Today we take for granted that information warfare — whether the disruption of other nations’ computer systems, the monitoring of citizens’ telephone calls to detect terrorist threats or the use of social media to shape foreign attitudes — is a key tool of national security. But virtually all our concerns about such tactics find their roots in the Great War, particularly in its first hours, when the Alert’s hatchet-wielding crew began its work.

A handful of agencies that provide tours to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea say business is growing.  Visitors can circumnavigate the country if they wish, although the itinerary is filled with propaganda with tour guides enthusiastically trumpeting the nation’s achievements and industrial advancement.

Fake social media accounts are spreading pro-Chinese propaganda on Twitter, disseminating upbeat news stories about the troubled regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, according to an investigation by advocacy group Free Tibet.

As of yet, no Israelis have been killed during the latest Gaza offensive. 174-0 is a tough ratio to explain. Especially for an operation that Israel claims is being taken in self-defense against terrorists in Gaza. But the Israeli Prime Minister’s office may have found an answer to this minor public-diplomacy challenge: Tinder, a popular online smartphone dating/hookup app.

“Migrants from everywhere, entrenched along the rail ties. Far away from where they come, further away from where they go,” singer Eddie Ganz croons in Spanish over the Caribbean beat of the marimba, a wooden xylophone-like instrument from Guatemala.  The song, and others like it, are part of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection campaign to deterring illegal immigration to the United States.

Over the past decade or so, something disturbing has been happening in the Chinese community media in this country. The Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda bureau has been buying up radio stations and newspapers across the country and channelling the voice of Beijing into them from editorial offices in China. Increasingly, topics on which press discussion is forbidden in China have vanished also from the Chinese language media in our own country.

As ISIS make gains in Iraq and declare an Islamic caliphate, media activists embedded along the front lines and their global support networks, the media mujahedeen, valorize their achievements in HD video and Hollywood film style posters which are distributed via social media.