1. Anti-misinformation Hub Launches In Central Europe (Barron’s)

An EU-funded hub to fight misinformation in Central Europe launched in Prague on Thursday, led by an alliance of researchers and fact-checking journalists. The project, coordinated by Charles University, also aims to boost public media literacy in the region and develop artificial intelligence tools to detect misinformation.

2. JOURNAL: Place Branding and Public Diplomacy – Special Issue on Sports Diplomacy (editor James Pamment)

Sports diplomacy has, over the past few years, developed into a vibrant field of inquiry relevant to both practitioners and scholars. Sitting at the intersection of many fields, it raises fundamental questions of politics, diplomacy, and statecraft.

3. Meta Is Absolutely Not Threatening to Leave Europe (Meta)

There has been reporting in the press that we are “threatening” to leave Europe because of the uncertainty over EU-US data transfers mechanisms. This is not true.

4. Tweeting is Leading: How Senators Communicate and Represent in the Age of Twitter (Annelise Russell)

Every U.S. Senator is on Twitter and every U.S. Senator pursues rhetorical agendas. Senators pursue rhetorical agendas as policy wonks, constituent servants, or partisan warriors. This is the central thesis of Annelise Russell’s new book Tweeting is Leading.

5. Responding to the COVID-19 ‘infodemic’: National countermeasures against information influence in Europe (Publication, The Hague Program for Cyber Security)

This collection, edited by Sophie Vériter, Monica Kaminska, Dennis Broeders, and Joachim Koops, includes six papers exploring and investigating European responses to COVID-related disinformation, specifically the responses of France, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, Serbia, and Hungary.

6. Nation Branding, Public Diplomacy and the Dystopian Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games (USC Center for Public Diplomacy)

The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games should be viewed and analyzed not only through the lenses of the pandemic but through China’s overall nation branding and public diplomacy strategy, including establishing its dominance by President Xi Jinping’s vision of becoming the biggest domestic sports economy in the world by 2025.

7. Why should diplomatic academies shift to online learning? (Diplo)

The pandemic has given a major boost to distance learning. It is now the method of choice for diplomatic systems, thanks to technology, convenience, and practicality.

8. What on Earth is Happening in Ukraine? (Ilan Manor Blog)

The day began, as always, with a barrage of memes mocking a meeting between Russian President Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The news was not all bad. Though the two gentlemen seemed distanced, Lavrov emphasized that there may still be a diplomatic solution that will avoid an invasion of Ukraine.

9. The Fight for Digital Sovereignty: What It Is, and Why It Matters, Especially for the EU (Luciano Floridi; Oxford Internet Institute)

Drawing on five case studies, the paper argues that digital sovereignty affects everyone, whether digital users or not, and makes the case for a hybrid system of control which has the potential to offer full democratic legitimacy as well as innovative flexibility.

10. EVENT: Disinformation Campaigns in Ukraine: A Hybrid War Challenge (DCN Global)

Feb 23, 2022, 06:00 PM, Kiev time (GMT+2).

Disinformation campaigns have been a major tool applied consistently in previous years as crises intensify. Though it remains a constant threat that continues to be exploited and used. Digital Communication Network Global is organizing an online discussion on “Russian Disinformation Campaigns in Ukraine: A Hybrid War Challenge” with distinguished speakers and experts from DFRLab, Bellingcat, and Mythos Labs.

11. Digital Artifacts Don’t Tell the Full Story (Lauren Hug Blog)

People are more than the fragments we find online. Before social media, we couldn’t make assumptions about people based on an online archive of whatever experiences they chose to document on social networks and whatever other people posted about them. Digital grace restores that privacy to and mystery about people – remembering that anything we encounter online requires context to make true sense of it.