Public diplomacy programmes with the goal to enhance a country’s reputation and image abroad have become wide-spread practice, also among small states with little geopolitical relevance. News media offer one of the most important platforms of their implementation. But do small states have the leeway to successfully implement their communication strategies on a global scale? Are media-based public diplomacy strategies even an option for those cases? This study assesses these questions based on international media resonance of states. Relating to the theoretical approach of country news value literature, a comparative research design is implemented. It analyses news coverage on the three German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, performing a multi-level automated text analysis of 11,513 news media articles in Arabic. In accordance with existing empirical and theoretical contributions, it is shown that high-status states have more resonance-based leeway. Nevertheless, media resonance-based leeway of smaller states with lower status is caused differently, i.e. by their political, rather than their economic or military power.

旨在提高一个国家在国外的声誉和形象的公共外交计划已成为普遍做法，在地缘政治意义不大的小州中也是如此。新闻媒体提供了最重要的实施平台之一。但是，小国是否有在全球范围内成功实施其沟通战略的余地？在这些情况下，基于媒体的公共外交策略是否甚至是一种选择？这项研究基于国际媒体对国家的共鸣来评估这些问题。关于乡村新闻价值文献的理论方法，进行了比较研究设计。它分析了三个德语国家德国，奥地利和瑞士的新闻报道，对11,513条阿拉伯语新闻媒体文章进行了多级自动文本分析。根据现有的经验和理论贡献，表明高状态状态具有更多基于共振的回旋余地。但是，地位较低的小州基于媒体共鸣的余地是由不同的原因引起的，即由其政治而不是其经济或军事力量引起的。