The news transmitted by the U.S. government to Cuba via Radio/Television Martí is keeping pace with the times in its use of social networks and multimedia platforms. Internet, Facebook, Twitter and text messaging are the latest media being used to aid the free flow of news to the island.

In less than a year, the external affairs ministry's twitter account has collected over 10,000 followers, pioneering the outreach of government organisations on social media platforms.

Last year, the Public Diplomacy division of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) began an experiment....[W]e see social media not just as a tool for disseminating information; it is also valuable for getting feedback, listening, engaging with people, so that a relationship is built.

Returning home from a Saturday afternoon walk with the dog, I did what has become almost a reflex action and checked Twitter. Bizarrely, there was the president of Rwanda having a go at me over disparaging comments I had made about an interview he gave that morning.

After a page calling for a mass march by Palestinians on the borders of Israel on May 15 was taken offline by Facebook, mirror sites with more than 3.5 million followers sprung up... Will the so-called "Facebook Intifada" tip the Middle East into further turmoil?

In the latest sign of the hardline movement's rapprochement with at least some areas of the modern world, the Taliban have embraced microblogging. Their Twitter feed, @alemarahweb, pumps out several messages a day, keeping followers up to date with often highly exaggerated reports of strikes.

In the past few days, India-based journalists have found it impossible to get a visa to go to Pakistan and cover the fallout of the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.But a complaint on Twitter by NDTV’s Barkha Dutt got the attention of the Pakistani establishment and now Islamabad is loosening up.

The Arab Uprising has shaken the way we understand politics, communications and public diplomacy. Social media may have played a role in the unrest, but pretending that the uprising is a social media revolution is as imaginary as the existence of the Empress of Mancha.