a more connected society there is the prospect of the development of more entrepreneurship.
Ross proffered that social media is constantly and increasingly becoming efficient and effective and, as it relates to the connect with the governing to the governed, he reminded that, 20 years ago, to be able to communicate with respective government, a letter probably had to be written.
The hope, then, was someone would read and respond. However, today, because of social media, “the connectedness between the governing and the governed is closer than ever before,” said Ross.
Talking about himself, Ross said, when he arrives at work in the morning, he no longer has to look through a stack of mail on his desk and decide on which he would read and which he would not.
Rather, he goes directly to Facebook or Twitter “and I hear from dozens and, occasionally, hundreds of people and I’m able to hear from them directly in a way that just wasn’t possible 20 years ago.”
“So, I think that the distance between people who are in government and people who are represented by that government have been made smaller by virtue of social media. And there’s a programme in the Obama Administration where we’re trying to make it even smaller, which is an open government partnership, which we co-chair with the Government of Brazil, where, to date, more than 40 governments have signed up, where what we are trying to do is take what is – what I would call the default setting for government information and where that historically would have been closed, we now want to make it open and we want to use technology to take government information and make it more accessible to our citizens,“ he explained.
Responding to a question on Internet freedom, Ross said it is the priority of social media combined with active listening, since social media is not viewed by the Department as a way of providing propaganda.
“Propaganda does not work at all in social media,” he argued.
The State Department official countered the question of whether he thinks people will be losing their ability to act to go out into the streets and will become passive social media users only; by reminding what is available in this case is actual data.

Activisim
“We’re able to see whether online activism translate into offline in-the-street activism. Just because you’re on Facebook and you click that you like something, that doesn’t make you an activist.
“One thing that we’ve been able to see, though, in the last couple years in the research and with the data is that online activism actually increases the amount of on-the-street activism and increases the amount of community participation. I think that this blurring between the online and the real world is only going to increasingly be the case,” he posited.
Wrapping up the discussion, Ross reiterated that the U.S. Department of State, like the rest of the world, is learning and adapting to a world that’s becoming increasingly disrupted by social media.
“This disruption can be good, it can be bad, but we live in a world of constant change,” he observed. 
Meanwhile, Ross in one of his on-line tweets noted: “Connection technologies are changing the ecology of geopolitical power. Hillary Clinton is a muscular Secretary of State who has unleashed 21st Century Statecraft so that our diplomats can adapt to the technology-fueled changes in the world and advance America’s interests.”
The State Department is already highly active on a plethora of media and has a total of 93 social media accounts, over half of which belong to individual embassies.
The State Department headquarters maintains a website, a blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter handle, YouTube and Flickr accounts and a Tumblr.
Ross, on account of his appointment which commenced on June, 4, 2009, is tasked with mazimising the potential of technology in service of America’s diplomatic and development goals.
Prior to his service at the State Department, he started his career as a sixth-grade teacher in inner–city Baltimore through Teach for America and is a graduate of Northwestern University.
He also worked on the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team and served as Convener for Obama for America’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications Policy Committee.