digital diplomacy
Facebook will become the suggester of perspective to avoid being the “arbiter of truth”. It’s rolling out “Related Articles” that appear below news links to stories lots of people are posting about on Facebook, or that are suspected to be false news and have been externally fact checked by Facebook’s partners. [...] Pre-click Related Articles are rolling out in the US, Germany, France, and Netherlands today.
Youth in Des Moines, Iowa have more in common with students in Tunisia than they thought. In particular, a passion for social justice. While participating in Youth for Understanding’s (YFU) Virtual Exchange Initiative, a program that digitally connects students in different countries for moderated, in-depth discussion, a group of students in Iowa brought up the Black Lives Matter movement.
In Afghanistan's patriarchal society, a woman's name should not be revealed, even on her grave. [...] #WhereIsMyName, recently launched by a small group of women's rights activists, wants to bring women's given names to official documents and to the lips of Afghan people.
Kenya's last two general elections have been tarnished by allegations of fraud and outbreaks of violence, which have divided the nation since. The country is hailed as Africa's Silicon Savannah and when citizens head to the polls again on 8th August, they will be using technology to make sure these elections are free and credible.
SOS Alerts have been developed with the aim of delivering important updates to users during major disasters. [...] The company says “major natural, manmade, or humanitarian disasters” will activate the alerts, but it “can’t guarantee that you’ll see an SOS Alert for every major crisis”.
YouTube says it will redirect people searching for "violent extremist propaganda" and offer them videos that denounce terrorism. People searching for certain terms relating to the so-called Islamic State group will be offered playlists of videos "debunking its mythology".
Crowdsourcing support can become a process where new ideas are mined and become part of a policy package for difficult relationships. [...] It has been said again and again that this is the age of digital diplomacy. For diplomacy to be digital requires, as one ambassador has said, that “we do things differently and develop new skills – the secrecy and exclusivity of the diplomatic bag no longer applies.
Careem, a Middle Eastern rival to Uber, has become the first ride-hailing firm to operate in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Dubai-based Careem, whose name is a play on the Arabic word for generous or noble, launched in Ramallah in June, aiming to bring digital simplicity to the Palestinian territory.