The Asia Pacific is the most dynamic digital landscape in the world, home to the fastest adopters of new technologies and the largest concentration of mobile and social media users. An escalation in online activism, changing cyber dynamics, developments in digital diplomacy and the exploitation of big data are shaping the region's engagement with the world.

The image of our country is the lowest it’s been [...] Bangladesh is yet to become attractive to G-7 investors. Bangladesh’s potential as a liberal Muslim country is not discussed at the right tables in the Middle East.

After the 2016 election, the new government has realised that soft diplomacy aligned with a more independent foreign policy is far more effective in the long-term than military force. As a consequence, the government establishes a new Department of Regional Cooperation. 

In 2010 former Lowy Institute research fellow Fergus Hanson published a forward-looking policy brief urging Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to catch up to the rest of the world, join the 21st century and get online. Social media, he argued, is only one aspect of digital diplomacy. 

Sydneysider Nicola Gray uses a new online photography project to introduce her Facebook audience to an Australian refugee—a “New Human of Australia”—every few days.

The rapid acceleration of digital technologies has been rupturing the conservative profession of diplomacy for the better part of a decade [...] Without deft digital diplomacy, Australia leaves itself unable to respond to the risks that [their] citizens and exporters increasingly face overseas.

"The Australian fashion industry is the exemplar of our creative economy. 220,000 jobs in Australia, $12 billion contributed to our economy each and every year. I have embraced 'fashion diplomacy' as coming under the umbrella of 'economic diplomacy', a pillar of our foreign policy," she [Julie Bishop] said.