A prankster presented a porn actress as a medal-winning Bosnian student, and a British diplomat was quick to spread the news; the gaffe highlights the importance of fact-checking in the era of social media.

British Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina Matt Field was recently duped by pranksters; a "Bosnian student" whom he praised online turned out to be one of the world's best-known former porn actresses.

Matt Field unknowingly reposted a humorous tweet that gave a shotout to Saša Garanović, a fictitious student of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Sarajevo who had allegedly won third place at a math competition in Chicago, lamenting that she had not enjoyed enough media attention.

The caption was accompanied by a photo of Sasha Grey, a retired American porn star who is now pursuing a career in modeling and music.

"Well done, Saša," Field tweeted, according to the Bosnian news portal Source.

After realising what a blunder he made, the diplomat, who took office last August following a number of overseas political and policy roles, deleted his erroneous tribute and turned it into a joke.

"Now I know how many follow me on Twitter. And that's something," he said, adding, tongue-in-cheek, that he'd managed to "go down in history."