ISLAMABAD – Digital Media Wing, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in collaboration with Strategic Communications Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs organised a Facebook workshop for Pakistan’s diplomats to understand social media diplomacy & grasp modern communication craft.
Since, diplomacy has entered into the digital age & brought rapid changes in all facets of state craft, it is a need of the hour to equip our diplomats and missions with the modern developments & make them learn the latest ways to further digital media diplomacy.
Addressing 150 Pakistani diplomats from over 90 countries, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi thanked missions which followed through on his vision of online presence with unified visual footprint & adopting Vision FO with full enthusiasm. He also expressed his gratification on seeing his missions engaging with the tools of modern digital diplomacy.
“Having developed your social media handles in line with my vision of standardization and uniformity, I would like to see and encourage you all to actively engage with your social media handles and post updates on your missions’ activities regularly,” the FM advised.
“Social media is an excellent medium for diplomats to communicate effectively with their target audience and disseminate key messages pertaining to the developments taking place for the country. Furthermore, it also helps in real-time engagement and assess the overall sentiment. We at Facebook are committed to assisting diplomats in gaining a better understanding of how to utilize our family of apps and building a more wholesome online presence, and today’s workshop is another effort from our end to make this possible.” stated Roy Tan Politics & Government Outreach Manager, Asia-Pacific, Facebook, who trains government departments across the APAC region.
The Foreign Minister also said he’ll shortly be launching a digital media dashboard to monitor social media handles of missions through latest AI tools.
Imran Ghazali, GM DMW said that in the 21st century, the Digital Media assets are strategically important for Pakistan and in-line with the vision of the Prime Minister, the government is working to build a strong and robust presence online.
DMW is working in close coordination with SCD, at MOFA to strengthen the digital presence of Pakistani missions abroad. Ghazali further said this workshop is the first one of the series of trainings that DMW will organize in collaboration with SCD, that will help us show the true image of Pakistan globally and do effective digital diplomacy.
The DMW has worked with the social media platforms for the verification over 120 twitter accounts and over 100 Facebook & Instagram pages recently, which is part of the strategy to organize the digital assets of Government of Pakistan.
