Michigan State University student Brisbane Asekome spent her summer serving as a student ambassador at the 2012 World Expo in Yeosu, Korea. As a student ambassador, she was on the front lines of U.S. public diplomacy efforts as the public face of the USA Pavilion 2012.

“The use of sport in local or intra-national diplomacy has proven effective in the case of Tanzania between two formerly conflicting nations, Tanganyika and Zanzibar, with the conduct of sports paving the way towards cultural exchanges, which eventually led to the strengthening of ties between the two liberation movements,” the lawmakers said in their bill.

A cultural, sports and tourism exchange programme between Vietnamese and Lao border provinces will take place from August 16 in Vietnam’s central provinces of Nghe An, Quang Binh and Ha Tinh and Laos’ Xiengkhoang, Bolykhamsay and Khammouan provinces.

Russia is missing out on opportunities to use soft power in Africa, according to experts on the continent. Russian authorities struggle to push "soft power" buttons in an effort to rebrand Russia's image and to regain some social and cultural influences in Africa population, experts say the plan of cultural diplomacy might only be achieved with consistency and to deliver on their promises promptly.

Since their launch in 2004, the Beijing-backed Confucius Institutes have been no strangers to controversy. While their defenders liken them to the Chinese equivalents of the Goethe Institute, the Alliance Francaise and the British Council, their critics have christened them fonts of espionage and propaganda – charges which, though salacious, are still unsubstantiated

A recent Yahoo! Japan search for “sofuto pawa,” the Japanese translation for soft power, yielded nearly two and a half million entries. While this number indicates the term’s popularity in Japan, it tells us little about how successful Tokyo has been in employing soft power throughout the Western Pacific.

“Min hem ya neem,” bellowed the baritone Kurdish Hamlet. To be or not to be—always a good question to be asked of any public diplomacy venture.