Guest Post: Public Diplomacy researchers from USC to visit India

By Maya Babla

         This December, a group of seven graduate students from the Master of Public Diplomacy program at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism in Los Angeles will embark on a journey to India. We will visit New Delhi and Mumbai, meeting with a range of stakeholders interested in how this global player is positioning itself to foreign and domestic audiences. 

         Our research will assess the role of each of these actors: public, private, and nonprofit, as well as media and academia—and seeks to understand how they create the public diplomacy ecosystem in India. We will survey a wide range of ‘diplomacies’—from cultural to economic to citizen-powered initiatives—to understand how each of these is contributing to communicating the idea of India. Along the way, we'll be reporting on our findings through the project’s website, India: Inside Out. The objective of the website is to spark a larger dialogue on the relevance and value of public diplomacy within the international affairs and communications communities, but we invite those from all fields to participate. 

      As part of the team, I started the conversation last week by offering my own definition of public diplomacy. In the coming weeks, each of the members of the India: Inside Out team will be writing about our particular research areas before our trip, our impressions of India upon our arrival, and once we’ve delved in, our analysis of what that public diplomacy ecosystem looks like.

-- Maya Babla, Master of Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California

Maya Babla is a student and researcher at USC's Public Diplomacy program. This December she will lead a USC delegation to study India's PD efforts.

* Guests posts are opinions of respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Public Diplomacy Blog. They are published here as a part of the blog's mission to create a forum for discussion on Public Diplomacy.