On 31 July 2015, Tom Fletcher, the outgoing British ambassador to Lebanon, signed off with an open letter on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website to the country he had served in for four years, titled “So . . . Yalla, Bye”. [...] The blog went viral and generated much discussion in Lebanon.

Vietnamese police have detained a blogger for posting "bad content" about the state, the latest move in a crackdown on dissent that has been condemned by rights groups and Western governments.

A lot of my diplomatic counterparts in Havana look completely bemused when I talk to them about Twitter or tell them what my last blog was about. That’s not because they don’t know what Twitter or blogging is but because they don’t really see social media as playing a role in their daily diplomacy.

Most Cubans remain cut off from the Internet but are still using creating ways to access and spread information online, a dissident blogger told journalists from around the Americas Sunday. Yoani (YO'-ahn-ee) Sanchez gave a largely grim report of the state of the press in Cuba at a meeting of the Inter American Press Association in Denver. She said President Raul Castro's regime has been aggressive in arresting and beating people who speak out against the government and has failed to document those actions, as his brother Fidel did. However, she said neither is better than the other.

An influential Communist Party journal on Monday decried online speech critical of the ruling Communist Party and government, comparing internet rumours to denunciation posters during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. “There are some who make use of the open freedom of cyberspace to engage in wanton defamation, attacking the party and the government,” said the journal Qiushi, which means ”seeking truth” in Chinese.

This week we are running a film that first aired on Al Jazeera English six months ago, on another one of Al Jazeera English programmes, Witness. It is the story of two Russian bloggers, Sergei Mukhamedov and Irina Gundareva, who use their blogs to expose corruption and challenge the established order in the different areas in which they live. Mukhamedov is based in Moscow and says he set up his LiveJournal blog to skirt the restrictions on freedom of expression put in place by President Vladimir Putin.