A few days ago, the New York Times reported on a leaked memo written by Richard Stengel, the State Department's under secretary for public diplomacy, who criticized America's foreign partners in the effort to counter the Islamic State's propaganda. It's the latest chapter in the U.S. government's decade-long saga to counter jihadist propaganda, which Greg Miller and Scott Higham documented so thoroughly last month in the Washington Post. 

Tensions Peak After A Kurdish Woman Falls to Her Death

The Foreign Ministry pulled an animated 50-second video clip it uploaded last week which ridiculed foreign correspondents for their coverage of last summer’s Israel-Hamas fighting. The video sparked complaints from the foreign press.

Rarely has amateurism in American foreign policy in the Middle East been as glaring and shocking as it has been in the past year with regard to Washington’s policy toward ISIS. In the United States during the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to follow more closely than usual news, analysis and political discussions about how Washington should respond to the threat of ISIS, and the experience has been frightening.

US President Barack Obama may have launched his official presidential Twitter handle @POTUS just two weeks ago, but he and other global leaders have been using the microblogging platform for years.

On the first Friday of each month The Interpreter will publish Digital Diplomacy links instead of the weekly Digital Asia links. As Australian digital diplomacy strives to catch up to the rest of the world, these links will highlight the most creative and effective ways countries are leveraging the internet for foreign policy gain.