A Constructivist Approach to Understanding Russian’s Public Diplomacy through Humanitarian Aid during COVID-19

Journal of Public Diplomacy. 2021. Vol. 1. No. 2. P. 1–26.

Vershinin I.

Applying discourse analysis of Russia’s narrative on humanitarian aid and its perception by the Western collective identity at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study identifies several challenges that constructivism poses to the current understanding of public diplomacy (PD). In contrast to the mainstream positivist tendency to evaluate the effectiveness of PD through models, this article expands the PD narrative by inquiring about the role of power, intersubjective knowledge, and collective identities in public diplomacy. In particular, it examines the PD questions often ignored by researchers regarding how collective identities can exercise discursive power to interpret incoming narratives, which challenge domestic intersubjective knowledge. It also argues that, because the Russian political elite failed to ensure a coherent story and provide informational support for its humanitarian aid, the Western intersubjective knowledge on Russia negatively contributed to the perception of PD narratives. Thus, the article underscores the importance for PD practitioners to understand how the socially constructed nature of knowledge can improve or harm PD strategies.

Keywords: constructivism, public diplomacy, power, academic knowledge, collective identity, Russia’s soft power