Respectfully, it is not "similar" but "much more," it is PD. The purpose of so-called "public diplomacy" is all that you described: informing audiences, changing public opinion, mobilization changes or action, and changing policy. Public diplomacy in inherently about "forum shopping" to affect change. A key reason one informed audiences, engages people (in "public diplomacy" employment in government is not a criteria of exclusion or inclusion). My counter is that because the term "public diplomacy" has been misused and abused, with the result that many have argued that *only* State (and only a part of State, for that matter) does public diplomacy (I can tell you about the time nearly 20yrs ago that DOD DASD literally, not figuratively, yelled at me at a conference that DOD "does not do public diplomacy"), but your narrowed view is understandable and yet inaccurate. Related to the confusion over what is and is not "public diplomacy" is the unfortunate modern adoption of the term "battle for hearts and minds" since it implies likability is a key feature and objective of PD. Another way to look at "public diplomacy" is to realize context matters. A US program (doesn't matter which agency does it, or that USG funds or other direction cause it if it's in support of US policy) conducted in, say, France may be interpreted entirely differently in, say, Russia or China. Case in point: discussing how US elections are run may get some interest, or even a yawn in Paris, but the same script in Beijing will be attacked as political warfare, and they'd be right. (I encountered this reaction in a meeting with the number two of China's domestic propaganda agency back in 2014 or 2015 when I was trying to get Beijing to uphold their promise to allow Voice of America a second bureau in China.) This raises an issue with "public diplomacy": it's term adopted to cover the activities of USIA (and previously used by the US press to describe the Russian proclivity to shape US-USSR meetings by speaking to the press, knowing full well their State Department counterparts wouldn't do such a thing), rather than the TTPs, outcomes, intentions, or anything else. Whether the method includes twisting an arm (i.e., blackmail) or convincing someone it's in their interest to do x ("affecting the will to act", see the largely forgotten phrase "struggle for minds and wills"), it's "public diplomacy," or diplomacy in or through the public. That's my take at least.