No country is further from Madison Ave than Soviet-style North Korea, but advertising is beginning to emerge as makers of goods try to pitch products to a rising group of consumers and a wealthy class of citizens.

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.

Serbian people, like their political leaders, seem to be in two minds about the world and their place in it. According to a recent poll, 42 percent of young people in Serbia would like to see the Russian political system implemented in their country. But on the other hand, when asked where they would ideally like to live, 70 percent of those between 18 and 35 chose the United States or Europe.

Arguing that the United States has so far failed to invest seriously in understanding or pushing back against the problem of Russian propaganda and disinformation, Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Washington Post columnist, and Edward Lucas, a senior editor at the Economist, are launching this week a counter-disinformation initiative at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington, DC. 

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.

The US official emphasised that the social media can be more effective tool in the hands of young Arabs to fight extremism and violence if properly used since it is an effective soft power that can spread the message of tolerance, understanding and modernity on a larger scale and enhance the impact of their countries in various global arenas.