One of the leaders in the virtual race is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi [...] As prime minister, Modi also went viral with a selfie he took with China's Li keqiang, a move promptly dubbed as "selfie diplomacy."
States should use the increasing power of social media networks and work with them to achieve foreign policy objectives. [...] However, there is much more room for states to cooperate with social media rather than seeing it as an enemy. Instead, there are ample opportunities to use social media’s features, low costs and high effectiveness as tools to promote a state’s foreign policy objectives.
US authorities and Internet giants are boosting attempts to counter the Islamic State group’s online propaganda, though it is unclear how effective these efforts are in hampering the jihadists’ public-relations machine.
Digital diplomacy is the use of internet and new information communication technologies to help achieve diplomatic objectives. [...] On this side of the globe, India is leading the way on digital diplomacy. Despite a modest budget in public diplomacy, India’s ministry of external affairs’ Facebook page with more than 1.2 million followers has come second only to the US state department among foreign ministries in the world.
It was a small blip on television news screens at the end of April. Reports of the death of Mohammad Shafi Armar, the head recruiter of the Islamic State (IS) in India, in a U.S. drone strike in Syria, got buried in the din of India’s domestic news. [...] The spate of arrests of Indian sympathizers this year alone has proved that ‘Brand ISIS’ has found its foothold in India.
India has been ranked in the top 10 nations in terms of its digital diplomacy performance over the last year by Diplomacy Live, a global research, advocacy, consulting and training platform. India and Mexico are the only two countries from the developing world in this list. India's high ranking is despite a relatively modest budget for public diplomacy.
Burson-Marsteller's new report breaks down the digital diplomacy of world leaders on Facebook.
Mark Zuckerbeg’s charm offensive in China won’t let up. [...] Zuckerberg’s goal, of course, is to bring Facebook to China, which has been blocked by Beijing since 2009. Adding just half of China’s 668 million internet users to Facebook would increase the social network’s total by 20%—and create a lucrative new market for advertising and publishing.