Undersecretary Rafael Seguis...said that DFA could not afford to ignore or belittle the role of the media in times of disasters or emergencies.Seguis said that the media are also a vital partner in public diplomacy thru the use of networking sites like Facebook or Twitter or other sites.

CPD Director Philip Seib will be speaking at the Strategic Communications Conference in Los Angeles, June 23rd to 24th, on social media in the Middle East and its effects on foreign policy.

Social media, including Twitter, Facebook, Diggit, live video, texting, bloggers, websites, My Space, and other outlets, now focus on the power of mass protests to rally together to topple governments and spread messages to fellow countrymen, and ultimately tell their story to the rest of the world.

The library clearly has reevaluated its role within the Internet information ecosystem and found a set of new identities. Let's start from here: One, the New York Public Library is a social network with three million active users and two, the New York Public Library is a media outfit. The library has become a social network with physical and digital nodes.

Search #endSH on Twitter today, June 20, and you will find a flood of tweets from men and women in Egypt and elsewhere in the region bemoaning and berating the prevalence of sexual harassment in Egypt's streets – and crowdsourcing ways to combat it.

CPD Director Philip Seib was quoted in The Christian Post regarding the use of social media in the Middle East.

The campaign is perhaps the largest and most genuinely grass-roots campaign by Saudi women to demand one of the many rights they are denied in this country, which severely restricts female independence.

One of the greatest lessons in social media is that everything begins with listening and such is true for any form of leadership. Governments and their administrations have much to learn. Not only are new media channels rich with insight, they are also interactive. There are people on the other side who have expectations of recognition, acknowledgement, and engagement.