Thanks to the rise of social media, news is no longer gathered exclusively by reporters and turned into a story but emerges from an ecosystem in which journalists, sources, readers and viewers exchange information. Journalists are becoming more inclined to see blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media as a valuable adjunct to traditional media.

The President isn’t the only one engaging Americans on Twitter. On June 28, the notice went out from the State Department’s spokesman that Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Judith McHale would field her first “Twitter Q & A” the following morning.

The decision by President Obama to participate in Wednesday’s first Twitter town hall meeting, live from the East Room, is a reminder that the White House is eager to exploit whatever technologies will help get out his message, unfiltered.

The broader problem highlighted by the Fox News tweet is that the social media universe has its fair shares of hucksters and malcontents. While social media thrives on its many voices, it also is built on the trust that users aren't deceiving or taking advantage of one another. News outlets in particular cannot afford to lose credibility by treating social media without care.

Joe Biden, the vice president of the United States, is on Twitter. Known for making the occasional hilarious gaffe in a speech from time to time, the microblogging platform that is Twitter introduces new possibilities for Biden to throw out a bit of straight talk directly to the world.

The shift to online media, and in particular, social media such as Facebook and Twitter, represents the growing trend of people turning to online sources for news and world events. This presents a unique opportunity for Israel's public diplomacy to penetrate global public opinion.

The rock band Radiohead has made a move to join the world of social networking in China. The group has been critical of the Chinese government’s censorship in the past...but the band has started a page on the “weibo” site of Sina.com, which has been described as the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

With the proliferation of information technology across all societies, people around the world are participating in shaping the political lives of their countries to an unprecedented degree. That drove us to an understanding that the United States government had to take a different approach to public diplomacy.