While soft power continues to be an influential idea in public diplomacy, the complex realities of a multi-polar world necessitate an examination not just of how nations gain soft power, but also how they lose it. How does a country traverse the spectrum of credibility gain and loss? How can the ontology of this progression be captured into a relevant epistemology? Taking an interdisciplinary, case study approach, and drawing inspiration from public diplomacy, sociology, and psychology, this paper presents a theory of reputational vulnerability, which facilitates risk assessment and understanding of the intersecting dynamics of political polarisation and reputational erosion.

While authoritarianism is deemed undesirable, whether an autocrat is considered an ally or an adversary impacts how they are seen in Western media. This leads to the question—while it is easy to imagine adversarial autocrat archetypes (e.g., Vladimir Putin)—what comprises the visual archetype of a “good autocrat”? To answer this, this article examines the visual news coverage given by the influential Western publication, Time, to two Pakistani autocrats allied with the United States: General Zia-ul-Haq and General Pervez Musharraf. Using semiotic methodology, this article presents a triadic heuristic model outlining the visual archetype of a “good” autocrat: Humanization, Absence, and Hobson’s Choice. It demonstrates how visual cues associated with these heuristics serve to construct regimes of truth that present desirable autocrats as “valuable” bodies whose soft power is constructed at the expense of an “other.” Finally, it interrogates the significance of these dynamics in analyzing contemporary populist “strongmen.”

Departing from the synchronic trend dominant in social semiotics research, this study examines the diachronic interplay between semiotic cues governing power relations, and global political power dynamics. It examines thirty years of photographic coverage given to Iran inTimeMagazine, focusing specifically on diachronic interaction analysis (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006, Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge). The significance of these discourses is examined with an interdisciplinary conceptual lens comprising of social semiotics (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006, Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge) and critical theory (Butler 1993, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge). The analysis reveals the even amongst a routinely "othered" national community, some actors are rendered more "valuable" by the camera. Specifically, the interactive cues of gaze, camera angle and social distance accord more power to male dissidents, and female trailblazers, discursive choices serving as an indictment of Iran's socio-political systems. Furthermore, this paper extends van Leeuwen's (2008, "Representing Social Actors." In Discourse and Practice, edited by T. van Leeuwen. New York: Routledge) work on visual "othering," and suggests three new categories for examining how visual cues create "valuable bodies": adjacency, subjectivation, and empowerment.

This article contends that the classic public diplomacy model prioritising scholarly research on maximising soft power in the eyes of foreign publics needs to be extended. It proposes a new concept, Negative Watch, which dyadically complements Nye’s in (Ann Am Acad Polit Soc Sci 616: 94–109, 2008) idea of soft power. By extending the epistemology surrounding negative place branding, this paper seeks to expand the debates around it. Where soft power is about accruing power via credibility, Negative Watch maps its loss, approaching it from a communicative dimension. Using a case study approach, the article presents the concept as a model with two key components (1) An index comprising a typology of unfavourable narratives connoting negative affect towards nation brands; (2) a heuristic model outlining a spectrum of outcomes precipitated by reputational decline. The index can be used as a self-assessment tool by a nation to track its reputational erosion, so that it may take measures before it progresses too far down the spectrum of consequences. It can also facilitate systemic assessment of external actors, including allies as well as adversaries, to facilitate strategic decision making within the realm of international relations and public diplomacy.

This article provides a historical perspective on how institutionalized articulations of gender in visual news narratives may contribute towards the erosion of a country’s soft power potential. It analyses thirty years of photographic coverage given by an elite western publication, Time magazine to women from two countries with problematic place brands: Iran and Pakistan. This study documents how iterative longitudinal patterns of visual grammar contribute towards the layered marginalization of women within narratives. Women are much less visible in terms of image frequency, with selective value placed on certain kinds of female subjects across the decades, choices often shaped by stereotypes as well as foreign policy preferences. For Iranian women, the visual discourse empowers women resisting conservative forces, and valorizes trailblazers redefining the public space. For Pakistani women, a narrative showcasing political activism devolves into one highlighting victims/activists in the context of gender-based discrimination. The choice of ‘valuable’ bodies in both instances, expressed with the help of quantifiable semiotic trends in camera angles, shot and gaze, is imbued with indirect judgment of the political leadership and cultural and socio-political systems of the countries themselves. In both cases, the overall narrative is of a system pre-disposed to oppress women, thus negatively juxtaposing the ‘people’ aspect of the Anholt Nation Brand Index against the elements of governance, culture and heritage, to the overall detriment of both place brands.

Courses Visual Rhetoric, Visual Communication, Multiplatform Journalism, Advertising, Journalism, Public Relations.Objective This unit activity requires that students analyze and produce imagery with the help of semiotic theory. Students will (1) learn to connect theory with practice holistically by simultaneously practicing visual analysis and synthesis; (2) practice visual rhetoric, a key skill for professionals from media and related sectors; and (3) understand the basics of visual storytelling.