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State Department to hold first ever Twitter briefing

The State Department will hold its first ever public briefing tomorrow using questions submitted on Twitter, an experiment in State’s ever-evolving strategy that it has dubbed "21st Century Statecraft." State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland will stand at the press briefing podium tomorrow and give live video answers to questions sent in by Twitter users. The ...

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The State Department will hold its first ever public briefing tomorrow using questions submitted on Twitter, an experiment in State's ever-evolving strategy that it has dubbed "21st Century Statecraft."

The State Department will hold its first ever public briefing tomorrow using questions submitted on Twitter, an experiment in State’s ever-evolving strategy that it has dubbed "21st Century Statecraft."

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland will stand at the press briefing podium tomorrow and give live video answers to questions sent in by Twitter users. The answers will then be made into video files and tweeted back to the users with translations in their native languages, Nuland said. Nuland will do this every Friday in January as an experiment.

The choice of languages reveals the priorities State sees in conducting its public diplomacy. Its outreach is directed toward Twitter users in the Arab world, China, Iran, the French-speaking world, the Portuguese-speaking world (namely Brazil), Russia, Spanish speakers, and those who speak Urdu (Pakistan). Twitter users who speak languages such as Japanese, Korean, or Turkish are out of luck for now.

The digital media team at State is sorting through the questions now and choosing 10 to 15 for Nuland to tackle.

"The guidance we’ve given them is to focus on the issues that are really trending around the world," a State Department official said.

The questions might be duplicative of questions asked by reporters at the daily briefings, so it’s not clear how much news will come out of the event — but that’s ok, the official said.

"The members of the public who are responding on Twitter sometimes may not be paying close attention to the daily press briefings," the official said.

Questions can be submitted using the hashtag #AskState to any of these Twitter feeds:

Video clips of the questions Nuland answers will be subtitled in the language of the original submitted question and made available on the department’s YouTube Channel.

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin

Tags: Social Media, U.S. State Department

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