Throughout the Middle East, protestors have employed Facebook, Twitter...and other technologies to organize and spread news at home and to the outside world. Democratic governments aren’t the only ones reacting to the Arab Spring. Autocracies, including China, which hosts the world’s most sophisticated online control regime, are drawing their own lessons.

In many ways, Al Jazeera is a victim of its own success. Since the beginning of the Arab Spring...Al Jazeera played a vital role in spreading news about the uprisings throughout the region. Once the revolutions started, the network featured more than just traditional newsgathering...made a point of aggregating social media content...to its TV viewers.

Public diplomacy practitioners, students and scholars are aware that one of the critical obstacles for public diplomacy is resource deficiency, which includes the lack of funding and personnel. In other words, the scope of influence is a problem. Both Biden and Locke successfully attracted Chinese attention, with which any diplomatic approaches can be magnified.

The challenges posed by the new media landscape...will likely take years to fully comprehend. But as the contours of the role of social media in the Arab Spring and elsewhere begin to take shape in the academic and policy-making arenas, everyone seems to agree on one point: The revolution is far from over.

Even by participants’ own estimates, the ongoing OccupyWallStreet demonstration hasn’t been very big. But this small action against bank bailouts, public spending cuts, and money in politics has drawn an outsized presence in the tech and media world. Many protestors cited demonstrations in Egypt--and their use of social media to jump-start a revolution--as an inspiration.

In fact, the State Department regularly uses nine different foreign language Twitter accounts, with more likely on the way. Ross tells TIME magazine that these new technologies give diplomats tools to exert "smart power" in advancing their interests.

To the long list of public diplomacy efforts the U.S. State Department has launched in Afghanistan, add the TV show "Eagle Four," a "24"-style cop thriller that has proven, in early analyses, to be the most popular of several TV programs financed by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The shows are all meant to serve some public policy function.

Ambassador Ford and other Embassy staff regularly post notes and interact with others on Facebook. The Ambassador believes it is important to use social media to get out the message that the United States wholly supports the Syrian people’s universal rights to freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful assembly.