Measuring Soft Power in the International System

Speaker: Dr. Irene Wu (Georgetown University)

Date: 6 June 2019

Speaker Session Preview

SMA hosted speaker session presented by Dr. Irene Wu (Georgetown University) as a part of its SMA Minerva Speaker Series.

During her presentation, Dr. Wu explained why soft power matters and how to measure soft power’s influence on broader considerations of geopolitics. She stated that soft power is often given short shrift because it is difficult to quantify. Moreover, measuring soft power’s impact also challenging. Dr. Wu identified examples of small, medium, and large indications of soft power influence: watching a foreign TV show, visiting or studying in a foreign country, or moving your family to a foreign country, respectively. She explained that these indicators reveal how significant of an impact soft power can have on populations and how certain data sources can help make soft power become at least somewhat quantifiable. Next, Dr. Wu compared immigration statistics from both Russia and China, as well as study abroad, foreign visitor, and foreign movie audience statistics. In summary, Russia is currently far more open to immigrants than China, though China is a much bigger player in the movie industry than Russia. She then compared immigration, emigration, foreign visitor, and study abroad statistics from Japan and Korea to gain a sense of their primary sources of soft power. In summary, Japan attracts far more foreigners than South Korea, while South Korea sends far more nationals abroad. For her third case study, Dr. Wu examined migration into South Africa from 1990-1995 (the tail end of apartheid) and from 2010-2015. These figures indicated a massive increase in foreign visitors from a larger variety of countries in the post-apartheid years. Dr. Wu then discussed the . relationship between hard and soft power, while using the UK and France as examples. To conclude, Dr. Wu highlighted her key takeaways and her future research plans.

Speaker Session Audio File

Briefing Materials

Biography:

Irene S. Wu, Ph.D. is an expert on the international politics, history, and regulation of communications technology. Her current research is to measure soft power in the international system, a project launched while she was a fellow at the Wilson Center. Her recent book, Forging Trust Communities: How Technology Changes Politics (Johns Hopkins 2015), tells how activists and governments around the world use the new tech of the day to get people to work together, from the telegraph to social media. www.forgingtrustcommunities.com. Her chapter on regulation in China is forthcoming in Policy, Regulation and Innovation in China’s Electricity and Telecom Industries (Oxford 2019). Dr. Wu is a senior analyst in the Office of Economic Analysis at the Federal Communications Commission. She has taught in Georgetown University in the Communications, Culture, and Technology program since 2007 and holds degrees from both Harvard and Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

The SMA Minerva Speaker Series description and list of the other sessions in this series can be downloaded here.