Report – Soft Power and public Diplomacy in The Arab World
The workshop about the soft power and public diplomacy in the Arab world was delivered at the Zoom video platform. The duration of workshop, as it initially planned, was two hours. It consisted of two main parts, presentation (that included short videos related to the topic and small discussions with the participants) and topic-related quiz game at the end of the workshop.
Regarding the number of participants, there were four people participating in the workshop at Zoom. Beside this, the workshop also went live on major social media platforms: facebook, instagram, and youtube. Taking social media followers into consideration.
The presentation had three main parts. The first one has covered the definitions and main components of the soft power and public diplomacy, as the two interrelated yet different concepts. This part examined main pillars of the concepts, as well as the question what efficient soft power strategy should consist of.
The second and the third parts of the presentation were dedicated to the case studies. The soft power strategy of the two countries were analyzed, the US as a global, and UAE as a regional power. In the US case study, the three main pillars of soft power – culture, political system, and foreign policy – were applied to the MENA region. Examining the UAE new soft power strategy, the potential changes in the definition of the concept were underlined, as well as in its main components. As noticed, the UAE case has shown the power of economic prosperity used for the effective nation branding and, as UAE official strategy stated, closely related successful soft power policy.
The second and final part of the workshop was topic-related quiz game. The platform used for this part was Kahoot, a game-based learning platform. After the short explanation of the game, the participants downloaded the app and joined the group created for them. The main task for participants was to apply the concepts they learnt about at the workshop on a new case study. Previously, everyone received learning material upon which the quiz questions were developed. The final case study in the game has been about non-state actors and their soft power strategies.
At the end, the participants had an opportunity for questions, answers and additional explanations of all topics covered throughout the workshop.