Links we liked

First, visions from a pre-eDiplomacy era from the BBC, diplomats and their stories – an introduction to an upcoming radio programme:  ‘”The Turkmen Horses have arrived in Moscow.” It was with these words in an October 1993 despatch that Laura Brady announced the completion of one of the strangest assignments ever taken on by a British diplomat.’  (picture also from the BBC site)

During our Public Diplomacy workshop last week in Pretoria, with the Directorate of International Relations and Cooperation, we learnt about some of the news sites which people use to stay abreast of opinion and comment in the dynamic and open South African media space, including. The Daily Maverick and politicsweb.

Internet: from digital diplomacy to cyber warfare. On the Voice of Russia, “Gennady Yevstafiev, Retired Lieutenant General of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, talks on the evolution of the Internet from a social networking platform to an international cyber-battlefield”

And when even the Economist has noticed the rise and rise of eDiplomacy (in a rather lofty way, dismissing Hilary Clinton’s ’21st Century Statecraft’ as pretentious) stories continue to surface of how MFAs are differently and creatively using digital media, as in for example, Transnistria’s Model of Facebook Diplomacy. And in yet another interview,  Alex Ross from the State Department, during a more traditional diplomatic tour of Kiev with the US Ambassador to Ukraine, offered a refreshingly balanced view of the role and impact of social media (and dealt perhaps a little too shortly with the constant questions that arise about the the State Department’s heavy use of US based Social Media platforms in its eDiplomacy)