China's public diplomatic networks on the Ebola issue in West Africa: Issues management in a network society

Practitioners of public diplomacy often need to deal with complex international issues and they could learn from the issues management perspective. However, little effort has linked issues management with public diplomacy. This paper develops an analytical model that combines the relational concepts of issues management and public diplomacy, and applies that model to the case of the Chinese Ebola public diplomacy campaign in West Africa. The goal is to better understand how China mobilizes a wide range of resources (human resources, material resources, financial resources, etc.) and builds relationships with various actors to manage the Ebola issue. This study applied social network analysis and qualitative content analysis to offer a comprehensive understanding of the function and structure of Chinese Ebola public diplomatic networks. The study demonstrates the broad application value of issues management.