Strategic humour: Public diplomacy and comic framing of foreign policy issues
| Author | Dmitry Chernobrov |
| Published date | 01 May 2022 |
| Date | 01 May 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211023958 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211023958
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2022, Vol. 24(2) 277 –296
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481211023958
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Strategic humour: Public
diplomacy and comic framing
of foreign policy issues
Dmitry Chernobrov
Abstract
This article explores persuasive applications of humour in public diplomacy. I propose a
new concept of strategic humour – the use of humour by state and proxy actors to promote
instrumental interpretations of contested international events to foreign and domestic publics.
Through strategic humour, states frame events in ways that advance their interests, deflect
external criticism, and challenge narratives of other actors. In an entertaining form, strategic
humour delivers a serious message that is simple, accessible, memorable, suited to the new media
ecologies, and competitive in capturing news media and public attention. I focus on Russia as a
state recently involved in a range of major controversies and demonstrate its use of strategic
humour in three case studies. I argue that strategic humour is a fast-emerging, multi-format tool in
public diplomacy, facilitated by the rise of social media and post-truth politics and less dependent
on the state’s broader power resources.
Keywords
digital diplomacy, humour, persuasion, post-truth, public diplomacy, public opinion, RT, Russia,
Russian public diplomacy, social media, strategic humour, strategic narratives
Introduction
RT publishes breaking news: ‘Putin thanks Trump for sharing information about terrorists’.
Putin calls Trump: ‘Thank you, Mr. President, for sharing intelligence’.
Trump objects, ‘But I did no such thing!’
Putin replies, ‘But all Americans now think you did!’
– Popular Russian joke
Humour is rarely taken seriously – after all, its role has long been to entertain rather than
to inform. And yet, stories told through humour – from popular jokes about nations and
politicians to Internet memes – are among the most widely circulated and best remem-
bered. As a narrative about international politics, humour has a considerable role to play
Department of Journalism Studies, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Corresponding author:
Dmitry Chernobrov, Department of Journalism Studies, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 4DT, UK.
Email: d.chernobrov@sheffield.ac.uk
1023958BPI0010.1177/13691481211023958The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsChernobrov
research-article2021
Original Article
278 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 24(2)
in how major international events and actors are communicated and understood. When
national reputation increasingly depends on ‘whose story wins’ (Nye, 2010: 8), humour
can give one’s story a distinct advantage in today’s media ecology. It presents a simpli-
fied, highly memorable, newsworthy, and widely appealing narrative that both entertains
and informs, with the potential to go viral online.
Political humour has traditionally been regarded in the context of the power structures
and media environments of the societies that produce it. In authoritarian states, humour
has been widely studied as a grassroots instrument of resistance, offering counter-hegem-
onic narratives to the official and often ideological news (Davies, 2015; Ding, 2013;
Kraidy, 2016; Wedeen, 1999). In democratic contexts, there is growing literature on
humour in election campaigns (Shifman et al., 2007; Young, 2004), jokes by or about
political leaders, and the effect of popular comedy shows on public opinion and voting
behaviour (Farnsworth and Lichter, 2020; Morris, 2009). Online humour has been
explored as means to encourage political participation and mobilise apathetic publics
(Džanić and Berberović, 2017; Lunde, 2016). However, there have been few attempts to
question the role of humour in communicating foreign policy – especially, the multifac-
eted applications of humour in public diplomacy campaigns, the framing of controversial
foreign policy issues, and the promotion of strategic narratives.
This article addresses this gap by formulating the new concept of strategic humour. I
define strategic humour as the use of humour by state and proxy actors to promote instru-
mental interpretations of contested international events to domestic and foreign audi-
ences. Such events involve competing narratives from international actors, affect their
domestic public opinion and international standing, and involve the use of strategies that
maximise the appeal and outreach of one side’s narrative and diminish the other. How the
story is told and how well it reaches audiences becomes no less important than whether
the story is true – and short, newsworthy, easily shareable sarcastic and mocking mes-
sages are often better adapted to media and online environments than lengthy factual
explanations or ordinary public statements. The purposes of strategic humour are to reach
wider audiences in order to frame controversial events in ways that advance state inter-
ests; to challenge the competing narratives of others; to embarrass, discredit or put pres-
sure on foreign governments and media; to expose and exploit incongruencies between
public and private statements of major politicians; to deflect and ridicule external criti-
cism; to influence dominant political agendas; and to portray in a favourable light, sup-
port, and legitimate state actions in the international system. I argue that strategic humour
is used as a tool of digital public diplomacy and contributes to the rise of post-truth public
diplomacy as it exploits and deepens the uncertainty around contested events, relies on
emotive messaging, and aims for outreach and popularity to claim consensus and truth.
To evidence strategic uses of humour, this article takes Russia as an example of a state
recently involved in a range of contested international events. Strategic humour practices
are observed in three different settings, where it is employed by diplomatic missions,
external broadcasters, and proxy actors that claim independence but effectively promote
state narratives. I demonstrate that the audiences of strategic humour are blurred – through
active use of online tools, strategic humour can target domestic and foreign audiences
simultaneously, even if the message these audiences infer is different. Finally, I suggest
that while strategic humour may be more effectively employed by well-resourced and
well-connected states, it relies on factors often independent of broader state power
resources.
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