BBC News - E-diplomacy: Foreign policy in 140 characters - 0 views
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The acknowledged leader in this field is the US State Department, which now boasts more than 150 full-time social media employees working across 25 different offices. It uses familiar sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, as well as local equivalents, such as VKontakte in Russia. Ambassadors and other State Department employees are encouraged to establish an online presence.
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"The State Department is really creating what is effectively a media empire that could soon be the digital equivalent of old school international broadcasters like the BBC," he says. "But they not only see it as part of a broadcasting strategy, they are looking at the wider potential." Social media acts like an early warning system of emerging social and political movements, he says. It is also a way of reaching online opinion formers, and a means of correcting misinformation very quickly.
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The State Department now has an internal version of Wikipedia called Diplopedia, which has more than 14,000 entries. To encourage internal networking, there is also an equivalent of Facebook called Corridor - in the look and feel, the two are strikingly similar - which has over 6,500 members.
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