The success of Obama, Modi, and others has been particularly good for digital diplomacy, which is the use of new communication technologies to help achieve diplomatic goals. It is hard to even imagine how many countries and heads of state didn't have a Twitter or Facebook account not that long ago.

Governments around the world are using stealthy strategies to manipulate the media.  Censorship is flourishing in the information age. In theory, new technologies make it more difficult, and ultimately impossible, for governments to control the flow of information.

As social media has emerged as a key communications tool, the External Affairs Ministry has come on the top among various ministries and government departments in terms of its presence on digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+. 
 

Social media giant Facebook revealed Tuesday the most talked about topics of 2014 around the world with the main topic the World Cup.  Other topics in the list included the Gaza conflict, the Ice Bucket Challenge, the Ebola Virus as well as Sochi Winter Olympics.

Fearing contagion, Jordan has announced that it will not tolerate any open activity, recruitment or support for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Narendra Modi met yesterday and discussed a wide range of issues revolving around the innovative use of Facebook as a platform to engage with a large audience in the service of humanity. 

“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.” 

The State Department actually has a Twitter account focused on countering some of these jihadis and extremists online and specifically on Twitter. It’s hard to say how effective that is, perhaps it’s better than doing nothing. But we shouldn’t kind of delude ourselves into thinking that public diplomacy can really change people’s minds in a very obvious way. The American government doesn’t have a lot of credibility with anyone who is going to be vaguely sympathetic to the aims of th