The Turkish Foreign Ministry held its first teleconference Thursday.

Newsweek article on Abu Dhabi’s growing arts scene, including the company Twofour54 — “(named after the emirate’s geographical coordinates) [it's] a ‘content-creation community’ that encompasses a giant high-definition film studio, a state-of-the-art television and radio broadcasting center, a media-training academy, and a division to fund new projects. The goal is to produce high-quality indigenous films, TV shows, news, and even gaming specifically for the Arab world (move over, Mario Kart, here comes Hameed Humvee).”

James R. Gaines’ column in the New York Times, “Over 60, and Proud to Join the Digerati,” that talks about the continuing importance of storytelling as the print publishing model is upended by online media:

In the digital world, though, social networks are now bigger than most national populations, more people are consuming more news and information than ever before, and an archive of all the world’s knowledge is being built and streamed to your favorite device. This new world brings with it as much promise as pain. It’s like youth that way.

MEDIA will change as radically as technology allows, and right now the Internet is moving over the media landscape like a tsunami. But the job I learned to love when young was to tell stories, and the story has lost nothing in this transition. It is as elemental and as riveting as ever.

The panel will consider the cross-over between the forms of collective activity that mark participation in transmedia narratives and other forms of collective activities that harness entertainment media for social good.  We will also discuss the relationship between the kinds of engagement courted by entertainment franchises and the kind of engagement required for active citizenship.

The bio for moderator Jerome Gary is available under “conference information.”

You can also see bios for chairman Ben Riley and presenters Rosa Brooks and Warren Wright under “conference information.”

Fowler’s current interests include social networks, behavioral economics, evolutionary game theory, political participation, cooperation, and genopolitics (the study of the genetic basis of political behavior). His work includes studies of how social networks affect legislative success and how altruism and social identification increase political participation.

Connected, published in September 2009, was featured in Wired and named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review, makes provocative assertions about the extent to which social networks can influence you and how people you don’t even know but are your friend’s friend’s friend can affect your behavior.

Fowler’s and Christakis’s examination of how your friends and their friends can help determine whether you gain weight (and vice versa) was the subject of a New York Times Magazine cover article, “Are Your Friends Making You Fat?” last month.

Among other phenomena Fowler has documented, he has shown that the so-called “Colbert bump” is real. In a February 2008 Los Angeles Times Op-Ed that advised Hillary Clinton to appear on Stephen Colbert’s satirical show in order to boost her fundraising numbers. Fowler wrote, “Democratic candidates who appear on ‘The Report’ receive 44% more money than those who do not in the first month after their appearance.”

Colbert made note of Fowler’s “Colbert bump” analysis in this video:

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The symposium will examine the evolving role of media and entertainment in public diplomacy due to new technologies, social networks and the democratization of communications. International relations are no longer restricted to governments and the globalization of media now includes consuming, producing and sharing media with people around the world. Every citizen is a diplomat.

iDiplomacy will assess the impact and future influence of modern media and social networking technologies on public and personal diplomacy, and determine how to empower both the public and private sectors and all American citizens to build bridges to other cultures to create a healthier world.

This blog will be part of the evolving discussion on the role of entertainment and social media in public diplomacy. It will highlight the work being done in the public and private sectors, particularly with regard to some of the new modes of communicating.

We will talk to some of the experts in the field as well as entities that would not traditionally be considered players in public diplomacy. We welcome your comments and suggestions.