Public diplomacy is one of the most powerful tools a president has to inform and influence the world by communicating American values and interests. By engaging with citizens overseas, we expand and extend our national security through the dissemination of news, information, culture, education, entrepreneurship and everything else that make a democracy strong.

When it comes to living in a democracy, Nato Thompson argues, nothing affects us more directly and more powerfully than culture. Culture suffuses the world we live in, from TV to music to advertising to sports. And all these things, Thompson writes in his new book, Culture as Weapon, “influence our emotions, our actions, and our very understanding of ourselves as citizens.”

Over 200 years ago, President George Washington warned Americans about foreign powers undermining American democracy by tampering “with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils.” In the present, we are finding that old threats are new again as the United States is challenged by Russia’s strategic communication efforts targeting both our domestic politics and international interests.

Several times, the concepts analyzed in theory and the ‘how should it be’ don’t really happen in reality, for social scientists like me it’s a constant struggle to analyze reality and society and try to come up with proposals to improve the situation and the life quality of people, and sometimes they don’t happen to be quite as real as we would want.

The Indian High Commission will hold a “Festival of India-Matri” from January 25 to March 15, 2017  to commemorate 60 years of a strong bond of friendship between India and Ghana. The festival  will be held in collaboration with Ghana’s Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, as well as the governments of both countries.

The Indian High Commission will hold a “Festival of India-Matri” from January 25 to March 15, 2017  to commemorate 60 years of a strong bond of friendship between India and Ghana. [...] He said the festival to  be held  in Accra, Takoradi, Cape Coast, Kumasi and Koforidua would showcase multifaceted aspects of Indian culture in its various colours and forms.

Digital Diplomacy is the new radio. Ever since politicians figured out that they could speak directly to ‘the masses’, we have had the phenomenon of public diplomacy. It became possible, via radio, to speak directly to people without having to go through official government channels. In the early 20th century, the Nazis and the Bolsheviks effectively used the radio to stoke revolutions in neighbouring countries.