The US State Department's Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) is conducting public diplomacy, not information warfare against the Islamic State (IS) and other terrorist organizations by contesting the space of digital communication and challenging extremist propaganda, the CSCC coordinator told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

“With the exception of Vice News, ISIS has permitted no foreign journalists to document life under their rule in Raqqa,” Crabapple wrote. “Instead, they rely on their own propaganda. To create these images, I drew from cell-phone photos a Syrian sent me of daily life in the city. Like the Internet, art evades censorship.”

The U.S. State Department is the same body that it has always been: handling relations between nations, maintaining peace and balancing tense situations around the globe.  But one office is doing that in a new way.  Moira Whelan is the deputy assistant secretary for digital strategy.  “It’s digital diplomacy,” she told the Centre Daily Times in an interview.

The Twittersphere and social media is abuzz in the Arab-Muslim world, this time over what conservative clerics say is a controversial practice of hajj pilgrims to Mecca taking “selfies” with their smartphone devices.

Could a digitally adept nation change the rules of public engagement and become an influence far beyond their physical and financial resources? Why not? For one thing, the digital diplomacy space needs positive presences. In some ways, it has become a slightly moribund arena, with innovation at a premium. It's a digital cliché, of course, but diplomacy needs its disruptors.

China may not be threatening the United States militarily, but it is certainly engaging U.S. companies in a costly cyber war, FBI director James Comey told 60 Minutes on Sunday, and no major business is immune.

Indian diplomats are increasingly using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and country-specific social media networks to stay in touch with the world.

South Korea's president is cracking down on rumors in cyberspace in a campaign that threatens the popularity of Kakao Talk, the leading social media service in a country with ambitions to become a global technology leader.