Professor Bernard Duhaime (left)

The USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School welcomed Bernard Duhaime, the incoming Canada-U.S. Visiting Research Chair in Public Diplomacy, to speak about the relationship between human rights and public diplomacy. Duhaime, who is conducting research and teaching in the Master of Public Diplomacy program this fall, explained how the growth of international human rights has created space for new actors, usually nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), to participate in complex diplomacy strategies to eradicate human rights violations. "In my opinion, obviously when we are looking at public diplomacy and human rights we can look at human rights as a method of public diplomacy in order to change behavior, but essentially public diplomacy is the tool to ensure that human rights work is respected," Duhaime said. He also addressed social media's effectiveness for drawing attention to human rights violations, stating concerns about source credibility and immediacy because information is continuously replaced on sites such as Twitter and Facebook. "It's not necessarily a useful tool to address more subtle issues, and we're certainly, at least I hope we are, looking at more complex issues, very subtle issues about equality, about economic and cultural rights," said Duhaime about social media tools. "These can be part of a social media debate, but I'm not sure that these instruments would render the full picture of the issue." Duhaime said social media would be useful to share atrocities and shocking events, but does not provide an effective platform for discussing and generating changes because of its limitations. Center on Public Diplomacy  Bernard Duhaime