Worldwide there are 35 global indexes, which help us orient onto where each country is in a specific sphere of the public life. Greece is 67^th in the world for global competition, 56^th for corruption, 31^st for freedom of speech, 22^nd for democracy, and 18^th for human resources development. “When we want to build our country’s image abroad we emphasize on the rankings, in which we are ahead—in other words, the rankings, which speak good of our country. We advise institutions to improve their work in field where the ranking is behind,” advises public diplomacy professor Aton Gilboa from the California University in a lecture in front of the Greek press-officers association.

 Aton Gilboa stressed that three revolutions have completely changed the principles, under which classical diplomacy is taking effect. The first one is the communication revolution, which led to a more active and diverse media attendance in people’s lives to a stage where scientists started talking about mediacracy and tele-democracy. The second one is the political revolution after fall of the communist system, which led to a jump of the democracy regimes worldwide, which right now are 60%. The third revolution is the one of international relations, which is not only country-to-country or country-to-international organizations anymore. The role of the nongovernmental sector, the cultural diplomacy, the societies, and even of separate figures like the Pope and Dalai Lama is bigger.

 “The global network changed everything in diplomacy. It created the cyber-diplomacy phenomenon. No one is only a listener or a speaker anymore. We all have the right and the obligation to be interactive,” believes Prof. Gilboa. The global TV stations, which engage viewers not only to be observers but also creators of TV products, the internet with blogs, mail, wireless, mobile phones, which stopped being only phones but internet and TV screens, and GPS systems – all this created a new form of diplomacy, which political scientists call virtual diplomacy.

 According to professor Gilboa, Greece does not use this new branch of diplomacy efficiently - Greeks living abroad need to join actively as well. “You have 11 million Greeks living in the country and another 11 million living abroad. These are 11 million diplomats living all over the world, who can be used,” advises the South California University professor. His other advise is the expansion of the so called cultural and educational diplomacy and the bigger presence of the Greek cultural foundation abroad.