Last week I had the pleasure of attending the International Communication Association's 68th Annual Conference in Prague. My presentation focused on the digital and public diplomacy activities of the Palestinian government in the West Bank, specifically it's Facebook Embassy to Israel. While presenting my work I mentioned that unlike other virtual Embassies, Palestine's Facebook Embassy... Continue Reading →
Narrative Alignment as Public Diplomacy Evaluation
Despite the emergence of new technologies the task of evaluating public diplomacy activities remains a daunting one. While scholars and practitioners have offered numerous definitions for the term public diplomacy, they have yet to agree upon a method for measuring the impact of public diplomacy activities. Some have suggested that public diplomacy is a means... Continue Reading →
Palestine’s Online Line of Defence
As the violence between Israel and Palestine continued to escalate over the past week, both parties took to social media in order to offer their narrative of events. Last week I explored Israel’s official narrative by analysing tweets published by Israel’s MFA. What struck me most was the fact that Israel’s narrative seems to completely... Continue Reading →
On Hamas, Digital Diplomacy & Digital Hypocrisy
On Friday, the Hamas organization launched a five day social media campaign aimed at altering the image of the organization among Western countries. The stated goal of the twitter campaign, which allows social media followers to query Hamas leaders through the hashtag #AskHamas, was to re-brand the organization as a liberation movement rather than a... Continue Reading →