The Power of Memes: Analyzing War-Time Messaging

The Russia-Ukraine war has witnessed the emergence of new social media practices. The Ukrainian government, for one, has been using social media to crowdfund its armed forces and create an IT army charged with cyber-attacks against Russia. Yet the war has also seen the growing use of memes. Ukrainian diplomats and government ministries have published... 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 – Here is what Saudi Arabia's city of the future will look like (Cybernews)State Department pursues ‘people-people’ diplomacy through video games (The Washington Post)Inside Ukraine’s open-source war (Financial Times)Starlink: Why is... 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 – Senate Bill to Boost Chip Production, Advanced Technology Set to Move Ahead (Wall Street Journal)Google fires engineer who said AI tech has feelings (BBC News)Kmart halt use of facial recognition... Continue Reading →

How Ukraine Can Leverage its Digital Achievements

It is often said that practice makes perfect. While Ukraine’s digital diplomacy is not perfect, the Ukrainian government has gained valuable expertise in using digital technologies. Indeed, since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine War, Ukraine has employed a host of innovative digital tactics. These include the creation of a hacker army; crowdfunding aid for its... 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 – The IT Army of Ukraine- Structure, Tasking and Ecosystem (ETH-Zurich)Meta Agrees to Alter Ad Technology in Settlement With U.S. (The New York Times)Google Is Sharing Our Data at a Startling... Continue Reading →

Memetic Engagement in the #Ukraine War

Since the onset of Russia’s War against Ukraine, social media users have authored and disseminated thousands of memes. At times, memes respond to trending news stories. Such was the case with the barrage of memes depicting Ukrainian tractors towing Russian tanks and armored vehicles. Other times memes have been used to try and galvanize international... 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 – How People From 1955 Imagined Technology of the Future (Gizmodo)The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life (The Washington Post)Ukraine uses 3D-tech to preserve hundreds of... Continue Reading →

On the Metaverse: The Good, the Bad and Ugly

Two weeks ago, the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Department of Communications at Ben Gurion University, held a one day workshop on the future of the Metaverse. The workshop explored how the Metaverse may impact society and diplomacy. Below, are my comments in which I call on diplomats to partake in shaping the vision of... Continue Reading →

Ukraine Has No Soft Power

In his renowned article from 1990, Joseph Nye hoped to conceptualize how America would exercise power following the Cold War.  Power, asserted Nye, rests on the ability to change the behavior of other states. This can be achieved through co-opetive, or Soft Power, or coercive Hard Power. Nye therefore distinguished between two policies that could... Continue Reading →

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑