Roughly half of Venezuela's TV audience was not able to watch supporting actor winner Jared Leto express solidarity with all the "dreamers" in Ukraine and Venezuela as he accepted his Oscar. That's because the private channel Venevision, for the first time in several decades of carrying the Academy Awards, did not broadcast the show Sunday night.

The Sochi 2014 Winter Games drew Sunday night to a close, an Olympics intent on projecting the image of a strong and confident new Russia across this vast country and to the world beyond, with a mighty Russian team awakening the echoes of the mighty Soviet sport system to prideful spectator cheers of “Ro-ssi-ya! Ro-ssi-ya!”

Social media can be a powerful tool, especially when considering how it empowers regular people with the ability to reach a large audience. It certainly played a prominent role in the Arab Spring protests of 2010, when protestors took to Twitter and Facebook to document the uncensored reality of their experience.

When the pundits talk about Vladimir Putin’s offensive in Ukraine, they usually mean troops and tanks, but his greatest weapons are ,in fact, his propaganda machine and the gullible western media. So far, he has been winning stunning victories without firing a shot.

Every year, select students from the USC Master of Public Diplomacy program at USC Annenberg travel abroad to conduct field research, which furthers the study of public diplomacy and international communications. This year, the Class of 2014 selected São Paulo, Brazil for its unique position in world politics.

A little more than a week after the Ukrainian Parliament ousted President Viktor Yanukovych and Putin's Winter Olympics in Sochi came to an end, Russian troops are now in control over Crimea, a chunk of Ukraine a bit larger than Vermont. Russian troops are consolidating their hold on the region, and Ukraine's still-shaky interim government is trying to organize a coherent response.

Late last month, as thousands of international journalists prepared to descend on Sochi to cover the Winter Olympics, the Kremlin resorted to using a controversy to silence a critical television station. A direct move to shut down the station would have been too blunt--particularly at a time when all eyes were on Russia--so authorities resorted to exploiting a producer's blunder, blowing it out of proportion, and pushing a third party to do their bidding.

Sustained anti-government rallies in Thailand, Ukraine and Venezuela have captured the attention of millions. But large pro-democracy demonstrations in Burkina Faso last month largely escaped the Western media’s radar. Since January, tensions have flared between the West African country’s authoritarian government and the impoverished masses yearning for democratic reforms. Depending on how developments unfold, the protests in Burkina Faso could serve as a catalyst for further uprisings in the region.