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Many people will wish to forget 2020. A year of fear and angst; lockdowns and isolations and one virus that brought the world to a halt. Indeed, the Covid19 virus transported the world to a previous era, one in which reaching another city, let alone another country was impossible. Airports, the signature of the networked... Continue Reading →
The speed of diplomacy’s digitalization has been truly remarkable. In less than a decade, MFAs (foreign ministries) have gone from launching websites and virtual embassies to designing smartphone applications, analyzing big data sets, writing code, creating algorithms and establishing social media empires that span multiple networks. This is all the more remarkable as MFAs were... Continue Reading →
Last week I had the opportunity to interview a software analyst working for one of the world’s most popular search engines. The analyst is part of a crisis response unit whose main task is to offer answers to Covid related queries. To do so, the crisis response team must gather reliable information from all over... Continue Reading →
When asked what is the enlightenment, Kant answered “Enlightened is man’s ascension from his self-imposed immaturity”. When reviewing the study of digital diplomacy, 2019 is the year of maturity. In 2015, scholars mainly asked who? Who manages the digital accounts of MFAs/embassies and multi-lateral missions? This was an important question. If digital diplomacy managers were... Continue Reading →
In the autumn of 1990, Joseph Nye sought to re-imagine what American power would like in the 21st century. Writing near the end of the Cold War, Nye offered scholars and policy makers a new conceptual framework through which they could understand power dynamics in a changing world. The Cold War would soon be over,... Continue Reading →
Some have traced the origins of digital diplomacy to America's need to counter Al-Qaeda's online narrative and recruitment efforts. As Ellen Hallams has written, already in 2008 it was estimated that the internet was responsible of 80% of recruitment of Jihadi movements. In an attempt to stem the tide of recruitment, and counter Al-Qaeda's narrative... Continue Reading →
From Digital Diplomacy 1.0 to Digital Diplomacy 2.0 When foreign ministries first migrated online, they viewed social media platforms as mass media channels. Much like the radio and television, Twitter and Facebook could be used to disseminate messages among millions of users. The conceptualization of social media as mass media was, in part, the result... Continue Reading →
2017 marks a decade since the advent of “digital diplomacy”. What began as an experiment by a select number of foreign ministries has transformed into routine practice for diplomats and embassies the world over. To mark this occasion, I will be publishing a series of working papers. The goal of this series is to reflect... Continue Reading →
