Sir, – In his timely article "Political upheaval and social media; are they connected?" (March 14th), Davin O'Dwyer says that "the great Canadian media intellectual Marshall McLuhan, in coining the phrase 'the medium is the message', got to the core of the situation".
On the basis of my extensive dealings with Prof McLuhan in the 1970s, I would add that he would say that, as we did and still do with TV, we sleep-walked through the advent of social media and are still doing so.
He would say that the political cost is showing up in enormously unrealistic thinking about our economic situation. Social media exchanges are akin to non-stop but inconclusive popular brainstorming.
That would be ephemeral entertainment if mainstream media focused relentlessly, daily on realistic economic thinking to which social media participants would react.
Those participants react most to what is said and depicted on radio and TV. So the political upheaval effect is lessened when conductors of radio and TV exchanges facilitate realistic economic thinking.
– Yours, etc,
JOSEPH FOYLE
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.