Richard Stengel, who left his job as managing editor of TIME magazine in 2013 to become Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the Obama administration, said ISIS conquering land is an "opportunity" because "it's easier to combat people holding land and trying to government it than it is to combat people who are non-state actors."

The embittered battle against ISIS is making nations rethink how to approach social media as a weapon of war. Early this month, Britain announced its plans to form a battalion of "Facebook Warriors" in effort to battle ISIS's adept skills of recruiting through the platform, and also Twitter, YouTube, and other websites.

The enlisting of digital diplomacy in Russia's national propaganda efforts has caused some diplomacy scholars and practitioners to wonder if Russia isn't ruining digital diplomacy for the rest of us.

IS has turned public executions into multifaceted tools of social control, recruitment and unconventional warfare, as well as performances of legitimacy and strength.

Formerly derided as the domain of time-wasting and self-obsession, social media has emerged as an unlikely shining light for international relations and social activism.

Formerly derided as the domain of time-wasting and self-obsession, social media has emerged as an unlikely shining light for international relations and social activism.

Twitter and Facebook are old news; Instagram is where it's at. And that matters, politically speaking.  While much of the political world and official Washington converses on Twitter and the Obama campaign in 2012 revolutionized how Facebook is used in campaigns, neither is as ascendant as Instagram.