Public diplomacy in a networked world.

With the aim of introducing this Issue of Questions de communication, this article first describes how the development of the internet gave rise, in the early 2000s, to a number of studies that praised the participatory virtues of new digital technologies within the field of public diplomacy. We then underline the need to break with these celebratory views and show how, together, the papers comprising this Issue help to understand some of the ways in which the rise of the internet and of social media has contributed to changes in the strategies and practices of the media used as public diplomacy channels.