According to a declassified Ministry of Defence report on the power of soap operas, positive messages and storylines slipped into New Home, New Life, the British-backed Afghan incarnation of The Archers, have helped reduce landmine injuries, and persuaded Afghans to vote and to stop producing opium.

While the Chinese government perceives Americanideological influence as a potential strategic threat, the increase of US "soft power" leverage is merely an effect, and not an intentional policy, Robert Daly, Director of the Wilson Center Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, has told RIA Novosti.

Could a digitally adept nation change the rules of public engagement and become an influence far beyond their physical and financial resources? Why not? For one thing, the digital diplomacy space needs positive presences. In some ways, it has become a slightly moribund arena, with innovation at a premium. It's a digital cliché, of course, but diplomacy needs its disruptors.

Last weekend, the paradisiac island of Rhodes, Greece played host to the most recent debates on the budding ‘information war’ between Russia and the United States. The United States has traditionally invested enormous funds in perpetuating its ‘soft power’ abroad, particularly in the former territory of the USSR .

India’s economy could be a catalyst for development if the region can open up.(...) Modi’s foreign policy, like that of many of his predecessors, is greatly reliant on South Asia. India’s role in the larger world has often been constrained by turmoil in its neighborhood. 

After weeks of defying international pleas to free eight European officials they had captured in May, pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine released them unexpectedly in June following a public appeal by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill.
 

Indian diplomats are increasingly using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and country-specific social media networks to stay in touch with the world.

As the new Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu is likely to revitalize the role of public diplomacy.