This chapter analyzes the digital interventions of various ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) in five broad areas which MFAs have prioritized during the pandemic: crisis management, international collaboration, foreign policy continuity, countering disinformation, and digital innovation. The pandemic has posed new questions for diplomats in each of these areas. After outlining broader themes of research in global trends of diplomatic adaptation during COVID-19, each of the areas above will be discussed in turn, drawing on illustrative examples and summarizing key lessons. This chapter will conclude with recommendations for the collective reform of diplomacy in the post-pandemic period.
2. Is Google’s 20-year dominance of search in peril? (The Economist)
ChatGPT-like tools could disrupt a lucrative business
3. Using emotions in migration policy communication (Publication by Dr. James Dennison)
how can migration communication help governments uphold legal- and rights-based migration policy frameworks against forces that would undermine them and contribute to maximising the potential benefits and the potential costs of migration to both origin and host country populations? Strategic communication can have multiple functions, to inform, persuade, and to affect behaviour. Perhaps the most common advice given on all three types of communication – in migration and otherwise – is the deceptively complex instruction to “use emotions, not facts.”
On Wednesday, March 1st, several contributors to the Forum will partake in a special Webinar to discuss key questions for public diplomacy and nation branding scholarship, which have been brought into relief by the War. Presenters will reflect on nations’ reputational security, the need to reconceptualize soft power, the use of transmedia storytelling and memes in war, and the relevance of emotions and trauma for public diplomacy.
5. Don’t stop me now: the growing disinformation threat against climate change (EU Disinfo Lab)
At EU DisinfoLab, we have compiled some of these disinformative climate-related websites and the discourses used by these malicious actors to deny the climate crisis.
6. The touchy-feely world of the metaverse and future gadgets (The Economist)
Soon, game players will able to pick things up—and feel the bullets when they are hit.
7. 1st EEAS Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Threats (EEAS)
This first edition of the EEAS report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) threats is informed by the work of the European External Action Service’s (EEAS) Stratcom division in 2022. Based on a first sample of specific FIMI cases, it outlines how building on shared taxonomies and standards can fuel our collective understanding of the threat and help inform appropriate countermeasures in the short to the long term.
8. 2022 Report on EEAS Activities to Counter FIMI (EEAS)
The EEAS has a specific team working on the challenge of Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, including disinformation. Following the Activity Report for 2021, the Strategic Communication, Task Forces and Information Analysis Division (SG.STRAT.2) has just published a report on its 2022 activities to counter FIMI. The work during the last year has considerably been shaped by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 2022. Since the creation of the East Stratcom Task Force in 2015, followed by the creation of the Western Balkans Task Force and the Task Force South, the Strategic Communications Division has further expanded geographically and technically. The Division now has, in addition to the three Task Forces, a dedicated Data Analysis Team as well as a team responsible for Policy, Strategy and Global Priority Issues, which also includes expertise and capacity on information manipulation and interference activities by actors related to the Chinese authorities.
9. Avoiding the success trap: Toward policy for open-source software as infrastructure (Report by )
This report compares OSS to three infrastructure systems—water management systems, capital markets, and networks of roads and bridges—and draws on existing policy vehicles from each to suggest policy that supports the sustainability and security of OSS as a communally beneficial resource.
This event, dedicated to the year of the overwhelming battle for Ukraine’s independence, will focus on the interim results of the information war dimension. Participants, together with experts in the field of disinformation, will discuss the results of the information war for Ukraine and Russia and the main lessons for this year. In addition, the participants, together with European and American experts and Ukrainian specialists, will analyze the main challenges for Ukraine in the information arena for the next stage of the war and find the best options to address these challenges in order to effectively sustain and expand further international support.
11. Can we make the internet less power-thirsty? (BBC)
So much of what we do every day involves a data centre. Shopping online, streaming TV shows, reading this story – they all need data to be stored and readily available.
12. Dangers of quantum computing: from new-style warfare to breaking encryption (Cybernews)
Of all the emerging technologies, quantum computing is the one that excites, frustrates, and makes techies nervous in equal measure. In 2019, Google’s quantum computer completed a calculation in under four minutes. It’s a task that would have taken the world’s most powerful computer 10,000 years to achieve, making it around 158 million times faster than the fastest supercomputer.
13. India’s Government Wants Total Control of the Internet (Wired)
The Modi administration keeps giving itself new powers, and Big Tech keeps giving in.
14. Cyber War, From the Bottom Up (Diplomatic Courier)
The story of cyber warfare is typically West-centric. This ignores both the surprising roots of cyber war and the bottom-up, percolating nature of cyber threats, writes Joshua Huminski in his review of Matt Potter’s latest book, “We Are All Targets.”