Israel seems to be backing off an effort to appoint settler-advocate Dani Dayan as ambassador to Brazil. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly announced that he was naming Dayan—who has “devoted” much of his life to “expanding the Jewish presence in…disputed historic places across the West Bank”—in a Tweet in early August. 

On Friday, State Department officials announced that they would revamp their efforts to counter ISIS messaging online — among other ways, by opening a new “Global Engagement Center.” That same day, the President and various high-ranking members of the national security establishment met with representatives from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other Internet powerhouses to discuss how the United States can fight ISIS messaging via social media.

The Obama administration announced a major revamp on Friday of its campaign to counter Isis propaganda amid mounting public anxiety about the group’s ability to encourage attacks within the US.The White House said that it was setting up a new counter-terrorism task force that will develop policies to prevent the radicalisation of potential terrorists. ​

Somalia’s Islamist militant group al-Shabaab has used a clip of Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump in its latest recruitment film. The group released a recruitment film in the form of a documentary about racial injustice in the United States featuring Trump’s recent call to ban all Muslims from the country.

A private, low-profile ‘public diplomacy’ outfit is setting out to train ‘Secret Hasbara Agents.’ But don’t worry, it’s not propaganda. A private Israeli hasbara – or “public diplomacy” – organization on Wednesday put out one of the weirdest responses yet to the incitement campaign by far-right group Im Tirzu of two weeks ago.

It is this particular feature of RTs, the capacity to stimulate engagement, that recommends it as an appealing metric for assessing the impact of digital diplomacy. The more RTs, the broader the MFA’s engagement with its target audiences and hence the more effective the digital strategy.