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.” 

Diplomacy is traditionally carried out behind closed doors, in hushed rooms, with perhaps a bowl of Ferrero Rocher to hand to put ambassadors at ease. Diplomacy 2.0, though, is carried out in public and, like everything else on social media, with a fair amount of sarcasm. 

The Islamic State released a video on Tuesday purporting to show the beheading of American hostage Steven Sotloff, raising the stakes in its confrontation with Washington over U.S. air strikes on its insurgents in Iraq.

Photographs purportedly showing more than 40 UN peacekeepers seized by Islamist militants on Syria’s side of the Golan Heights – along with their identity cards – have been posted on social media.  The al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front says the captives, all from Fiji, were detained on Thursday because their UN mission was helping Syria’s government and had ignored the suffering of its people. It says they are being treated well.

This may be the best Ice Bucket Challenge to combine the viral video craze with what’s in the news right now.  Militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have been mocked by one social media user who has imitated what an ISIS member would look like if he were to accept the challenge.

Russian officials have responded to a mocking tweet from Canadian delegates over the escalating Ukraine crisis. Diplomatic relations between the two countries have been in the spotlight since Canadian officials posted a snarky map to help Russian soldiers who keep “getting lost in Ukraine”. Moscow officials have hit back with their own map, with the disputed Crimea region clearly marked as Russian territory.