DiploNews – Issue 169 – 18 October 2010
Creative Support on Illustrating Climate Change
DiploFoundation always tries to make complex issues tangible through humorous and enlightening cartoons. The Climate Change Building is one such example. We are currently preparing our calendar for next year in which we will be illustrating climate change diplomacy, and Diplo offers you two ways to contribute. First, we have developed some cartoons that are still in need of text and we invite you to contribute texts. Second, we invite you to come up with ideas for new cartoons that illustrate climate change and its links to diplomacy, development, and technology. The best contributions will receive books published by DiploFoundation (listed at Diplo’s book webpage) as prizes. The current illustrations that still need some text can be found online. We are looking forward to your creative suggestions on a hot topic. Please submit ideas, comments, and suggestions to climate@diplomacy.edu by 31 October 2010.
Dinosaurs and Social Media Policy
The diplomatic and foreign service sector often finds itself playing catch-up with the early adopters of social media. Although new social media tools like Facebook and Twitter may, on the surface, seem irrelevant to diplomacy, today it is crucial to engage with people in the places where they talk to each other, which increasingly means by social media. In an interview available on Diplo’s E-Diplomacy website, Michael Calcott, Director General of the Canadian Foreign Services Institute, talks about his institute’s early thinking on the tricky issue of how to develop policy for a medium whose influence comes primarily from its immediacy, informality, openness, and honesty. He also describes the institute’s response to the challenge raised by those, often in senior positions, who find it difficult to engage with the medium or recognise its transformative nature. The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Digital Diplomacy website provides an interesting example of another government’s approach to the interface between social media and diplomacy.
Online Study for the New Year
Start planning now to make the most of 2011! You are invited to apply for the following courses beginning the week of 21 February 2011:
- Diplomatic Theory and Practice
- Public Diplomacy
- NEW! Multilateral Diplomacy II: Current Issues in the United Nations
These courses are available as University of Malta Accredited Courses (application deadline 20 December 2010) and as Diplo Certificate Courses (application deadline 17 January 2011). For further information or to apply, click on the titles of the courses above, or visit our courses website.
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