Domestic public diplomacy as a communications strategy. Analysis of the Spanish case

The concept of public diplomacy is recent. In this paper, we analyse its potential as a country brand communication strategy. In this case we have applied it to Spain, but the conclusions can be extrapolated to other countries. The applied methodology has been based on a survey of 1800 people. The sample distribution set quotas by gender, age group and autonomous region. And weighting was established to adjust the data by gender, age and autonomous region to the population data published by the Spanish Institute of Statistics (CIS), with a sampling error of +/- 2.34 and a confidence level of 95.5%, and p = q = 0.5. Among the main conclusions, worth noting is that the image of international institutions (UN, EU, and NATO) is not good, especially among residents in rural areas. Regarding news consumption, the ‘entertainment seeker’ group (9.4% of the respondents) and the ‘disconnected from the news’ (10.2% of the sample) have a more negative perception of the three institutions. Another surprising conclusion is that the respondents positioned on the right (36.3% of the sample) prefer, by 52.6%, for Spain to pursue its own interests. Unlike those on the left where this option is not the majority (41.3%).