Several weeks before, in Algiers in December 2010, the U.S. State Department had launched the North African Partnership for Economic Opportunity (Napeo), bringing together over 300 entrepreneurs from Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya.

One year after the Arab Spring, American public diplomacy is still facing the now-established conundrum of linking words and actions. The rise of Islamist political parties as the new leaders in the Arab world is the latest challenge for U.S. public diplomacy, but it is also an opportunity.

One year after the Arab Spring, American public diplomacy is still facing the now-established conundrum of linking words and actions. The rise of Islamist political parties as the new leaders in the Arab world is the latest challenge for U.S. public diplomacy, but it is also an opportunity.

Events in Egypt and countries across the Middle East and North Africa have shown in the 'Arab Spring' that internet platforms and technologies should be seen for what they are: effective tools for the conduct of political campaigns in authoritarian contexts.

While Twitter and other social media had become a megaphone disseminating information about the uprisings to the outside world, Marks said, "a comprehensive study of Tweets about the Egyptian and Libyan uprisings" found that more than 75 percent of people who clicked on embedded Twitter links related to the uprisings were from outside the Arab world.

Now that the events of 2011 have turned Arab politics upside down, U.S. policymakers are facing what they hate most: irrelevance. Those who were so long ignored by American public diplomacy are finally gaining power as evidenced by the successes of the Ennahda Party in Tunisia...

Extremist use of the media and information environment to propagate views and garner international support comes under the microscope in Germany next month...experts from government, academia and industry will focus on the issue...

Over the years, the “public” at which U.S. public diplomacy was aimed was carefully limited to exclude the Islamist community. However, the events of 2011 have turned the Islamists who were once viewed as adversaries by American policymakers into the mainstream of Arab politics. It's high time U.S. public diplomacy caught up with this new reality.