In an age of 24/7 information, where there’s pressure to stand out, and a general expectation that we should react to news in real time, we need to say something as quickly and emphatically as possible – so we say it with gifs. In a medium where words might be limited, the emotional impact of gifs should be similarly direct: “They’re lingua franca,” says Dr Sarah Thornton, a San Francisco-based sociologist of culture, “They’re not determined by linguistic boundaries, and they are so simple that a child can understand them.”

The U.S. Department of State will explore the effects of mobile technology and their impact on diplomacy at Tech@State: Mobile Diplomacy on Friday, October 3, 2014. The event is designed to stimulate conversations between Department of State personnel and a wider community about ways mobile technologies can transform the work of diplomacy and development.