Turkey’s Twitter public diplomacy: Towards a “new” cult of personality

This study examined how Turkey uses social media as a tool for public diplomacy and how the state’s soft-power efforts have recently changed on the global stage. The researchers constructed a dataset of 2769 Twitter posts by the Turkish government’s most influential public diplomacy accounts. The analyses revealed that the focus of Turkey’s Twitter public diplomacy has become concentrated on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and is thematically focused on the political values embodied by the Turkish president. The findings suggest that public diplomacy remains to be the diplomacy of the government, not of the public, and social media is used as just another tool for propaganda, not as a means of engagement with foreign publics. Further, the findings indicate the emergence of a “new” cult of personality in public diplomacy and point out the instrumental role of social media in changing the dynamics of leader-follower relationship. The study contributes to public relations theory and practice by advancing the burgeoning public diplomacy scholarship at the intersection of social media and relational approaches.     

Woman and Desire Why Women May Not Want to Want

Questioning why it is that female genitalia and desire are viewed in psychoanalytic theory as hidden, inaccessible, and lacking, the author examines 1) female genital representation, 2) girls' erotically desirous relationships to their mothers, and 3) the nature of women's experience in sexuality. The author proposes that the marker “absent” regarding female genitalia and desire may be a particular female form or protection against “castration” of sexual desire; males inflate whereas females may deflate their genital representation and desire. The author suggests that the female body lends itself-and, abetted by culture and psychoanalytic theory, is unconsciously used by females—to a specific form or protection of female desire.     

From the Editor

No abstract available for this article.