Strategic Communication Of The United States Government After 9/11(2001-2021)

After taking a huge hit on September 11,2001,the US government poured resources into strategic communication and made it part of national strategy in order to achieve national security goal.In the past two decades,the U.S.government’s strategic communication planning has covered three major areas:security,economy and politics.A full-blown success is yet to be seen comparing to the substantial amount of effort by the United States government.This study aims to explain the cause of this discrepancy.Strategic communication is the form of communication that takes roots on an institutional level,which requires the top-level design of high stations and the overall coordination of multiple departments and agencies.To give full play to the role of strategic communication in influencing target audiences through multiple means,the United States government has put forward the action standard of "synchronizing words and deeds",which requires the government’s words and actions to be consistent,which in turn needs to rely on relatively micro communication strategies.This study is based on the communication strategy model of Falkheimer and Heide,combined with the strategic communication practice of the United States government,carried out by its strategic communication agencies such as the United States Department of State,the United States Global Media Agency and the United States Agency for International Development in the post-9/11 period.This study than pursues setting up the scheme of goals for strategic communication,the strategic communication strategy model and collaborative hierarchy model of the United States government.This study found that the U.S.government’s strategic communication goal consists of three parts:security goal,economic goal and political goal.The security objectives include preventing new terrorist attacks,preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and safeguarding the security interests of allies and partners.The economic objectives can be divided into three sub-objectives:adhering to scientific and technological innovation and sustainable development,providing foreign development assistance and actively maintaining economic relations.Finally,the political goal of the United States government is to maintain the global leadership of the United States,of which the policy towards China and the language and culture policy are the sub-goals that have received high attention.The strategic communication planning and practice in the three fields will ultimately serve the purpose of safeguarding the world hegemony of the United States.Due to the fact that strategic communication is a means with high requirements for planning and coordination,the United States government’s strategic communication practice also shows the characteristics of coordinated use of four strategies.The strategic communication strategy model of the United States government is composed of overall planning strategy,evolutionary strategy.agenda-setting strategy and constructive strategy,which is summarized in this study on the basis of existing theories and relevant practice.The overall planning strategy is a strategy that plays the role of resource integration and coordination in the strategic communication planning stage and has both macro and micro applications.The application of the evolutionary strategy by the US government pays attention to the adjustment of the communication plan according to the actual communication effect,at the same time,it achieves the moderate updating and iteration,and pursues continuity rather than temporary achievement.The difference between the practical application and the academic definition is caused by the different nature of strategic communication led by the United States government and practice in the same field conducted by business entities for the purpose of profit.The agenda-setting strategy can also be applied in both macro and micro ways.At the macro level,the release of the National Security Strategy of the United States itself is an agenda-setting behavior that directs the audience’s attention to specific topics.At the micro level,different strategic communication organizations can achieve multi-point and multi-thread communication synergy in practice by setting the same topic and serve to optimize the strategic communication effect.Finally,constructive strategy plays an all-supporting role in the strategic model and is a strategy that attaches importance to strategic communication objectives and practice continuity.Constructive strategies can gradually interact with the social and cultural context in which the communicator is located through long-term and continuous information dissemination practices by virtue of the communication effects achieved by the other three strategies.In addition,this study establishes a hierarchical model of synchronized strategic communication of the United States government.The first level is the level of objectives and practice synchronizing,which is the most basic and commanding level.The second level is the level of coordination among the various communication agencies of the United States government,which can be further divided into the synchronizing at the communication planning stage and the synchronizing at the communication practice stage.The third level is the level of synchronizing between the overall goals among different strategic communication objectives,that is,the communication and coordination among the three goals of security,economy and politics.The fourth level is the level of international coordination,which means that the United States government utilizes the framework and resources of international organizations to seek better communication effects with less investment.The last level is the level of synchronizing words and deeds of the United States government,which is also proposed by the United States government but has not received the due attention of its inventor.Lastly,this study found that the advantages of the U.S.government in strategic communication lie in the well-equipped institutional system,reasonable strategies model and reliable synchronizing levels.However,with the hegemonic ideology dominating the United States government’s view,its overall strategic communication plan does not take specific national interests as an absolute foothold,but chooses to link its own interests with the so-called "universal values",and then try to carry out strategic communication with the slogan of promoting "universal values" and "realizing the well-being of all people",which turn out to have become the Achilles’ Heel of the United States government’s strategic communication practice.