Programme fellows will meet once every two weeks to learn things such as “techniques of hasbara, standing before an audience...image of Israel in the world, Palestinian society and key topics in the world of diplomacy.” Fellows are promised “strategic tours to ‘burning’ sites on the public agenda” and encounters with “spokespersons and experts amongst the best in their fields.”

New Delhi: More than 50 protestors under the banner of the Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (INCABI) Sunday demanded boycott of a musical production by the Israeli ensemble Cameri Theatre here because the theatre group allegedly serves as a propaganda tool for the state of Israel.

On 2 November, Maltese pianist Caroline Calleja performed in Washington D.C. to an audience that included members of the diplomatic community and music lovers. The concert was part of this year’s edition of the Embassy Series and took place at the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia.

US director for Afghan-Pakistan public diplomacy Eileen M O’Conner called on Minister for Information and Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Kaira on Tuesday. They discussed matters of mutual interest, particularly cooperation in the field of media that played role as opinion maker.

The minister said she would “like to focus on increased coordination with ministry of tourism, human resource development and external affairs to ensure a focussed and coordinated effort to promote culture which not only projects India’s soft power, but also benefits the cultural and economic lives of all our citizens”.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan dashed hopes for a normalisation of his country’s relations with Israel, on his return to Ankara from a state visit to Berlin Friday, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel directly appealed to him to reopen dialogue with the Jewish State.

Future prejudices of China will be born not in the columns of the print media and in the radio and TV reports, but in the mushrooming blogs and micro-blogs of the digital world... Future stability will depend not only on what happens in the real world, but also on what happens in the digital world.

Nation states are facing a second wake-up call in public diplomacy. The first wake up call, prompted by the 9/11 attacks, was the realization that perceptions of foreign publics have domestic consequences. The second wake up call, which rang out first for China during the 2008 Olympics, and then for other countries with Wikileaks, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy Movement, is that adversarial publics are able to challenge states in the quest for global public support. How states can effectively respond to this second wake-up call is a pressing area of public diplomacy research.