The use of social media for the purpose of public diplomacy has increasingly drawn the attention of U.S. diplomacy professionals, observers and political analysts especially after the recent attacks on the U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya that were triggered by outrage over an anti-Islamic video released on Sept. 11.

The notorious tweet reaffirming a statement that condemned "the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims" has been deleted by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, but the incident raises a question that lingers: Is blasting out 140-character messages on Twitter a good way to conduct diplomacy, given the political, and even mortal, risks?

American embassies across the globe have taken to Twitter over the last year or two, an impressive soft power outreach to citizens of foreign countries, but the Cairo feed has stood out. Other feeds, even when they tweet frequently, tend to take the staid tone of official diplomacy, tweeting press releases, quotes from U.S. officials, and relevant headlines.

Libyan officials on Wednesday condemned Tuesday’s attack on the U.S. Consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi that resulted in the death of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.
Mohamed al-Megariaf, president of Libya’s General National Congress, apologized to the U.S. and Americans for the attack.

In recent years it often looks like diplomacy has moved from the “smoke filled rooms” of international gatherings to the touchpad screens – so much has been said about the new dimension of public diplomacy labelled e-diplomacy, twiplomacy, etc.

In late 2005, I found myself in Afghanistan, working for the defence minister at the time as director of communications. I quickly became acquainted with the frustration of trying to communicate effectively through the noise of suicide bombs and high-profile attacks.

Ediplomacy promotes social networking technologies such as Twitter and Facebook to reach out to citizens, companies and others. "I define it as building on traditional forms of diplomacy to account for the technologies, the networks and the demographics of the 21st century," says Ross. "The key role for me is to be an accelerant."

While still evolving at incredible speed, the current use of social media is a dramatic step in the right direction that can help make the counterinsurgent successful at providing truthful information to the public before the insurgent can distort the perception of the event.