This workshop explored how real-time information access and open-source global communications affect international news reporting and policy decisionmaking. Some questions addressed included:

• How can decisionmakers and practitioners separate valuable information from all the "white noise?"
• How can policymakers, diplomats, NGOs, and diverse media maintain their credibility with a public that has access to multiple-source global information flows?
• Does decisionmaking and persuasion increasingly depend on information intermediaries?

The mission of the Virtual Diplomacy Initiative is to explore the role of new information and communication technologies in the conduct of international relations, particularly how they affect international conflict management and resolution. The Institute's educational objective is to extract lessons and insights for future training of international affairs specialists, whether in government, international organizations, or the private sector.

This event was webcast at 9AM ESP on March 12. The archives are no longer available online.

Speakers

• Peter Ballantyne
  OneWorld Europe
  Mr. Ballantyne has been associated with OneWorld almost from its beginning, first as a partner organization (the European Centre for Development Policy Management) then as Director of OneWorld Europe and Editor of OneWorld's Think Tank. OneWorld groups more than 400 development NGOs and research institutions in a supersite on the Internet where information from partner organizations are broadcast to large audiences in efforts to achieve greater visibility for resource and expertise sharing. An information specialist by training, Ballantyne has experience as a practitioner (as a manager of information and communication services) and researcher (focusing on information flows in development, information strategies, information cooperation, and capacity building). In the past three years, he has also been an "institution builder" - setting up both a cooperative and a private company to address the Internet communication needs of development and human rights communities in Europe.
• Ralph Begleiter
  CNN International
  Mr. Begleiter has been a CNN World Affairs Correspondent since 1981. He began his broadcast journalism career in 1967 in Providence, Rhode Island, where he worked as a reporter, writer and news director. In 1994, he conceived and hosted GlobalView, a public affairs discussion of international issues seen worldwide on CNN International. From 1994-1995, he co-anchored CNN's prestigious International Hour. In 1998-99, Begleiter developed and hosted Cold War Postscript, a 24-part weekly program examining connections between the history of the Cold War and global affairs in today's world. He regularly anchors special reports and live coverage for CNN International. He has been awarded Georgetown University's Weintal Prize, the Hood Citation for Diplomatic Correspondence, the ACE Award from the National Academy for Cable Programming, and various film, television and video awards.
• Nik Gowing
  BBC World Television, London
  Mr. Gowing has been an anchor for BBC's international TV news service BBC World since 1996, and is the main presenter for the ninety-minute weekday news show The World Today. He has been a founding presenter of Europe Direct and is a guest anchor on both Hard Talk and Simpson's World. From 1989-1996, he was Diplomatic Editor for the one-hour nightly news analysis program Channel Four News from ITN in London. His reports were aired frequently by the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour on PBS, NBC's Super Channel, and CNN International. His work won a BAFTA "Best News Coverage" award in 1981 and 1996, and was singled out for praise in the Independent Television Commission program review for 1995. In studies published by Harvard University, the Carnegie Foundation and the European Commission, he challenged conventional wisdom on assumptions about a role for the media in preventing conflict, and reviewed the effect of information control in crises. He is a vice-chairman of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, and a Visiting Fellow in International Relations at Keele University in the UK.
• Robert O. Keohane
  Duke University
  Professor Keohane is Professor Emeritus at Duke University and President Elect of the American Political Science Association. Previously, he has taught at Swarthmore, Stanford, Brandeis, and Harvard Universities, and has held fellowships at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Endowment for the Humanities, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, German Marshall Fund, Council on Foreign Relations, Social Science Research Council, and has also held Guggenheim and Bellagio Fellowships. He has chaired the Committee on Global Environmental Change at the Social Science Research Council, and the Political Science Panel at the National Science Foundation. He has also chaired the nominations committees for the Woodrow Wilson Award Committee, the Minority Identification Project, Harvard University, and has been president of the International Studies Association. Among his many publications, Professor Keohane co-wrote "Power and Interdependence in the Information Age," with Joseph S. Nye (Foreign Affairs, vol. 77. no. 5) and Local Commons to Global Interdependence, edited with Elinor Ostrom (Sage Publishers, 1994). His Imperfect Unions: Security Institutions Across Time and Space, edited with Helga Haftendorn and Celeste A. Wallander, is forthcomng from Oxford University Press in 1999.
• Thomas Pickering
  Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
  Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Ambassador Pickering was sworn in as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs on May 27, 1997. He holds the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the United States Foreign Service. Prior to becoming Under Secretary, he served as the President of the Eurasia Foundation, a Washington-based organization that makes small grants and loans in the states of the former Soviet Union in support of democracy and economic reform. He previously served as Ambassador to the Russian Federation from May 1993 until November 1996. He also served as Ambassador to India from 1992-1993; Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1989-1992; and Ambassador to Israel from 1985-1988, to El Salvador from 1983-1985, and to Nigeria from 1981-1983. He was Assistant Secretary for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs from 1978 to 1981. From 1974 until 1978, Ambassador Pickering was the United States Ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In 1983 and in 1986, Ambassador Pickering won Distinguished Presidential Awards and in 1996, the State Department's Distinguished Service Award. He is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Media Inquiries

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