iDiplomacy » International Information Programs http://idiplomacy.org iDiplomacy will examine the evolving role of media and entertainment in public diplomacy due to new technologies, social networks and the democratization of communications. Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:19:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 State Department Social Media Initiatives http://idiplomacy.org/2009/11/14/state-department-social-media-initiatives/ http://idiplomacy.org/2009/11/14/state-department-social-media-initiatives/#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:14:23 +0000 Liriel http://idiplomacy.org/?p=501 William May, who works out of the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs in the office of innovative engagement, spoke about some of the social media initiatives they have undertaken to engage with the world. They include:

* Official State Department social media sites — 130 Facebook pages, 50 Twitter sites, and 15 blogs. They’re also on YouTube and Flickr.

* Co.Nx, an online chat that makes American citizens available to chat to an online global community. Some of the upcoming chats include one with a college student on”campus life in America” and another with Ambassador David M. Satterfield, senior advisor to the secretary of State and coordinator for Iraq on “U.S. policy and the Middle East.”

* For President Obama’s Cairo speech they had related SMS messages you could sign up to receive (opt-in only).

* They used a variety of methods to drum up enthusiasm for President Obama’s speech in Ghana, a country where only three percent of the people has internet access. They sent flyers to regular media so they could spread the word that Obama would be taking questions and comments and answering some of them.

They also took a podcast and sent it to the embassies in Africa. The general tone and tenor of the comments they received back was “This is really cool, Obama wants to know what we have to say, and he’s actually going to respond to it.”

An embassy in Pretoria partnered with a popular texting site, MXit, which drew 50,000 additional comments and questions. The contact was very youth-oriented but the texts they got back were more adult-oriented.

They facilitated international architectural collaboration in Second Life. (We wrote about the talk they hosted earlier in a Studio Wikitecture post.)

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