The USC Center on Public Diplomacy is proud to announce that Melanie Ciolek, MPD '11, is the winner of the 2010 CPD Prize for Best Student Paper in Public Diplomacy. Her paper, entitled "Understanding Social Media’s Contribution to Public Diplomacy" is an examination of the U.S. State Department's use of Facebook to increase the visibility and impact of President Obama's planned visit to Indonesia.
Hear the words “Foreign and Commonwealth Office” and you might think of fusty old English ambassadors sat behind oaken desks reading leather-bound books. It turns out they’re more likely to be tweeting a link to their latest Flickr photo set these days.
For the last two weeks, North Korean propaganda has flooded the Internet–courtesy of the Internet, interestingly enough, and not North Korea. A North Korea government official tells Forbes that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is not using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube...
The security obsessed Israeli military is confronting a new adversary - trying to control what its own soldiers post to the Internet. Facebook, along with YouTube and other popular sites, is turning into a formidable nuisance for the army, as young recruits in this tech-crazy country post embarrassing and potentially sensitive information online, circumventing tight military controls.
Over the past few years technology has played an increasingly important role in protest movements around the world, from Myanmar (Burma) to Tibet to Iran and now to Kashmir, the largely Muslim state at the heart of the dispute between India and Pakistan.
Government agencies are increasingly using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to engage the public, but they will also need to establish a clear, well-defined social media strategy to prevent potential backlash, according to industry watchers.
...United Arab Emirates ambassador to the U.S., Yousef Al Otaiba, was making an official visit when he received a phone call from a friend asking what he was doing in Texas. “How do you know I’m here?” the ambassador responded. It had been on Facebook, said Bader Bin Saeed, media director for U.A.E.’s embassy in Washington.
Culture and creativity are central to life in the 21st century. The global stakes have never been higher; never before have we been surrounded by so much information or so much art - high and popular, visual and aural, original and reproduced, amusing and challenging, bland and exciting.