Exploring Digital Diplomacy

Each week, I publish a list of interesting articles, essays and reports that may be of interest to the digital diplomacy community. This week I have curated a list of the most important digital news of 2021. Happy Holidays! Leveraging digital technology during the pandemic (Brookings)The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online (The New York Times)Tokyo 2020: TikTok becomes the unofficial behind-the-scenes Olympic channel (BBC News)Facebook Will Not Fix Itself (Time Magazine)Danish White Paper: Towards a better social contract with big tech (Danish MFA)AUKUS essentially a ‘defence industry and technology information sharing arrangement’ (Sky News)Hey, Facebook, I Made a Metaverse 27 Years Ago (The Atlantic)AI fake-face generators can be rewound to reveal the real faces they trained on (MIT Technology Review)‘Conditioning an entire society’: the rise of biometric data technology (The Guardian)Facebook is shutting down its facial recognition software (CNN) Some ..

Each week, I publish a list of interesting articles, essays and reports that may be of interest to the digital diplomacy community. This week- The 20 Most Promising Israeli Startups to Follow in 2021 (Haaretz Newspaper)WSJ’s deep dive into eating disorder on TikTok explains a sudden policy change (The Verge)What is the metaverse? (BBC News)Could Supernova be an ‘ethical alternative’ to the social media giants? (TechCrunch)How to save our social media by treating it like a city (MIT Technology Review)Facebook Warns 50,000 Users Were Targeted By Spy-For-Hire Companies (Forbes)The year Reddit changed Wall Street forever (CNN News)LGBTQ people in need of stand-in parents at weddings find ‘family’ in Facebook group (USA Today)What Google’s trending searches say about America in 2021 (Vox) Some light reading- Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Each week, I publish a list of interesting articles, essays and reports that may be of interest to the digital diplomacy community. This week – Two-thirds of Ultra-Orthodox Israelis are online, COVID driving them to tech training (Times of Israel)How Russia tries to censor Western social media (BBC News)The worst technology of 2021 (MIT Technology Review)India antitrust watchdog orders investigation into Apple’s business practices (TechCrunch)A program for cheaper internet for low-income Americans launches today (The Verge)How “Digital Twins” Are Transforming Manufacturing (Time Magazine)2022 will be the biggest year for the metaverse so far (CNBC)5 predictions for bitcoin, NFTs and the future of money (Cnet)Why our values should drive our technology choices (NATO Review) Some light reading- The Hollow Crown, by Dan Jones

The universe, as we now know, began with a bang. A big bang to be precise. A cataclysmic and cosmic explosion that at once gave birth to more than 120 billion galaxies. Digital diplomacy also began with a bang, or a momentous event that instigated a global change in the practice of diplomacy. This event, according to many scholars, was Sweden’s 2008 decision to launch a digital Embassy on the virtual world of Second Life. While it is true that the telegraph, fax and email all predate Sweden’s digital Embassy, and while all these technologies are digital, none of them ushered the current age of digital diplomacy. In retrospect, Sweden’s digital Embassy foretold how this digital age would evolve. First, Sweden never intended for its digital Embassy to replace its physical posts. Rather, the Embassy on Second Life would be used to augment Sweden’s diplomatic efforts by creating the world’s first, global Embassy accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Second, Sweden’s Embassy us..

To understand digital diplomacy, one must first understand the digital society. The reason being that diplomacy is a social institution and diplomats are social beings. Processes that affect society as a whole affect diplomats and it is through diplomats that such processes permeate into MFAs giving rise to new norms, values and working routines. Sociologists have argued that the digital society can be characterised by three main features. First, it is a society that exists in real-time. Indeed, people no longer wait for the morning’s newspaper or the evening’s newscast to learn about world events. Through social media and news sites people learn about world events as they unfold. Moreover, digital technologies render time meaningless as information and capital circle the globe within seconds while transatlantic Zoom meetings enable participants all over the world to interact in real-time. Second, the digital society is one that transforms openness and transparency into a virtue. Memb..