Top 10 moments in digital diplomacy in 2016
What would you include in this list?
Here are my picks for top moments in digital diplomacy in 2016, in no particular order:
1.The United Nations launches on Medium on Human Rights Day, with a post bylined by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein and a publication titled We The Peoples.
2. Pope Francis joins Instagram. “Instagram will help recount the papacy through images, to enable all those who wish to accompany and know more about Pope Francis’ pontificate to encounter his gestures of tenderness and mercy,” the Vatican said in a statement.
3. The White House prepares for the first-ever digital transition to hand over several social media accounts to the new administration in January.
4. The first-ever official Olympic refugee team goes viral on social media during Rio 2016.
5.On Facebook, Norwegian prime minister Erna Soldberg shares the iconic 1972 photo of a naked, screaming 9-year-old girl after a napalm attack in Vietnam — a Pulitzer Prize-winning image by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut. Facebook first removes, then reinstates it.
6. September 2016 marked the anniversary of Aylan Kurdi’s tragic death. Last year, a photo by Turkish photographer Nilüfer Demir of the 3-year-old Syrian refugee, whose lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach a year ago, became the symbol of the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean sea. Since then, however, things have only got worse for children in Syria. A few weeks before the tragic anniversary, an image by photojournalist Mahmoud Raslan of 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh, bloodied and shocked after he was pulled from the rubble after airstrikes in Aleppo, jolts once again our collective conscience.
7.Even before touching down in Cuba for his historic visit, president Barack Obama goes viral with a Reuters photo of Air Force One landing in Havana.
8.From Barack Obama and Ban Ki-moon to Theresa May and Enrique Peña Nieto, many world leaders mention the power of social media and smartphones at the 71st UN General Assembly in New York.
9.Diplomacy debuts on Netflix with the premiere of I Am the Ambassador, a documentary that follows Rufus Gifford in his daily life as the US Ambassador to Denmark.
10. And finally — yes — Brexit, one of the most talked about topics on social media in 2016.
What would you add to this list?
For digital diplomacy moments on Twitter, check out my top 10 picks here:
