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Virtual Diplomacy
Campus Report ^ | June 1, 2009 | Bethany Stotts

Posted on 06/01/2009 11:51:23 AM PDT by bs9021

Virtual Diplomacy

by: Bethany Stotts, June 01, 2009

All those who believe social networking technologies are superficial and undermine social communication move over, because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton believes that “virtual diplomacy” via Facebook and Twitter is the way to empower America’s “citizen activists.”

Clinton announced at New York University’s May 13 commencement that the U.S. State Department would be forming a Virtual Student Foreign Service Initiative (VSFSI). “Working from college and university campuses American students will partner with our embassies abroad to conduct digital diplomacy that reflects the realities of the networked world and you can learn more about this initiative on the State Department website,” she said.

Nearly two weeks after the initiative’s launch, however, the State Department website limits its information about the VSFSI to the length of about six Tweets or a Wiki stub and refers viewers to its Facebook page. The entry utilizes substantially similar phrases as those found in Clinton’s NYU speech.

Also the commencement speaker at Columbia University’s Barnard College, Clinton again pointed to internet tools as a “democratizing” influence worldwide and encouraged students to go on Facebook or Twitter, the Greenbelt Movement or Kiva. “Now in another time, the story of [Nasoon Ali’s] individual courage and her equally brave lawyer would not have been covered in the news even in her own country but now it is beamed worldwide by satellites, shared on blogs, posted on Twitter, celebrated in gatherings,” said Clinton. Ali, a Yemeni girl, was married to a thirty-year old man at the age of nine and successfully sued for annulment when she was ten years old....

(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...


TOPICS: Computers/Internet; Education; Government; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: columbia; hillaryclinton; twitter; web20

1 posted on 06/01/2009 11:51:23 AM PDT by bs9021
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To: bs9021

New way to start a war or to fight a war!!


2 posted on 06/01/2009 11:52:46 AM PDT by handy old one (It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims. Aristotlme)
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To: bs9021

what is “digital diplomacy”?


3 posted on 06/01/2009 11:54:42 AM PDT by rahbert
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To: rahbert

We throw 1 and 0 at each other until the other one surrender because they are covered up in numbers.


4 posted on 06/01/2009 11:58:59 AM PDT by handy old one (It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims. Aristotlme)
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To: rahbert

Middle finger.


5 posted on 06/01/2009 12:05:19 PM PDT by kabar
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To: kabar; bs9021
"What is Digital Diplomacy?"

"Middle finger."

Heh. Good one.

6 posted on 06/01/2009 12:35:56 PM PDT by Dinah Lord (fighting the Islamofascist Jihad - one keystroke at a time...)
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