Over the past year, much has been written about Russian digital diplomacy. While some have argued that Russia uses social media for propaganda, analysis has shown that the Russian MFA is one of the most active and dominant foreign ministries on twitter. Moreover, the Russian MFA is one of the most central ministries among the online diplomatic milieu.
This past weekend Ireland marked the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. I was lucky that I was able to travel to Dublin for the weekend.
I stayed with a friend in Grand Canal near Boland’s Mill one of the sites of the rising.
“What do you think Brits in Berlin think about the prospect of Brexit?” Matt Hanleyasked me. So we set about trying to find out – by putting on an event on 24th February entitled #BERBritsBrexit (details of the event here, Facebook event page here, Twitter search for the tag here). We booked a room for 20 people in the Aufsturz pub on Oranienburger Strasse, put it out on Facebook, and… then things ended up taking on a life of their own! We needed Aufsturz’s bigger room, and in the end there were about 120 people present at various points in the evening! Photos of the evening can be found here, the recording of the live stream here, and Tom Barfield’s write up for The Local here. There is also now a mailing list to sign up for info about future events – signup form at the top of the page here. Big thanks to Matt Hanley for helping out with the organisation, to Victoria Elles for moderating, and to Philip Oltermann and Brian Melican for their speeches.
It is at once an informal encampment of makeshift shelters; a town under construction, with shops, restaurants and schools; and, a space subject to institutional violence, at risk of imminent destruction.
The fracturing demands a rethink of the terms usually employed for describing migration movements, such as ‘route’ and ‘border crossing.’ Introduction to a rethink.
Fabio Bucciarelli has spent years documenting the plight of the thousands fleeing wars in Syria, Libya and Afghanistan and beyond. His images focus on the refugees’ humanity, and the dream that sustains them throughout their difficult journeys. An exhibition of his work, The Dream, is on display at the Bronx Documentary Center in New York from 10 to 27 March
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