UN communications at 75: Incremental change or innovative transformation?

Over the course of the UN’s 75-year history, its Department of Public Information (DPI) has played an important role leading and managing the communication policies and activities of numerous UN agencies and regional offices. ¹ During this time, the rapid development of communications technology since the 1990s has empowered individual citizens to influence both the public and private sectors as never before, making civic engagement an increasingly important factor in the successful management of large organizations. As UN Under-Secretary-General Brian Urquhart insisted in 2004, this is certainly true of the UN system, which needs strong public support to tackle the challenges of the 21st century. ² For this reason, the UN has strived to embrace diverse interests and opinions of civil society worldwide. An example is the hard work undertaken before the organization launched its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. The UN tried hard to reflect NGOs’ wide range of demands related to environment, poverty, health, gender equality, and education to set 17 SDGs and their 169 detailed targets. Before launching the SDGs, the UN General Assembly operated the Open Working Group over 2 years, consulting with civil society and hearing the voices of the most vulnerable. In doing this, the UN reinforced the DPI’s capacity to mediate between the very different ideas and values held by the UN’s diverse stakeholders and partners, including member states, enterprises, NGOs, foundations, the media, and global citizens.

While there is considerable research regarding the UN’s peace and security, economic development, human rights, and environmental work, there is relatively little on its communications and public relations activities. Indeed, as Mark D. Alleyne argued, the UN had avoided funding research on the impact and effectiveness of DPI policies and activities, fearing criticism that it might become too influential in international politics, undermining the power of member states. ³ Consequently, the DPI had operated without being informed by systematic research, resulting in incompetent efforts to win over the hearts and minds of global citizens. ⁴

Like the UN itself, the DPI is a conservative organization, drawing criticism for its bureaucratic and irresponsive nature. This description is in keeping with historical institutionalism and path dependency theory, where “policy-making systems tend to be conservative and find ways of defending existing patterns of policy, as well as the organizations that make and deliver those policies.” ⁵ Yet, the DPI has certainly changed over its 75-year history, usually evolving very slowly but sometimes changing almost overnight. This paper explores the various processes of change within the DPI, using two deductive theoretical frameworks: James E. Grunig and Todd Hunt’s four public relations (PR) models and Harry Nyström’s model of organizational innovation. ⁶ Grunig and Hunt’s four PR models aptly describe the DPI’s historical evolution since the Second World War, providing a compelling explanation for changes to the DPI’s approach to its public relations activities at a macro level. However, these models are too rough and imprecise to account for changes in DPI policies and activities within each model at the micro level. Our paper, therefore, also uses Nyström’s model to track incremental change as well as innovative transformation in the DPI.

Finally, together with these two theoretical frameworks, this study employs document analysis to review UN official documents on DPI policies and activities from 1946 to the mid-2010s. This methodology represents a valid way to understand DPI history, given the time and effort invested in creating authoritative UN documents, which are usually developed through consensus-building among stakeholders. UN documents, including General Assembly resolutions, reflect the organization’s norms and consensus during the periods examined.

This paper consists of five sections, including the introduction. The second section reviews the existing literature on the assessment of UN communications, followed by the third section explaining in detail the two aforementioned theoretical frameworks. The fourth section lays out specific research questions, data, and methods and presents the results of the document analysis, employing both qualitative text analysis and quantitative keyword analysis. The last section discusses the paper’s conclusions.

Assessments of the UN’s communication activities

During the UN’s first 50 years, there were three distinct criticisms levelled at the DPI, which was created in 1946 as the Cold War confrontation between US-led democracies and the communist Soviet Union began to heat up. Critics claimed that the DPI was mismanaged. The department wasted resources, failed to clearly define target audiences, and suffered from disagreements between member states over the role of public information at the UN. ⁷ The DPI was also criticized both for being too passive in its response to international political problems and for violating its ethos of impartiality in deference to state sovereignty. ⁸ These last two criticisms highlight the DPI’s central dilemma: The department has always reflected, argues Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi and Helio Belik, the tension between the UN’s desire both to develop its own distinct voice and to preserve neutrality and balance on controversial international issues. ⁹ Thus, the DPI’s fundamental problem stems not from public relations tactics but a disagreement over its purpose.

Although Alleyne has similarly criticized the DPI for its bureaucratic ineptitude, he acknowledged that the DPI has not always been static in its policies and activities. ¹⁰ Since the mid-1950s, as UN membership expanded by including, for instance, decolonized countries, communication policies changed to embrace the Global South’s interest in such issues as economic development, human rights, and refugees. The UN designated 1959 as World Refugee Year to heighten public awareness of global migration challenges. Similarly, the 1960s were dubbed the Decade of Development. However, such measures also inadvertently reinforced stereotypes of weak and financially dependent, developing countries. ¹¹

In addition to the DPI’s inclusion of a wider variety of issues, Seth Center has also pointed out the change in the DPI’s relations with NGOs. Historically, the UN was inclined to view NGOs as little more than handy tools for reinforcing its own legitimacy and as vehicles to spread UN information to transnational civil society. ¹² Since the turn of the century, however, NGOs have played a more significant role, promoting greater transparency and accountability in the UN system. Center has stressed the growing importance of such public–private partnerships in improving the DPI’s strategic communications. ¹³ Indeed, through collaborations with the media, NGOs, academia, enterprises, and celebrities, the DPI focused more public attention on the UN’s goals and programs, maximizing the impact of UN communication activities.

Scholars have been especially active in assessing UN communications during Kofi Annan’s terms in office from 1997 to 2006. Alleyne, for instance, highlights Annan’s leadership in reforming the DPI and promoting partnerships with civil society and the business sector. ¹⁴ Although Alleyne acknowledged that the UN’s public relations activities, including celebrity diplomacy in collaboration with the art and entertainment industry, were propaganda, he differentiated between good and bad propaganda. Bad propaganda threatens the shared values and interests of the international community, whereas good propaganda fosters friendly relations between states based on UN Charter principles. ¹⁵

Similarly, Young Joon Lim analyzed four communications projects representative of Annan’s terms in office: the Goodwill Ambassador/Messenger of Peace, the 2004 UN Global Compact Leaders Summit, the 2005 World Summit, and the Ten Stories Project. These projects, he observed, employed many public relations strategies with varying degrees of success. ¹⁶ The Goodwill Ambassador/Messenger of Peace program, an example of peripheral messaging, was initially successful in attracting public attention through its emotional appeal, but its short-lived nature reduced its effectiveness. In contrast, the 2004 Global Compact Leaders Summit demonstrated the success of Annan’s centrally routed messaging, a tactic which utilized rationally analyzed information and intellectual stimulation to promote a shared vision between the UN and business leaders.

Theoretical framework for analysis

Four PR models

Numerous studies utilize Grunig and Hunt’s four PR models to analyze the communication activities of private enterprises, ¹⁷ public enterprises, ¹⁸ governments, ¹⁹ media, ²⁰ and nonprofit organizations. ²¹ Likewise, the four PR models are also helpful for contextualizing the UN’s public information programs because their typology offers criteria for evaluating DPI policies and practices. ²²

The first PR model described by Grunig and Hunt, press agentry/publicity, is simple propaganda, which often promotes an organization through distorted, incomplete, or half-true information. ²³ In this model, the communications flow one-way, from the organization, as the source of information, to the public, as a passive receiver. Furthermore, press agents and publicists rarely use advance research of public attitudes and perceptions to hone their efforts. Instead, they only track media coverage of their publicity materials and count how many people participated in their events. Since its establishment, the DPI rejected this type of public relations in order to protect its reputation for impartiality and neutrality.

Grunig and Hunt’s second model, public information, disseminates largely objective information about an organization to the public. However, it, too, embraces one-way communication, where public information specialists do little advance research and, instead, focus on preparing materials for mostly unknown audiences. In this second model, practitioners occasionally test the readability of their information and conduct readership studies to assess whether audiences use their information. Alleyne characterized the first 50 years of DPI communications as public information. Its program was asymmetric, its policy-making and implementation were not based on research, and it was hard to assume that feedback about its public information programs actually changed the UN. ²⁴

A third model, two-way asymmetric communications, uses social science theory and research on public attitudes and behaviours in order to persuade publics to accept an organization’s views, values, and goals. ²⁵ Public feedback also enables two-way communication, but this exchange greatly favours the organization, which remains the sole information source. Unlike the public information and publicity models, practitioners of this model conduct formative research in advance to plan PR activities with clear and appropriate objectives. They also carry out evaluative research to see if they have attained their objectives and goals.

Grunig and Hunt’s fourth model, two-way symmetric public relations, promotes mutual understanding between an organization and its public through dialogue rather than monologue. ²⁶ This model differs from the two-way asymmetric model in that organizations not only try to change public attitudes and behaviours through research, but, in turn, use audience research to change themselves in response to feedback from the target audience. In this model, no distinction exists between source and receiver because the two groups evenly interact with each other. Practitioners of the two-way symmetric model use both formative and evaluative research to understand public perceptions and to adjust PR policies to reflect evolving public interests. This model is idealistic and normative in the sense that organizations employing it are expected to be more effective and socially responsible. ²⁷

A model of organizational innovation

As our literature review suggests, the DPI has maintained its bureaucratic inertia. This observation can be understood through the lens of historical institutionalism, a perspective that considers the existence of path dependency in institutions: they tend to reinforce pre-existing policies and resist change and innovation. ²⁸ But a review of the literature shows, too, that the DPI has also transformed its organization. However, the process by which an organization transforms itself varies. To understand the processes by which the DPI changed and innovated, it is important to understand the current theories regarding the transformation of an organization. Two perspectives are frequently used to analyze organizational change. B. Guy Peters, Jon Pierre, and Desmond S. King view policy change and innovation as a result of incremental and gradual developments rather than a sharp break from a trajectory. ²⁹ On the other hand, John W. Kingdon contends that institutional innovation emerges as punctuated equilibria, the sudden replacement of a stable pattern with a new equilibrium, after policies have been maintained for a long period of time. ³⁰ Leadership ³¹ or significant exogenous shocks ³² are often found to break a path dependency and stimulate dramatic shifts in institutions.

Innovation at an organizational level has been the major focus of theoretical and empirical studies on innovation. ³³ Several studies have looked at both how innovation is defined at an organizational level and also how it develops. Michael Aiken and Jerald Hage defined innovation as the adoption of new ideas or behaviours by an organization. ³⁴ Fariborz Damanpour and William M. Evan also defined innovation as a new program, policy, process, system, product, service, or device. ³⁵ Innovation’s development in an organization, Nyström argues, is “a result of the interaction between strategy and structure, with organizational culture and climate as important intervening variables.” ³⁶ The basic model of organizational innovation was first developed in the 1970s and applied to many studies of Swedish companies. In this model, strategic leadership affects two variables—innovative direction and innovative potential—as shown in Figure 1. OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Basic model of organizational innovation. ³⁸

Innovative direction includes the changes an organization wants to achieve, whereas innovative potential is what an organization can do within its structural restraints, which include both material and immaterial resources. In this framework, organizational culture and climate are crucial intervening variables, influencing the organization's innovative performance. Organizations that stress stability and the status quo are “positional,” whereas organizations that emphasize the need for change and have the potential to realize it are “innovative.” ³⁷

How the UN DPI has transformed its practices

Research goals and questions

Grunig and Hunt have insisted that the four PR models represent developmental stages of PR history. Hence, they appear to be valuable for verifying, at a macro level, the direction of the DPI’s changes over time. However, these four PR models are too crude to explain detailed changes in each model at a micro level. Grunig and Hunt postulate that each model is distinct from another. However, this leads to an implicit assumption that any change in an institution’s PR approach could be revolutionary. In reality, however, boundaries between the models are blurry. Moreover, the four PR models are unable to shed light on the driving forces behind DPI innovation. To remedy these shortcomings, this study will also utilize Nyström’s basic model of organizational innovation, which can explain both gradual changes and innovative transformations within the DPI and reveal the constraints on and potential for transforming the organization.

We analyze the extent to which the DPI’s policies and activities have maintained a continuous path and how it has transformed itself from 1946 to 2015. We also attempt to discover the major impetus driving the DPI’s transition from one model to the next. To do so, this study investigates how the leadership of UN Secretaries-General has affected the DPI’s innovative direction and potential, and, consequently, cultivated its organizational culture to bring about innovative performances.

Q 1. How well can Grunig and Hunt’s four PR models and Nyström’s basic model of organizational innovation explain the UN DPI’s incremental changes and/or innovative transformation?

Q 2. How has the UN DPI maintained its past practices and reformed its policies and strategies for the past 70 years? What were the driving forces to break the DPI’s path dependency and push innovations?

Methods and data

In order to answer the aforementioned questions, this study employs a document analysis. In document analysis, a variety of documents may be used to help a researcher approach the research problem. They enable a researcher to find meaning, deepen understanding, and share new insights. ³⁹ Moreover, according to Glenn A. Bowen, “documents provide a means of tracking change and development” in an organization. ⁴⁰ The official documents of the UN are particularly important because they contain resolutions crafted by a significant number of forums and discussions involving a wide range of stakeholders and partners. Nevertheless, compared with national archives, the UN Archives have been rarely used by scholars. ⁴¹ This study conducts both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the UN’s official documents related to DPI policies and activities from 1946 to 2015. We searched keywords, such as public information, communication, and DPI, in the UN Bibliographic Information System (http://unbisnet.un.org/) ⁴² to find relevant documents in English. As a result, we found six documents from 1946 to 1949, five in the 1950s, 14 in the 1960s, 15 in the 1970s, 20 in the 1980s, 52 in the 1990s, 85 in the 2000s, and 32 from 2010 to 2015. The documents include the General Assembly’s resolutions on the Secretariat’s organization and the UN’s public information activities, the Secretary-General reports regarding the DPI and its reforms, and the Committee on Information reports dealing with questions relating to UN communications and the DPI’s work. While the documents from 1946 to the 1970s are mostly scanned copies, the number of digitalized text documents usable for computer-based analysis has sharply increased since the 1980s.

In addition to qualitatively analyzing document texts one by one, we employ a text analysis program, Voyant Tools (https://voyant-tools.org/), developed by Dr. Stéfan Sinclair and Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell, to visualize keyword trends from the 1980s to the 2010s. Based on our qualitative document analysis, we identified a number of keywords pertaining to the innovation and advancement of the UN’s communications. Among them, twelve keywords displayed a significant increase or decrease of use during the period; four are related to evaluation and effectiveness (review, impact, change, reform), another four concern public engagement and participation (civil society, outreach, partnership, communications), and the last four are regarding information technology and new media (technology, internet, website, social media).

Historical evolution of the DPI policies and activities

Establishment of the DPI

The administrative organs of the UN Secretariat, including the DPI, were designed in 1946. The UN founders recognized the importance of public information, declaring that “the United Nations cannot achieve the purposes for which it has been created unless the peoples of the world are fully informed of its aims and activities.” ⁴³ As the name indicates, the DPI’s communications activities were not intended as propaganda but as the dissemination of objective and accurate information. The press agentry/publicity model is clearly not applicable to the UN. At its founding, recent exposure to Nazi lies and propaganda made the UN very cautious about engaging in propaganda, an attitude that also stopped the DPI from being more active and effective. ⁴⁴

However, the early DPI was encouraged to undertake positive information activities through press, radio, publications, films, graphics, exhibitions, and public liaison. ⁴⁵ For example, the DPI’s Radio Division provided broadcasting agencies in member states with information programs and communication facilities. The DPI also gave direction to the UN’s own broadcasting stations, which operated in its five official languages. In addition, the DPI had a Films and Visual Information Division, in charge of film production in collaboration with governmental and commercial organizations. The UN Film Board, created in 1947, coordinated the film work of the UN and its specialized agencies, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), by meeting quarterly and establishing policies related to film production and distribution. ⁴⁶

In addition, the UN’s Technical Advisory Committee on Information, also created in 1946, recommended that the DPI and its branch offices analyze world public opinion about UN activities and the extent of public understanding of its work. From the start, therefore, UN member states acknowledged the importance of conducting research to improve the DPI’s effectiveness. Although documentation from this period indicates that the DPI was expected to be innovative with its policies and activities, its communications remained firmly within the boundary of the unidirectional public information model.

Decentralization of the UN DPI. ⁴⁷

In 1959, the UN General Assembly requested that the Secretary-General give special consideration to regional representation in the policy-making of the DPI and in the arrangement of the UN Information Centres (UNICs). ⁴⁸ It also asked him to establish new UNICs, particularly in the regions where mass media were less developed, by decentralizing the staffs and services of the UN Headquarters. The General Assembly hoped that media, educational institutions, and NGOs in all member states would expand their activities to promote greater awareness of the UN by disseminating accurate and objective information. In addition, it instructed the Secretary-General to appoint a panel of experts representing various geographical regions and cultures to advise on UN information policies. Their goal was to maximize effectiveness at a minimum cost. ⁴⁹ While the DPI maintained the characteristics of the classic postwar public information model during this period, these changes reflected its growing interest in engaging regional interests and embracing opinions from a wide range of member states.

Strengthening the DPI in response to global indifference

In the late 1970s, the fourth UN Secretary-General, Kurt Waldheim, expressed his concern at the UN’s growing inability to attract public attention and support, which remained essential for achieving the UN’s objectives. ⁵⁰ He called for renewed efforts to convince global citizens that their engagement with the UN’s work, both as supporters and critics, would make a difference. In response, the DPI acknowledged that its information outputs should be more creative and dynamic without losing their factual character or objectivity. ⁵¹ As there were divergent North–South views on the DPI’s role and responsibilities at this time, the Joint United Nations Information Committee (JUNIC) was asked to coordinate plans and actions related to the public information of various agencies and regional offices, while respecting their administrative independence and autonomy.

Moreover, to bridge the gap between developing and developed countries, understanding of the DPI’s role, the UN General Assembly encouraged a more balanced dissemination of information between them and a mutual understanding among their peoples by diversifying sources of information and respecting different interests and sociocultural values. ⁵² In doing so, the DPI made sure that its information and communication outputs would be more adequate, objective, and impartial, and would reflect divergent opinions on such issues as peace and security, decolonization, human rights, economic and social development, the environment, and terrorism. ⁵³

As mass media, including television, spread throughout the world in the 1980s, the DPI was able to reach more and more audiences. On the basis of this changing circumstance, the DPI applied new formats to the production of radio and television programs and adopted new forms of cooperation with radio and television networks. At the same time, there were internal calls for greater efficiency and effectiveness from the DPI through systematic program planning, targeting, and evaluation. Nevertheless, despite its growing use of mass media and internal pressures for reform, the DPI was unable to accomplish drastic changes. This attachment to the status quo reflected both Waldheim’s failure to provide a clear direction for innovative change ⁵⁴ and the Cold War’s constricting grasp on the DPI’s organizational culture. Under the surface, however, the DPI was gradually reforming its organization and communication programs to meet the needs of various regions of international community and keeping up with changes in a new media environment.

A more open, transparent, and interactive DPI

As information technology dramatically developed throughout the 1990s and Cold War tensions evaporated, new media associated with the internet revolutionized UN communications. UN member states and Secretary-General Kofi Annan shared the view that the DPI should be placed at the centre of the UN’s strategic management and planning and should reorient its policies and activities toward more open and transparent communications. ⁵⁵ Despite limited resources, new information technology improved the output and productivity of DPI programs and expanded their audiences. New UN websites made an outstanding number of UN materials widely available for the first time. At the same time, the internet enabled the maximum use of radio and television programs, video clips, and photographs by allowing them to be uploaded onto the UN’s first audio-visual web page, created in 1999. Figure 2 quantitatively proves that information technology and new media increased in significance from the 1980s to the 1990s. The relative frequency of three keywords rose as follows: technology (from 0.0002289 to 0.0003296), internet (from 0 to 0.0005267), website (from 0 to 0.0001030).

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Figure 2.

Relative frequency of keywords relating to information technology and new media. ⁵⁶

The DPI’s reorientation took place in other ways as well. The department not only maintained but also expanded its capacity to use traditional media in developing countries, where new information technologies had not yet been developed. Under Annan, the DPI also fostered partnerships with the private sector, actively involving businesses in the UN’s policy-making processes. In justifying this shift, Annan argued that “Businesses can relate to the United Nations as participants in global and regional policy-making forums and projects.” ⁵⁷ A website to engage corporations, launched in 1999, is one example. It attracted over 10,000 hits to its virtual enterprise liaison service within 36 hours. ⁵⁸ Such innovations helped the DPI receive feedback from both the private sector and global citizens. In an effort to utilize feedback to adjust and further its reach, the DPI also established the Media Response Group in 1998. Its goal was to both monitor media coverage about the UN and respond to harmful criticism and misinformation in a timely manner. Finally, in order to improve the effectiveness and marketability of UN publications, the DPI analyzed in depth the results of the 1997 readership survey. ⁵⁹ Taken together, the media revolution, Annan’s leadership, and stepped-up research provided the impetus for the DPI to shift its communications from public information to two-way asymmetric public relations in the late 1990s.

Creative partnerships and public engagement in the new millennium

Since Kofi Annan launched UN Messengers of Peace in 1997, creative partnerships in the arts and entertainment have grown remarkably and been used to generate greater public interest in the UN’s programs. The DPI has managed and coordinated the celebrity diplomacy of 13 UN organizations, including the United Nations Children’s Fund, which appointed its first goodwill ambassador in 1954, and UNESCO, which appointed its first celebrity ambassador in 1988. At present, approximately 200 celebrities have partnerships with UN organizations under different titles, including special envoys, honorary lifetime goodwill ambassador, patrons, special ambassador, and global ambassadors. While celebrity diplomacy has contributed to attracting popular attention and making the DPI’s programs more visible, it risks being negatively impacted by the private life of celebrities, making the UN’s messages peripheral and easily forgotten. To strengthen the program, Annan hosted two meetings of goodwill ambassadors and messengers of peace in 2000 and 2002.

To further collaboration with the entertainment industry, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the Creative Community Outreach Initiative in 2009. The international profile, expertise, and resources of the global entertainment industry promoted new ideas and innovative actions in the DPI’s outreach division. For instance, Project Runway All Stars, a popular American reality television show, filmed its 2013 season finale inside the UN’s Economic and Social Council Chamber in New York. Through this partnership, three finalists designed a clothing line promoting their cultural heritages and showcased the collections to fashion industry experts, UN staff and delegates of member states, and the public. ⁶⁰

As social media developed and proliferated in the 2000s, the activities of the DPI were maximized. The DPI paid special attention to Social Network Services (SNSs) to expand its outreach to and interaction with global citizens. Using cutting-edge internet services, the UN gained much more visibility and feedback from global constituencies, including civil society, young people, academic institutions, artists, the entertainment industry, and local communities. It transformed the paradigm of the DPI’s international communications toward public engagement. By using two-way communications, it deepened the public’s understanding of UN values and goals and built better relationships between the UN and global citizens. Figures 2 and 3 provide evidence for such trends. The relative frequency of three keywords pertaining to information technology and new media increased from the 1990s to the 2000s as follows: technology (from 0.0003296 to 0.0009279), internet (from 0.0005267 to 0.0007112), and website (from 0.0001030 to 0.0009279). In addition, the appearance of the keyword social media sharply increased between the 2000s and 2010s (from 0 to 0.0009560). Finally, the use of keywords concerning public engagement and participation continued to grow from the 1990s all the way to the 2010s: civil society (from 0.0000736 to 0.0006055), outreach (from 0.0003384 to 0.0015774), partnership (from 0.0000706 to 0.0004780), and communications (from 0.0005620 to 0.0030552).

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Figure 3.

Relative frequency of keywords relating to public engagement and participation.

In particular, UN member states were, in the past, not eager to embrace other stakeholders, such as civil society, in their decision-making process. However, it is important to demonstrate when the UN accepted the stream of times and innovated its programs, especially since this conservative organization tends to resist change and defend its existing policies and activities. Thus, quantitative results that confirm the UN’s move toward greater public engagement and participation in the 2000s and 2010s are meaningful.

As Annan launched the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, the DPI strengthened its outreach services to interact with civil society and to encourage public participation in new UN development projects. Moreover, he established a DPI organizational culture that evaluated its activities to reflect the needs of target audiences. This development ultimately improved the DPI’s effectiveness. ⁶¹ As a result, survey activities significantly increased, from one in 2001 to 16 in 2005. Approximately 10,000 users have offered feedback on the quality, usefulness, and relevance of DPI products, services, and activities. On average, the DPI satisfied 80 percent of target audiences’ demands. Further, it used these survey results to change its policies and activities to reflect user views. For instance, the DPI redesigned websites in response to poor survey scores. Similarly, the DPI surveyed participants of UN Headquarter tours in 2002, learning that the guided program provided too much information. Consequently, the DPI streamlined the information provided by guides, earning an 83% approval rating in a 2005 survey. ⁶²

In sum, the DPI’s communications model shifted dramatically between 2000 and 2006, from a two-way asymmetric model to a two-way symmetric model. This shift was achieved by meeting the two conditions outlined by Grunig and Hunt: (a) conducting research on public attitudes and behaviours and (b) negotiating mutual changes between the UN and its target audiences. This crucial advancement can be confirmed by the bar chart regarding evaluation and effectiveness, as shown in Figure 4. The relative frequency of three keywords associated with these tasks rose remarkably from the 1990s to the 2000s (review: from 0.0003973 to 0.0008861, impact: from 0.0002178 to 0.0005438, change: from 0.0000412 to 0.0003004). The use of the keyword reform slightly decreased for the same period (from 0.0001824 to 0.0001654). However, the weight of reform was relatively higher in the 1990s and 2000s, when Annan was in office, than the 1980s (0.0000067) or the 2010s (0.0000438).

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Figure 4.

Relative frequency of keywords relating to evaluation and effectiveness.

The past decade can be defined as a maturing period for the DPI to sustain the innovative direction and organizational culture achieved since 2000. The SDGs, launched in 2015 under Ban Ki-moon, were a significant program during this time. In keeping with a two-way symmetric model, they were formulated and driven by a wide range of partners, including the business sector and NGOs. Ban also actively involved academia, adding such UN programs as the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), designed to encourage global thinkers to promote new ideas and solutions for global challenges. The UNAI aligned educational institutions with UN goals and mandates by harnessing the energy of young people and the innovation of research communities. Such movements enabled the DPI to pursue still greater interactive and participatory communications.

Conclusion

From public information to public engagement

The two alternative theories employed in this study, Grunig and Hunt’s Four PR models and Nyström’s model of organizational innovation, describe the process of the DPI’s historical change in a complementary way. From 1946 to the 1980s, the DPI maintained its conservative practices, corresponding to the neutral public information model, and dictated, in large part, by the polarizing Cold War clash between the US and the Soviet Union. The Cold War ensured that an ethos of impartiality was heavily emphasized in the UN system, limiting the DPI’s opportunities to develop and implement new communication strategies. Nevertheless, several UN Secretaries-General made incremental efforts to improve the DPI’s effectiveness during this period. In the 1950s and 1960s, for instance, the DPI decentralized its power and resources to reflect regional voices in the UN policy-making process. Similarly, UN leaders encouraged a balanced dissemination of information to developed and developing nations for better mutual understanding. These gradual changes became the foundation of the DPI’s shake-up at the end of the century.

Between 1997 and 2006, the UN DPI dramatically reformed its communication policies and activities, driven by three factors: the end of the Cold War, the advent of the internet and social media, and Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s strategic leadership. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 broke up the bipolar system, encouraging a renewed enthusiasm for multilateralism and intergovernmental organization. ⁶³ This exogenous shock propelled the DPI out of its habitual inertia and passive communications role, forcing it to adopt an active public relations strategy designed to expand the UN’s influence. Second, the rapid development of communications technology and new media boosted interactions and mutual understanding between the UN and its engaged public stakeholders. Third, Annan restructured the DPI’s organization in 2004 into its current configuration: (a) Strategic Communications Division, (b) News and Media Division, and (c) Outreach Division. Based on the new political environment and technological developments in communications, he exerted strategic leadership by setting an innovative direction for the DPI and cultivating its innovative potential to produce innovative performances. As a result, global public opinion about the UN’s influence was remarkably positive in 2005, according to the BBC World Service Poll. ⁶⁴ These three factors enabled DPI’s communications to shift from a public information model to, initially, two-way asymmetric PR in the late 1990s and, later, two-way symmetric PR in the 2000s. These trends are supported by the bar charts developed using Voyant Tool.

Even though the UN’s communications have become more interactive and audience-centred, traces of the DPI’s former public relations activities remain. For example, the News and Media Division still focuses more on fact-oriented publicity, with relevance to the public information model, while the Outreach Division performs relationship-oriented functions, promoting public engagement and diverse partnerships. However, as the internet and social media emerged as the DPI’s key communications channels, the partitions between divisions were lowered in order to integrate programs pursuing active interactions with extended stakeholders.

Since the two-way symmetric model presented by Grunig and Hunt is a more ethical form of public relations compared with the others, the UN’s current communications model also reflects changing normative values. As the influence of civil society and NGOs rapidly increased in the UN system since the 2000s, the standard of ethics required for the DPI changed. The earlier goal of maintaining a strict objectivity to safeguard the sovereignty of member states gave way to an ethics that is more responsible and accountable for human rights and the well-being of people. Thus, it is evident that the UN’s public relations have advanced to be more transparent, inclusive, and democratic.

Strategic leadership is imperative for organizational innovation, but the emergence of leadership is only made possible by environmental changes. Based on our findings, we modified Nyström’s basic model of organizational innovation by including the significant factor that gave rise to the leadership of the Secretary-General. During the 1950s–1980s, due to political constraints, the DPI made only gradual changes. As the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s and new media, such as the internet and SNSs, emerged in the 1990s–2000s, Annan used the authority of his office to reform the DPI’s organization substantially rather than pursuing the incremental changes of earlier leaders. Ban Ki-moon mobilized innovative potential by maintaining the culture of evaluation developed by Annan, thereby strengthening the DPI’s outreach division during his two terms in office from 2007 to 2016.

The current DPI is far from an ideal two-way symmetric model. The defining feature of a mature two-way symmetric communications model lies in its capacity for continual research and assessment. Although the DPI has long recognized the need for research, budget shortfalls and a reluctance to expose itself to outside criticism have held it back. Yet, the Evaluation and Communication Research Unit under the Office of the Under-Secretary-General of the DPI, which operates as a focal point to assess DPI projects, may represent a way ahead. We suggest that this unit actively use the DPI’s network of 63 United Nations Information Centres to survey and measure public understanding, favorability, and support. Further, the UN DPI could collaborate with external research institutions to improve the credibility and transparency of its own assessments and to reflect different perspectives from professionals outside the UN. The UNAI has already been actively cooperating with more than 1000 partners in higher education and research in more than 120 countries. Through this extensive network, the DPI could carry out joint programs to evaluate its communications efforts.

Since Secretary-General António Guterres took office in 2017, the movement for change has gathered momentum once again. In 2019, the UN named Melissa Fleming Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications. Flemming holds a wealth of experience with contemporary communications for international organizations. She previously served the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the International Atomic Energy Agency as a head of their communication departments, and was part of the UN’s transition to a two-way symmetric model in the 2000s. The name of the UN DPI also changed to the Department of Global Communications in 2019. These two developments align with current public relations trends, suggesting that the UN is headed toward a more agile and integrated communications future. According to the 2018 UN Secretary-General report on the DPI, the reforms aim at increasing both internal and external engagement in the UN’s communications and more actively involving young people in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. ⁶⁵ The DPI’s new effort for innovation aligns with our own study results, which indicate a paradigm shift in UN communications: from public information to public engagement.