States should use the increasing power of social media networks and work with them to achieve foreign policy objectives. [...] However, there is much more room for states to cooperate with social media rather than seeing it as an enemy. Instead, there are ample opportunities to use social media’s features, low costs and high effectiveness as tools to promote a state’s foreign policy objectives.

Which would you rather look at? Pictures of war, conflict and violence - or hot guys eating hummus? Four students from the IDC in Herzliya are counting on you choosing the latter. That premise was the idea behind the hottest new Instagram account around: “Hot Dudes Eating Hummus.” [...] “The four of us wanted to create an apolitical branding campaign for Israel to shed some light on the humor, diversity, fun, beauty, and culture that are so vibrant and rich in this country,” 

The debate about diplomacy in the digital age has been recklessly profligate with terminology. Terms such as e-diplomacy, cyber diplomacy or digital diplomacy have been used almost interchangeably, with each author sticking to his/her favorite. This not only wastes three perfectly good terms where one could do (denying us the other two for other purposes). It also conceals considerable confusion about the relationship between diplomacy and the digital world.

Efforts to extend the reach of the internet to the 4 billion people worldwide that are not yet connected will only succeed if a digital ecosystem approach is adopted where access, affordability, skills and content are given equal attention, according to a new World Economic Forum-led initiative, Internet For All, whose key learning and best practices are published today.

Digital diplomacy is the use of internet and new information communication technologies to help achieve diplomatic objectives. [...] On this side of the globe, India is leading the way on digital diplomacy. Despite a modest budget in public diplomacy, India’s ministry of external affairs’ Facebook page with more than 1.2 million followers has come second only to the US state department among foreign ministries in the world. 

It was a small blip on television news screens at the end of April. Reports of the death of Mohammad Shafi Armar, the head recruiter of the Islamic State (IS) in India, in a U.S. drone strike in Syria, got buried in the din of India’s domestic news. [...] The spate of arrests of Indian sympathizers this year alone has proved that ‘Brand ISIS’ has found its foothold in India.