Digital Diplomacy: Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds
Here’s a brief, pre-event summary/overview of this presentation. An “after action” review and analysis will follow.
Presenting today at O’Reilly Media’s Open Government and Government 2.0 Online Conference
Rita King (IBM Analytics Virtual Center)
The Digital Diplomacy: Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project was lead by Rita J. King and Joshua S. Fouts who are both Senior Fellows at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. The project was funded by a grant from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation.
The idea for Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project was hatched with a very specific idea in mind: How could people learn about other cultures in an authentic, experiential space — specifically, how could we learn about cultures that self-identified as Muslim? In turn, how could this information supplement or augment the physical world work of foreign policy and especially public diplomacy practitioners? Fouts and King chose the virtual world of Second Life as the platform for their research for many reasons, among them that it is the best international platform — more than 70% of its users are from outside the United States. The goal was to to see what they could learn about Islam — not by inviting particular people with particular perspectives into Second Life, but rather to follow the trail of what was already happening culturally in the space that might yield new insight about Islam.
The findings included a trilogy of actionable items available in digital format. By releasing three types of reports — policy recommendations, documentary video and graphic book — Fouts and King hoped to make what is still a very new medium as accessible as possible.
via en.oreilly.com
Dr. Paulette Robinson, leader of the 
