It’s that time of the year again. A time of expectation and jubilation. A time of press junkets and photobombs. A time of pomp and circumstance and a time of high level negotiations. It’s the time of the UN’s annual General Assembly when leaders, foreign ministers and diplomats swarm to New York to redraw borders,... 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- Afghan women hit back at Taliban with #DoNotTouchMyClothes campaign (BBC News)Game changer: The first Olympic games in the cloud (MIT Technology Review)China’s Technology Workers Get Unions (Voice of America)The next chapter... Continue Reading →
In the age of Covid19, are Pharma companies diplomatic actors? A Twitter Analysis
Are tech giants diplomatic actors? This question has occupied scholars and commentators for several years. Some have argued that social media companies have obtained a form of digital statehood. Facebook, for instance, displays many trappings of a state including a citizenry, a currency and a diplomatic branch charged with managing relations with offline states. Others... Continue Reading →
How the US Army Visually Narrates the Fall of Afghanistan
In a blog post published last week, I examined how different actors framed, or narrated, the Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan. Examining the use of digital diplomacy by world leaders, Embassies, diplomats and individuals, I demonstrated that social media are a competitive framing arena in which multiple actors vie over the attention of digital publics while... 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- Israeli Army Employs Popular Blogger for Psyops on Social Media (Haaretz Newspaper)Taliban's Afghanistan takeover presents fresh challenge for social media companies (Reuters)Deepfakes Are Now Making Business Pitches (Wired)How a Technology Revolution... Continue Reading →
Who won the framing competition over Afghanistan? A Twitter Analysis
In 2012, Craig Hayden published one of the first research papers on digital diplomacy. Focusing on the emergence of social media, Hayden stated that the audiences of diplomacy were fragmented into networks of elective exposure. Some individuals learned about the world by following diplomats on Twitter, others turned to trusted bloggers while still others followed... Continue Reading →
Real Time Diplomacy: How Social Media Accelerates Diplomacy
In September of 1952, the world was shocked to learn that Israel and West Germany has signed an accord promising financial reparations to the Jewish victims of Nazi Germany. Until that month, Israel had vowed to never recognize, negotiate or interact with West Germany. The accord was made possible once German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, made... 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- Why Is Beijing Micromanaging Its Technology Sector? (The Diplomat)Zoom reaches $85M settlement in ‘Zoombombing’ lawsuit (TechCrunch)Israel Aerospace Industries inks $237 million radar deal with German military (Times of Israel)Clubhouse Opens Its... Continue Reading →
Putting the P back in PD: Networking with the New Middle Ground
The advent of digital diplomacy was closely associated with the practice of public diplomacy. The State Department first migrated online to converse with Muslim internet users and establish new ties throughout the Middle East. The Swedish MFA created the world’s first virtual Embassy in order to interact with global computer users while the Israeli foreign... 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- Science and technology is central to strong and lasting Indo-US ties (Hindustan Times)Technology unicorns are growing at a record clip (The Economist)Ireland now has a world class regulatory technology sector (The... Continue Reading →