APDS Blogger: Jennifer Yael Green

Nearly twenty years after the end of Apartheid, South Africa is still a country of controversy and conflicting narratives.

State-owned Qatari television network Al Jazeera is exploring the acquisition of Spain’s La Liga premier soccer league rights in a bid to expand its budding global sports franchise, tweak its business model in a world in which pan-Arab television is on the decline and compensate for mounting criticism of its coverage of popular revolts in the Middle East and North Africa.

eInterns (American students working virtually) are an initiative of the U.S. Department of State's Virtual Student Foreign Service. The goal, according to the State Department website, is "to harness technology and a commitment to global service among young people to facilitate new forms of diplomatic engagement." The eInterns work from their own campuses in the U.S. and are partnered with our U.S. diplomatic posts and other organizations on "digital diplomacy." The program began in 2011

The external costs to American public diplomacy of keeping Manning on the global stage now outweigh any additional benefit from further legal action. The longer the case goes on, the greater the opportunity for international rivals to make propaganda hay at America’s expense.

Arab governance systems are yet not as transformed as many had hoped. However a new process of shaping Arab public opinion has emerged, facilitated by popular dynamism combined with the Internet and other technological innovations. And this revolution in discourse and communications provides an unprecedented opportunity to confront issues that have bedeviled our relations with the Arab world for decades.

What do the natural gas that began to flow to our homes from the Tamar reservoir, US President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel, and the expected rapprochement between Israel and Turkey have in common? Answer: The new public diplomacy.

A four-wheel drive instructor once gave me the quintessential piece of advice: "You have to be smarter than your equipment." I have followed that pearl of wisdom in many realms of life, but most recently, in my previous responsibility as Mexican Ambassador to the US, it came in very handy when I made the decision to become the first ambassador accredited to Washington to start "tweeting" in an official capacity.

The U.S. Embassy in Cairo shut down its Twitter feed Wednesday following a public fight with the Egyptian Presidency and the Muslim Brotherhood over the arrest of an Egyptian television star.