Almost as soon as a Russian court convicted activist Alexei Navalny of embezzlement, on highly dubious grounds, in July 2013, U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul tweeted his disappointment at the “apparent political motivations in this trial.” Within minutes that comment echoed across Russia’s social media landscape, eventually generating nearly 1,000 retweets and getting picked up by numerous media outlets.

In recent years, Somalia’s al-Shabab militia has banned smoking, playing soccer, watching movies, wearing bras, anything it deemed Western. Now, the al-Qaeda-linked group has targeted something else common in most of the rest of the world: the Internet.

It’s a new year for public diplomacy, and one that’s likely to be filled with opportunities and challenges. With this in mind, I have assembled a top 10 list for public diplomacy priorities for 2014. While by no means serving as a complete list of all the important issues facing U.S. public diplomacy, it is a reflection of the numerous discussions I have held with officials, practitioners, and academics over the past year.

The result is what we academics call premature closure, or what policy makers call a failure in due diligence; basically an unwillingness to consider all of the potential options, the risk and the consequences of a particular course of action. In this newspaper and elsewhere, I have addressed the reasons why a foreign policy that is not open to public scrutiny lacks both accountability and legitimacy.

In our book, First Globals: Understanding, Managing, and Unleashing the Potential of Our Millennial Generation, Joan Snyder Kuhl and I present a number of prescriptions for welcoming Millennials into the workforce. One of my favorites involves the creation of a First Globals Technology Corps, a practical and cost-efficient way of utilizing the special skills of this mobile and techno-savvy age cohort, while at the same time, allowing them to make a real difference in the world.

Iran is a country of many contradictions. You have have heard that before. Unrelated men and women aren't allowed to mingle freely, yet they find a way to do so. Women are required to cover their hair, but many cover it in a way that becomes a fashion statement. There are many others. Here's another contradiction: Iranian officials — including the President Hassan Rouhani and foreign minister Javad Zarif — are frequent users of social media. Yet Iranian citizens are officially banned from signing up.

The use of social media is exploding in Brazil. It's the third largest market for Facebook; fifth largest for Twitter. The controversial women-only app Lulu recently launched here and quickly became the top downloaded app in the country, making Brazil Lulu's biggest market. "I think it is cool because it's a social network for what all women throughout history have always done," says 20-year-old Marcela, as she taps away at the Lulu app on her iPhone.

On the cusp of the New Year 2014, I went to St. Peter’s Square to see and hear perhaps the only person in the world -- not counting Justin Bieber, Rihanna or the boys in One Direction -- able to draw an eager outdoor crowd of 100,000 on a chilly, drizzly, gray December afternoon. It was Pope Francis’ first Christmas Day speech to the city and the world, and what I witnessed was a leader aware that he lives in an era of rampant digital disruption.