AI systems could provide assistance to diplomats and decision–makers in times of crisis by helping them make sense of what is happening (descriptive analytics), chart possible trends or patterns of evolution of the crisis (predictive analytics) and assess the validity of the response strategies (prescriptive analytics).
2. YouTube Researcher Program (YouTube)
Eligible researchers from diverse disciplines can apply to use YouTube data to study a variety of topics. We’re starting this program by offering participants the following: 1. Scaled access to YouTube’s public data corpus with as much quota as required for their research. 2. Opportunity to derive insights from global YouTube data. 3. Support and technical guidance from YouTube.
3. Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War (Microsoft intelligence report)
The lessons from Ukraine call for a coordinated and comprehensive strategy to strengthen defenses against the full range of cyber destructive, espionage,
and influence operations.
4. This is Russia: Satire and Attribution in the Russia Ukraine War (Ilan Manor Blog)
On Thursday, July 28th, a video supposedly touting the benefits of moving to Russia began to gain traction on Telegram. Titled “This is Russia”, the video identifies the many benefits of moving to Russia at this moment in time. This video, which was soon shared on Twitter by journalists and academics, is representative of two digital facets that characterize the Russia-Ukraine War: the problem of attribution and the growing use of sarcasm and humor online.
5. Putin’s propaganda machine hammers EU while Brussels sleeps (Politico)
Russian foreign minister tours Africa, blaming Europe for the food crisis.
The Council invites all relevant parties to ensure that digital diplomacy becomes a core component and an integral part of the EU external action, and is closely coordinated with other EU external policies on cyber and countering hybrid threats, including foreign information manipulation and interference.
7. Africa and the future of digital diplomacy (Brookings)
As a supplement to traditional diplomacy, African countries need to embrace the full potential of digital diplomacy in order to advance their foreign policy goals, extend international reach, and influence foreign audiences in the cyberspace.
This paper focuses on some of the key forms of digital repression in the Middle East and North Africa, and their implications for deepening Israeli-Gulf links and Chinese digital diplomacy. It analyses the main ways in which Europeans are currently responding to these trends – including through regulation and diplomacy – and makes recommendations for how they should address the challenges posed by spyware, artificial intelligence, and the protection of civil society.
9. The future of public service broadcasting (IPPR)
Marking 100 years of the BBC, this edition of Progressive Review focuses on the future of public service broadcasting in the rapidly changing media landscape. While some may argue that traditional broadcasters are anachronistic, they have also risen to recent challenges, from the pandemic to the unmatched coverage of the invasion of Ukraine. In a world where fears about media freedom and disinformation are rising, we ask what it means to be a public service broadcaster in the 21st century.
Using nationwide public opinion surveys in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, open-source online forum ethnographic research, and postcolonial epistemological predispositions, the authors suggest that although other historical instantiations exist, the most prominent contemporary example of Afrancaux News can be seen in the fake news stories related to the French counterterrorism presence in the Sahel.