DiploNews – Issue 260 – 15 September 2014

2015 Master in Contemporary Diplomacy

The application deadline is approaching quickly for the 2015 Master in Contemporary Diplomacy, and the Master in Contemporary Diplomacy with an Internet Governance Specialisation. These unique postgraduate programmes, offered in cooperation with the University of Malta, include a 10-day residential workshop in Malta followed by 16–20 months of online learning. Please visit the Master in Contemporary Diplomacy webpage to read more and to apply. The programme starts on 2 February 2015. The deadline to apply for international applicants is 1 October 2014 and for Maltese applicants it is 15 November 2014.
 

Education Diplomacy Day in Geneva

On 7 October, the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) and DiploFoundation will host an Education Diplomacy Day in Geneva, bringing together educators, diplomats, international and development organisation staff members, and others to discuss the emerging concept of education diplomacy. Education diplomacy refers to the cross-disciplinary, transnational sharing of theories, ideas, and concepts that advance education. It uses the skills of diplomacy to guide educators toward a deeper level of understanding, engagement, and practice in order to advance sustainable change across education systems. Read more about the event, register online, and join us at Diplo’s office in the WMO Building, 7 bis, Avenue de la Paix, Geneva.
 

Asia-Europe Public Diplomacy Training Initiative

Diplomats from ASEM countries are encouraged to apply for the second online course Listening and Engaging: Public Diplomacy in Asia-Europe Relations. An invitaiton for nominations has been sent to all Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) ministries of foreign affairs. Read more about how to apply on the webpage for the Asia-Europe Public Diplomacy Training Initiative.
 

Webinar on 16 September: How to overcome IG policy silos on global and national levels

Join us on our preparatory journey towards the Geneva Internet Conference (18‒19 November). The first in our series of discussions will on Tuesday, 16th September at 11:00 GMT:  How to overcome IG policy silos on national and global levels. Policymakers across different sectors face similar issues, yet follow or adopt very different perspectives. Last week, the UN Human Rights Council discussed online privacy. It remains to be seen how many governments and other actors around the table address online privacy from economic (WTO), standardisation (IETF, ISO, and ITU), and security perspectives. Ultimately, the same issue ‒ online privacy ‒ is addressed from different angles. The same applies to other IG issues: cybersecurity, e-commerce, intellectual property to name a few. What can be done to achieve coordination among different actors at national and international level? How can we avoid turf battles and foster constructive dialogue? Registration is necessary.
 

Diplo and the GIP at the 9th Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul

The 9th annual Internet Governance Forum was held in Istanbul, Turkey, on 2-5 September, 2014. Thousands of stakeholders discussed Internet issues ranging from human rights to spam, from net neutrality to child online protection. Diplo and the Geneva Internet Platform participated actively with a packed programme of events and workshops. The recordings and transcripts of Diplo's sessions are available here. Throughout the IGF, the team also reported daily from the ground on the proceedings taking place every day. Read the digests: Days 0 and 1; Day 2; Day 3; Day 4.
 

6th edition of An Introduction to Internet Governance launched

The 6th edition of the book An Introduction to Internet Governance, by Dr Jovan Kurbalija, was launched at the 9th Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul. The launch also marked 10 years of courses as part of the Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme (IGCBP), as well as 10 translated editions of this popular IG book. Read more about the launch and follow the links to download the book.
 

Maps, spaces, and phylogenetic trees: preliminary report

The four days of the 9th Internet Governance Forum coincided with interesting developments in Diplo's methodological approach to IG. The IGF provided us with the opportunity to study the statistical properties of the emerging language of Internet diplomacy as it unfolded before us in numerous workshops and sessions. Our experiments and exercises were conducted in the scope of the development of Diplo Text-Analytics Framework (DTAF). This analytical framework utilises text-mining technology  to foster the interpretation of immense amounts of textual input to global multistakeholder governance processes. As the experience of NETmundial witnesses, the ability to develop an understanding of a large number of technical and non-technical concepts ‒ some of them introduced in the course of debate ‒ map the relations between them, and coordinate the statements of numerous stakeholders in an efficient way, may soon prove to be a capacity of indispensable value in the management of complex governance processes. The preliminary report is available here.