Outspoken Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has made his first anti-government comments since his release from detention, using Twitter to hit out at the treatment of colleagues and fellow dissidents and risking a potential return to custody. Mr Ai became the most high profile casualty of China's increasingly authoritarian stance following the Middle East uprisings, after which several prominent Chinese dissidents were detained.

As the riots in London continued for a third night on Monday, Egyptian bloggers, watching events unfold on live television, debated the meaning of the violent confrontations between young people and the police, which reminded some of them of their own pitched battles on the streets of Cairo a few months ago.

The Indian Embassy has taken to Sina Weibo, the popular Twitter-like microblogging service from China, in an attempt to portray India’s modern image and promote Indian culture and tourism to Chinese youngsters. Since Sina Weibo boasts a hundred million users...it provides a perfect platform for the Indian embassy to remove the earlier misconceptions and present a modern image of India.

In the slow-evolving world of diplomacy, it may be the biggest innovation since the wax seal: social media that lets Canadian diplomats go around the censors to speak directly to, and hear from, the citizens of the world’s rising superpower.

That was the genesis of the MEA’s move beyond its high walls into the social media platforms and to become more accessible through the tools of the 21st century—Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and their ilk.

When an Internet research group recently released a study concluding that the most influential person in the Twitter universe was Rafinha Bastos, a Brazilian comedian ...the English-speaking world was predictably baffled.

The Department of State is pleased to announce “Ask Alan,” a new effort to engage with the Iranian people through our Persian language social media brand, USAdarFarsi. Every month on Facebook and Twitter, we will be asking our fans for questions on a topic that we set in advance. Our Persian language spokesman, Alan Eyre, will then provide answers to the most popular questions in Persian.

The Australian government is to post on YouTube images of so-called boatpeople being turned away and sent to Malaysia, in an effort to deter asylum seekers. The video will show arrivals at Australia's offshore detention centre on Christmas Island being expelled and boarding aircraft. Asylum seekers remain a politically sensitive issue in Australia.