Film and television works have an important role in transcending emotions and connecting different cultures, officials said at a symposium today. High-level translation is crucial to draw people from different countries closer and support the cultural development, Ding Wei, Vice Minister of Culture of China, said at the opening ceremony of the 2016 Sino-Foreign Audiovisual Translation and Dubbing (SFATD) Cooperation Workshop & Symposium.

In recent weeks, business deals between Australian and Chinese media groups have raised concerns over potential Chinese government influence in the Australian press. But according to a report in the Australian Financial Review, the media is not the only institution that has recently received Chinese government money as part of a soft power push by Beijing.

According to Parni, civic diplomacy involves “people to people” contact through all means, involving social media and conventional media ( press diplomacy ) with particular emphases on social ( humanitarian ) and concrete cultural activities.

How is democracy promoted around the world? What techniques are successful? Established state democracies are by no means the only inspiration for democracy or for good governance; these ideas can find inspiration in other cultures and societies, such as Myanmar.

"Venezuela has a lot to offer in terms of art and culture. We have already opened a cultural centre in New Delhi. ICMEI is going to be the extension of our efforts. All are invited to be a part of these two centres at Noida and Delhi. We have grown much bigger in one day," said the Ambassador, appreciating the large network of 162 countries of ICMEI.

Finding that the curse of unsupervised hate speech is rampant on the web and leads to terrorism, social media moguls Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube have joined in signing a “Code of Conduct”. The document, produced by the European Commission (EC), states that these mega companies will dedicate manpower and algorithms to remove “illegal hate speech” within 24 hours.

“When MasterChef kicked off here in India, there were some ­racial issues with people getting beaten up, taxi drivers and all the rest of it,” Mehigan said while signing plates. [...] when MasterChef started, it all turned around. It’s what embassy people call “soft diplomacy”...

When the Chinese government donated a library to the University of Technology Sydney few people noticed. Only slightly more seemed to care when groups friendly to Beijing began funding think tanks in Australia, making political donations and paying primary schools to run Chinese language programs.