Governments need to adapt to technological challenges more rapidly, but technology companies and private sector must also recognise their social responsibility.

In the second week of June Riga became a hub for strategic communications for the third time. The conference ‘Riga StratCom Dialogue’, organised by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, gathered more than 700 strategic communications experts from more than 40 countries.

“Democratic societies have always been facing challenges. But this is also their source of strength – they adapt, respond and endure. New technologies and social media have created vulnerabilities precisely because we place such a high value on civil liberties. Our societies, governments, media, and tech companies will have to cooperate more closely, if we want to address these challenges. Two days of productive discussions between some of the sharpest minds in the field of strategic communications have been an important step towards such cooperation.” said Jānis Sārts, Director of the NATO-accredited Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.

The conference was opened by H.E. Raimonds Vējonis, the President of Latvia and featured a keynote speech by H.E. Mr Tacan Ildem, NATO Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy. One of the conference highlights was mentalist Gilan Gork, who interactively demonstrated a remarkable ability to decode and influence people’s thoughts and showed how one can increase levels of trust, credibility, and influence through insights from psychology.

The NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (NATO StratCom COE) is a NATO accredited multi-national organisation that conducts research, publishes studies, and provides strategic communications training for government and military personnel. The NATO StratCom COE was initially founded by Latvia, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, and the United Kingdom in 2014. The Netherlands and Finland joined the Centre in 2016, Sweden in 2017. Canada and France are set to join in 2018, Slovakia – in 2019.

Watch videos from the conference here.

More information: Linda Curika, 0037126533953, linda.curika@stratcomcoe.org