Digital Warfare Tops List of Public Diplomacy Developments in 2014
Helle Dale /
The explosion in digital warfare tops the list of public diplomacy developments around the world in 2014, as identified by the University of Southern California’s Center for Public Diplomacy (CPD). Information operations by non-state and state actors alike have become a major factor in the 21st century. The radical Islamist terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was just the most recent example of the dead-serious battle over freedom of expression.
“Digital communication technologies were an increasingly potent weapon in global conflicts this year,” writes the CPD. “Supporters of both Israel and Hamas took to social media to galvanize their virtual troops, a Twitter-based hashtag battle arose between the U.S. and Russia after recent events in Ukraine, and ISIS employed social media for recruiting purposes while the U.S. waged social media campaigns against them.”
Beyond digital warfare, the list includes a wide range of items: Pope Francis’s headline-grabbing speeches and trips; Cuba’s Ebola initiative and rapprochement with the U.S.; China’s new Silk Road Diplomacy expanding ties with its neighbors; the FIFA World Cup and the Sochi Winter Olympics; the U.S.–Africa Summit; the revival of the Russian media machine; the Malaysian government’s mishandling of its airline disasters; the growing popularity of Germany’s soft power appeal; and India’s public diplomacy advances under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Particularly ISIS’s use of social media as a recruiting tool and their ability to project terror through propaganda videos, threats, and hacks of social media accounts, even those of the U.S. military, have grown into a major challenge. From a policy point of view, after years of neglect by U.S. lawmakers and Administrations, public diplomacy, strategic communication, international broadcasting, and related foreign policy tools must be revitalized.