Digital Age Diplomacy: Time to Text

The advent of the fax, internet, email, video or telephone conferencing and other forms of information technology has transformed the means of diplomacy. Instructions to an embassy can be cleared within a foreign ministry and through other government departments in minutes. The globalisation of news may mean that a crisis manager in a capital will know about a disaster in a foreign country while the embassy is sleeping. The diplomat’s job is increasingly not to compete with CNN or Sky or BBC World, but to add value with analysis, with physical presence among the victims of a disaster and by making contact with the local authorities in the case, for instance, of a kidnapping.