digital diplomacy & new tech

In November, 2016 Oxford Dictionaries proclaimed “post-truth” the word of the year. The choice was obviously a reflection of two important political campaigns: Brexit and the US Presidential elections. In both campaigns truth became subservient to political gain. The distinction between fact and fiction eroded as fake news spread globally through social media sites. However, Oxford Dictionaries’ choice was, to a certain extent, a publicity stunt in its own right.

Is public diplomacy still relevant? This is a question often asked nowadays. [...] In international relations, public diplomacy or people's diplomacy is considered to be a form of communication with foreign public that establishes a dialog designed to inform and influence. "Today's myriad of international journalism outlets makes it increasingly challenging for U.S. government public diplomacy programs to capture global attention,"

The new director of the Vatican museums, Barbara Jatta, presented a new multimedia web site to journalists at the Vatican press office on Monday. The user-friendly site, available in Italian, English, French, Spanish and German, contains thousands of images plus over fifty videos and virtual tours and has taken almost three years to complete.

Enterprise Estonia, the state-run agency responsible for promoting Estonia abroad and attracting investment, launched two brand new web platforms, estonia.ee and brand.estonia.ee, at the cost of €200,000. The new website estonia.ee replaces the estonia.eu site that had become obsolete and outdated, both in design and content. The long-serving “Welcome to Estonia” logo will be dumped as well.

From a digital perspective, 2016 has arguably been the year of emotions running high [...] The fact that people are emotional beings is hardly a secret, of course, especially when tragedies or high-stakes political affairs are involved. What digital platforms have brought to the table is a rather new form of commodification of human emotions as instruments of social exchange.

Medvedev, by En.Kremlin.ru

As digital communications become more emotionally-charged, digital emotional intelligence is crucial.

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.

Oxfam, one of the UK’s biggest charities, plans to harness the power of the smartphone to bring donors closer to its work. The global poverty reduction charity is launching an app, My Oxfam, that it says will make donating easy and rewarding. The app will also bring supporters closer to the charity’s projects, offer a new level of transparency around its work, and aims to help regain donors’ trust.

Pages