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.

In the last week or so there have been kerfuffles about the blogging British ambassadors and the twitterific cake eating Americans.

Jared Cohen, the youngest member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, and Alec Ross, the first senior adviser for innovation to the secretary of state, were taking their tweeting very seriously...

As per the officials from the foreign ministry, very soon the foreign ministry shall be joining all through the social networking means.