Politicians, businesses and the mainstream media are still struggling to come to grips with the importance of blogs and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, a conference in Dubln has been told.
More than two dozen online experts from across Europe and the US gathered in the Berkeley Court Hotel this morning for the Dublin Web Summit.
It was opened by Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan, who spoke of the importance of improving wireless and broadband technology in schools.
He accepted the Government should have done more to roll out broadband across the State over the last decade. He conceded that while large numbers of Irish people had been quick to embrace new technologies and social media to enhance their lives, the formal system was still playing catch-up.
Social networking, which recently overtook pornography as the single biggest online activity, was the focus of the morning sessions.
Iain Dale - one of the UK’s most prominent bloggers - told the summit there was now considerably more recognition amongst mainstream media and politicians about the role communications platforms had in modern society. However, he warned that adopting an appropriate tone still presented challenges.
“Newspaper editors have now recognised that they have to engage with new media in a meaningful way and, for many of them, it is outside their comfort zone as it is for many journalists.”
He pointed out that journalists were traditionally trained to believe they should not be part of the story. "But on a blog you have to use your own personality and all the most successful blogs are written by people who are willing to inject a bit of themselves into it.”
He said blogs, Facebook and Twitter in particular were “a risky business”, especially for politicians. “They need to have a break mechanism or a filter and the ones who get into trouble are the ones who are impetuous when it comes to posting. It is a new environment and mistakes will be made.”
He said people who criticised social networks for being filled with banal chatter were misguided. “Most of our conversations are banal but the people who have a large number of followers have them because they are saying interesting things," he said.
Alberto Nardelli, co-founder and chief executive of Tweetminster, a service that uses Twitter to let people follow and connect with MPs, said there was a fear and a risk element for many politicians, but that much of it was displaced. "They are making a mistake because many politicians are under the illusion that they are in control of their message when often it is actually being filtered through a mainstream media prism," he said.
He said the politicians using social networking positively could enhance the system. "The majority of people have a monolithic impression of politicians and regard all members of a certain party as the same but social media allows people to form an impression of an individual politician," he said.
