Vanessa Bravo publishes article about Mexico’s public diplomacy strategies

Vanessa Bravo, associate professor of communications, recently published a peer-reviewed journal article in Rising Powers Quarterly. Published in December, the journal’s special edition is centered around the theme “Public Diplomacy of Rising and Regional Powers.”

Bravo’s article, co-authored with DePaul University’s Associate Professor Maria De Moya, is titled “Mexico’s public diplomacy efforts to engage its diaspora across the border: Case study of the programs, messages and strategies employed by the Mexican Embassy in the United States.”

In the piece, Bravo and De Moya analyze the ways in which Mexico has communicated to and about its diaspora community – Mexican migrants who live in the United States – between 1990 and the present, including through websites and the social media platforms Facebook and Twitter.

According to the article’s abstract, one major conclusion is that “after the change in the U.S. administration [in 2017], the messaging by the Mexican government through its Embassy expanded from messaging centered on building a positive image of its migrants and defending their rights, to responding to U.S. President Donald Trump’s messages about restrictive immigration policies and the flow of drugs and undocumented migrants from Mexico. The study shows how Mexican government used its diaspora communication and other strategic messaging efforts to remind the United States that immigration is a shared responsibility.”

A previous version of this study was presented by Bravo and De Moya at the International Communications Association’s (ICA) annual conference, where it received the Top-3 Faculty Paper Award in ICA’s Public Diplomacy Interest Group. The recent published version is available online and Rising Powers Quarterly’s print version.

​Rising Powers Quarterly is a peer-reviewed, nonprofit, free-access journal dedicated to the study of the growing role of rising powers in global governance. According to the publication’s website, it aims to explore the political, economic and social processes through which the states regarded as “rising powers” in world politics interact with other states as well as international and transnational organizations.