ICT and Public Diplomacy Event at Fletcher

Thanks to my colleague and friend Mary Joyce for taking notes at the ICT and Public Diplomacy panel at the Murrow 100th Anniversary event at Fletcher yesterday. By the way, during the panel, Ethan Zuckerman called Mary one of the "10 best thinkers in the digital activism space." True dat.

From the I&D blog...

Today I am at the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University to attend a panel organized by I&D research assistant (and Fletcher student) Josh Goldstein and chaired by Berkman fellow and Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman. The panel, entitled “ICT and Public Diplomacy” is part of a larger conference, the Edward R. Murrow 100th Anniversary Conference on public diplomacy. I took notes on all the panelists’ presentations but as I still need to edit the other sections, I’ll start with Ethan’s.

Ethan begins with an introduction to the Internet. There has been a fundamental shift in recent years. The ability to broadcast online, which was previously only accessible to physics professors connected to CERN, is now available to anyone. This greater access also applies to cell phones. In a recent study conducted by the London School of Economics, 79% of rural Tanzanians said they had access to a mobile phone if they needed one. (This potential access tends to realize itself at moments of political crisis.)

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