The fundamentalist militant group ISIS has capitalized on the power of social media to spread its message and recruit new followers, but social networks and governments are fighting back. On Thursday, VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, announced it will ban accounts affiliated with the ISIS terrorist group.

In this week’s frantic rescue effort, one unexpected development is the army’s use of Twitter, WhatsApp, a messaging service, and Facebook to reach families. Twenty years ago, when social media first emerged, India’s government — like its counterparts in Beijing and Moscow — regarded it warily, as a force that could undermine state power. 

For the second time in six months, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has taken to the twitter airwaves to host an impromptu Q&A under the #AskBaird hashtag.  Among the revelations to emerge over the course of the chat, which lasted just over an hour: While "a tweet won't tackle ISIL," he sees "digital diplomacy" as "an important tool for promoting our values."

Gérard Araud, France's newly minted ambassador to the United States, arrived in Washington this month with a reputation for speaking his mind, a potentially perilous distinction for a career diplomat. A recent convert to Twitter, Araud has skirmished with human rights activists over French policy in Western Sahara, defended France's controversial burqa ban, denounced Russian aggression, and poked fun atWashington's Iraq war hawks.

The ostensible purpose of the recent videos that show the beheadings of two American journalists by Islamic militants is to deter attacks — your missiles on our positions will beget our knives on Western hostages — but the true aim is to spread dread and terror.

The video that became prominent last week is one of several on a new State Department YouTube channel in English aimed at disaffected young Western Muslims who may be wowed by the Islamic State’s battlefield momentum. The counter message is simple: These guys are lying to you, and if you go to Syria to fight Western oppression you’ll just end up killing innocent Muslims.

“The impact Twitter has on diplomacy apart from being a broadcasting tool for election campaigns is hard to measure. However, the fact that a growing number of global leaders mutually follow each other is evidence of the importance of digital diplomacy. In particular, foreign ministers and their institutions have focused on connecting with their peers. In September 2013, the US State Department followed 22 other foreign offices as well as Iran’s President @HassanRouhani and Foreign Minister @JZarif, timidly establishing diplomatic relations between the US and Iran on Twitter.”