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Presidential Attention Focusing in the Global Arena: The Impact of International Travel on Foreign Publics
Author(s) -
Cohen Jeffrey E.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
presidential studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.337
H-Index - 5
eISSN - 1741-5705
pISSN - 0360-4918
DOI - 10.1111/psq.12250
Subject(s) - presidential system , public opinion , trips architecture , political science , public diplomacy , publics , foreign policy , diplomacy , public administration , linkage (software) , law , politics , parallel computing , computer science , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
Presidents increasingly engage in public diplomacy, especially traveling to other nations. Often presidents target the public in the visited nation, with the aim of improving the opinion climate there and then using that improved opinion climate to further U.S. policy goals in the visited nation. To a degree, then, foreign travel resembles presidential domestic going public. This article tests one important linkage in the process from a presidential trip to foreign public opinion, whether trips can focus public opinion in the visited nation on the president. Analysis uses a pooled cross‐sectional time series analysis of weekly Google Trends data for forty‐two nations during Barack Obama's first term in office. Results suggest that presidential trips lead to impressive increases in searches on the president, an indication of increased attention to the president. The conclusion places the findings into two literatures, presidential going public and public diplomacy, and suggests directions for future research.