Wharton Professor Galit Sarfaty just published a paper on changing norms in international institutions, using as an example the advance of the human rights agenda in the World Bank . The study describes the process of how new norms are adopted – or not – in large organizations and how different factions negotiate their positions

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Establishing Norms in Large Organizations (Or: How to Win the Turf War)

‘Ha, I almost forgot; we need a dissemination strategy for the report. Get somebody to sort that out

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Dissemination vs Public Engagement; in Other Words, Are You Serious?

There are so many things in the world that need fixing, don’t you think? More people need health insurance – but not from my money! Refugees need space and facilities in order to live halfway decently – but not in my backyard! Religious groups have the right to open their centers wherever they want – but not in my neighborhood! It’s a common public phenomenon – NIMBY, Not In My Backyard.

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Not In My Backyard

Everybody knows to be a little wary of the blurb on the back of books but the pitch for Peter Mandelson's memoir is still a bit rich. Did I really buy TheThird Man because “Much has been written about the man at the heart of New Labour

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PR lessons from the "Prince of Darkness"

In the 16 years since a 1994 ceasefire agreement put the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed mainly-Armenian populated territory of Nagorno Karabakh on hold, peace remains as elusive as ever. The war fought in the early 1990s left over 25,000 dead and forced a million to flee their homes, leaving ethnic Armenian forces, backed by Armenia proper, in control of over 16 percent of what the international community considers sovereign Azerbaijani territory

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Overcoming Negative Stereotypes in the South Caucasus

Since the last post about Wikileaks on this blog , the site has drawn the world’s attention with its release of nearly 100,000 classified military documents from the U.S.

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A New Media Model for the Developing World?

My colleague Shanthi Kalathil is working on a ” Toolkit for Independent Media Development ,” which we have mentioned several times on this blog. One of the points she makes right at the beginning is that donors need to distinguish between media development and communication for development. Communication for development means the use of communication tools – usually in the form of awareness raising campaigns – to achieve development goals.

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Media Development vs. Communication for Development: Structure vs. Process

“If you are in a senior position in politics or at the very top in business, it is probably as well to assume that life is on the record. When the organisers of any event you are speaking at tell you it is being held under “Chatham House rules”, and that everyone in the room is utterly discreet and trustworthy, it is best to nod and smile

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Quote of the Week: Alastair Campbell

For two days last month (June 21-22) CommGAP and the Governance Practice in the World Bank Institute organized a workshop on the theme: The Political Economy of Reform: Moving from Analysis to Action . In attendance were practitioners and academics from around the world, including several leading donor agencies.

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Donor Bureaucrats As Obstacles To Reform Initiatives

“Social media are giving public relations theory a workout,” writes guest editor Tom Kelleher, introducing the “brisk circuit of scholarship” he has brought together for a special edition of the Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol 22:3 . Media Catching and the Journalist–Public Relations Practitioner Relationship: How Social Media are Changing the Practice of Media Relations , by Richard D. Waters, Natalie T

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Credibility and flying BMWs: JPRR Social Media Special

The issues of journalism and a free press come to mind these days. With a significant number of journalists attacked in, among other countries, Russia, just in the past few months, we clearly see the dependence of the media system on the political environment in a country.

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Murder and Impunity

Internet gameplay is becoming more socially and culturally diverse and ubiquitous than ever before. Yet at the same time, the culture of griefing or pranking that dominates these games and other forms of networked social life such as Second Life and Chatroulette takes increasingly racist and racialized forms.

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Lisa Nakamura: Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game

Practitioners of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) technique assert that the problem-led diagnostic approach in development planning tends to focus on negativity, which only emphasizes and amplifies negative traits, while, appreciative inquiry focuses on positive features and leverages them to correct or overcome the negative (White, T.H.

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Co-creating the Future

The World Bank has been engaging a wide variety of policy advocacy CSOs on the issues of access, rights, and financing of urban water and sanitation programs over the past five years. Of particular concern to CSOs have been the issues of water privatization, cost-recovery approaches, and lack of affordable water services for low income populations in Bank-financed water and sanitation projects. For its part, the Bank has welcomed this dialogue because it clearly shares with civil society the goal of extending universal coverage to the poor in developing countries and improving delivery effectiveness

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Bridge over Troubled Waters: Navigating the Policy Divide

” The basic principle of democracy is that since all are full members of society, all have the right to speak as they wish or find. This is not only an individual right, but a social need, since democracy depends on the active participation and the free contribution of all its members. The right to receive is complementary to this: it is the means of participation and of common discussion

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Quote of the Week: Raymond Williams

Eli Pariser, the president of MoveOn.org, answered the PdF 2010 question “Can the Internet Fix Politics” with a warning about how the hidden personalization features of search and newsfeeds were subtly destroying the notion of a common public space.

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PdF 2010 | Eli Pariser: Filter Bubble, or How Personalization is Changing the Web

Communication is something of an ugly duckling in the social sciences – not many people take it seriously and not many people see the immediate relevance of the research. However, the study of public opinion is a good example to outline the immediate relevance of the field – and its future relevance.

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The Age of Communication Research

During a recent discussion on the issue of diplomacy in the information age, hosted by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, I got to mulling over the idea of the transnational public sphere.

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Opining at the Speed of Light

Google I/O 2010 – Fireside chat with the Social Web team Fireside Chats, Social Web David Glazer, DeWitt Clinton, John Panzer, Joseph Smarr, Sami Shalabi, Todd Jackson, Chris Chabot (moderator) Social is quickly becoming an integral part of how we experience the web, and this is your chance to pick the brains of the people who are working on Buzz, the Buzz API and the underlying open protocols such as Activity Streams and OAuth which are an essential component of a truly open & social web. For all I/O 2010 sessions, please go to code.google.com

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Google I/O 2010 – Fireside chat with the Social Web team

On May 2 this year, Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, the gigantic Wall Street bank, was interviewed on CNN by Fareed Zakaria (his show is Global Public Square ).

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Global Financial Markets: A Tale of Two Moral Publics