Having never used Facebook or sent a tweet, and with no desire to do so, I am what you might call a social media sceptic...It troubles me to contemplate the effect it's having on government and public policymaking - when politicians feel the need to respond to the gossip and information generated with such rapidity by Twitter.

In a nation where just one in four citizens has Internet access, The New Hanoian is a new phenomenon...

Carolijn van Noort is working as a trainee for the Consulate General of the Netherlands in San Francisco on a survey that assesses professional views about the importance of social networking in public diplomacy.

On July 16, 2010, The Huffington Post published an opinion piece authored by John Brown, former U.S. Foreign Service officer and currently Adjunct Professor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown University.

I am suspicious of the phrase “21st-century statecraft”. I am suspicious because I can't define it...Is it a new kind of state-run broadcaster, a digital Radio Free Europe? Is it a new kind of public diplomacy...

I was intrigued to see several recent calls for bids by the U.S. Agency for International Development for programs that would, among other things, train young Arabs how to better use the Internet and other digital technologies for political activism, advocacy, greater transparency and accountability, and other such democratic practices.

Since then, the State Department has brought the issue of online freedom to the table in its diplomacy around the world and joined with Internet providers and social media companies to foster public-private partnership in Internet freedom.