The term ‘dual-use technology’ is used to denote technologies that may have both civil and military applications. Such is the case with Global Positioning Systems or GPS which are used to help track and identify targets for missile attacks and are also used to help drivers navigate in cars. Another example is drones which may... Continue Reading →
The Role of Pop Culture and Humor in Ukraine’s Digital Diplomacy
Acknowledgement: This blog post is part of a paper that I presented at a recent workshop on humor and global politics at the University of Sheffield. I am thankful to all participants and to the organizer, Dr. Dmitry Chernobrov. Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine War, Ukraine has used social media to rally online and... Continue Reading →
Monday’s Digital Diplomacy Must Read List
Each week, I publish a list of interesting articles, essays and reports that may be of interest to the digital diplomacy community. This week- How Big Tech Is Killing Innovation (The New York Times) Why does AI hallucinate? (MIT Technology Review) Does what happens on your iPhone still stay on your iPhone? (The Guardian) China... Continue Reading →
How to Practice Digital Diplomacy in a World Devoid of Context?
Every few years, a new word seems to dominate societal discourses. In recent years the dominant word was “narrative”. New pundits depicted politics as a clash of narratives, diplomacy was understood as the practice of constructing appealing narratives, fake news and conspiracy theories were viewed as disruptive narratives that undermine trust in national institutions while... Continue Reading →
From “Wolf Warrior Diplomacy” To “Lone Wolf Diplomacy: The New Logic of Digital Public Diplomacy
At a recent international conference I was asked- how does relationality help understand public diplomacy in today’s world? To answer this question, we must first characterize todays’ world. It is a world that is prone to crises, a world that is marked by wars, it is a complex world as a crisis in one world... Continue Reading →
Digital Diplomacy and the Beautification of War
Susan Sontag famously argued that photography was violent in nature. Photographs, according to Sontag, are violent as they fracture linear time. Each photograph is like an atom torn from linear time and forever frozen. The more photographs one takes, the more he or she rips linear time into fragments that can longer form a coherent... Continue Reading →
Monday’s Must Read List
Each week, I publish a list of interesting articles, essays and reports that may be of interest to the digital diplomacy community. This week- What the future holds for driverless cars (BBC News) Resistance Is Futile, But Maybe Not With AI (Bloomberg) It’s Time to Give Up on Ending Social Media’s Misinformation Problem (The Atlantic)... Continue Reading →
The Drone Wars: How Ukrainian Drones Are Reshaping War Coverage
In the early 1990s, scholars coined the term “The CNN Effect” referencing the impact that CNN had on American foreign policy. Scholars asserted that issues which rose to prominence in CNN were soon addressed by American policy makers. In this way CNN shaped the priorities of the White House and the State Department. CNN was... Continue Reading →
The Twitter Prisoner Dilemma and the Future of Digital Diplomacy
Note: This post was originally published as an Op Ed at E-International Relations. It was co-authored by Ilan Manor, Corneliu Bjola and Bar Fishman. On November 23, 2023, the mayor of Paris announced that she was leaving X, the network formerly known as Twitter. Citing a rise in a disinformation, hate speech, racism and “vicious... Continue Reading →
Is Humor an Effective Digital Diplomacy Strategy?
Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine War, Ukraine has relied on its social media channels to obtain foreign policy goals. Through its use of Twitter, Facebook and Telegram Ukraine has crowdfunded humanitarian aid, raised funds for the purchasing of weapons, negotiated agreements with tech magnets such as Elon Musk, managed a cyber army and obtained... Continue Reading →