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On July 21st, Elon Musk shared a tweet featuring an AI-generated fashion show of world leaders. The AI fashion show soon went viral, given the satirical depiction of world leaders and due to its realistic appearance. Although the fashion show was clearly generated by AI, the video did demonstrate the extent to which this technology... Continue Reading →
The 'middle-ground' is as important to diplomacy as it is to society. It is in the middle-ground where diplomats can meet and resolve differences. It is in the middle-ground where different citizens, with different opinions, can meet to discuss issues of shared concern. It is therefore in the middle-ground where action may be initiated. In... Continue Reading →
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 →
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 →
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 →
Advertisers argue that attention is a finite resource. According to one study, individuals in the digital society are exposed to 8,000 advertisements a day. Given humans’ limited capacity for information processing, this barrage of advertisements is mostly ignored or forgotten within seconds. This means that if commercial brands are to compete successfully for the attention... Continue Reading →
On January 18, 2024, the European Digital Diplomacy Exchange, and the State Department, invited me to discuss my work on Digital Diplomacy. In this 45 minute lecture, I argue that in order to research digital diplomacy one must first research the digital society. This is because diplomacy is a social institution. When societies adopt new... Continue Reading →
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 →
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 →
Each week, I publish a list of interesting articles, essays and reports that may be of interest to the digital diplomacy community. This week- Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg fight will be streamed on X, according to Musk (CNN) Ukraine’s elite forces rely on technology to strike behind enemy lines (The Washington Post) U.S. company... Continue Reading →
Exploring Digital Diplomacy 