On 28 November 2011, the NCCR North-South Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) based in Bern and the ETH North-South Center based in Zurich sponsored a half-day conference, “Water diplomacy: transboundary rivers and international politics” at the Museum of Natural History in Basel. It explored the theme of water as an instrument of diplomacy, in particular how water management can be used to solve diplomatic conflict and how diplomacy can solve water conflicts and improve resource management.

China is increasingly making its presence felt internationally. Till now, over 350 Confucius Institutes and 500 Confucius Classrooms have been founded in 105 countries and regions. Aiming to promote Chinese language and culture, the global presence of Confucius Institutes is viewed as a barometer of China's "soft power".

With 40 percent of Russian adults online, many say social media, including the Russian social networking site VKontakte, has made it possible for a long stalled opposition movement in Russia to organize a rally that size.

Al-Shabaab, an Islamist militant group in Somalia, has posted on Twitter more than 80,000 times since setting up an account. The move demonstrates that, in the 21st century, no radical insurgency or martyrdom operation is complete without a social media platform, even if Somalia is one of the world's poorest and most anarchic countries.

While HBO’S aim is to broaden its audience’s knowledge of India, the films, all of which were made by foreigners, threaten to open a long-festering wound in India. The outside world’s depiction of the country is seldom appreciated, or embraced, by Indians.

According to America's Voices in Israel, an organization that aims to bolster Israel’s image in the U.S., the goal of such trip is to allow guests, whether pastors or celebrities, to use their respective platforms – from pulpits to social media – to share their experiences in the land and to engender positive feelings and, ultimately, visits to Israel by their followers.

CPD Interns Maya Babla, Mona El Hamdani and Aparajitha Vadlamannati are part of a team of seven graduate students currently on a two-week research trip to India to analyze the country's public diplomacy efforts. The objective of the trip is to spark a larger discussion on the relevance and value of public diplomacy within the international affairs and communications communities.

In China, a large number of government departments and officials have stepped into the online world through weibo, the most popular and biggest micro blog service in China. But most of them are still more show than tell, while some have just followed the new media trend blindly without interacting with netizens.