Intermap

by Craig Hayden

Quick take on the July 29 New York Times article about the twitterific musings of the State Department’s senior technology advisors, Alec Ross and Jared Cohen.

The article “Twitter Musings in Syria Elicit Groans in Washington” addresses the discomfort caused by Ross and Cohen’s candid musings about their experience while traveling Syria for the State Department. The two were “riffing about how visitors can buy an American-style blended iced coffee at a university near Damascus and how one of them had challenged a Syrian communications minister to a cake-eating contest.”

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable use of Twitter to me. continue reading…

by Craig Hayden

I had the good fortune to attend a discussion last week between Alec Ross, the Senior Advisor for Innovation in the office of Secretary of State Clinton and Marc Lynch, professor of political science at George Washington University and a featured blogger on Foreign Policy.com. The focus of the discussion was primarily about the use of media technology for outreach and public diplomacy in the Arab world. Each gave a short presentation that talked about the need for embracing technology, and for sustaining realistic attitudes towards what communication technology can accomplish for the US State Department. For this blog post, I’ll summarize a few of the interesting points they raised:
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