Don’t expect to see Irish politicians blogging anytime soon
Published October 15th, 2005 in E-PR‘Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt - Abraham Lincoln
When people mention politicians blogging, I always tend to say that they should podcast instead. My main reasoning behind this is that most of them wouldn’t have the time to get bogged down in online conversation, but more importantly most people rarely meet their local representative, let alone hear his voice.
Just to show how backwards things are IT-wise in Ireland. As part of the Digital Rights Ireland talk at TechCamp today, Damien Mulley told us about a response he got from a politician when he sent him an email.
He got an email in reply, but it was a scanned in letter as an attachment. So while people like Stuart Bruce might be blogging in his role as a politician, I don’t think we’ll see much Social Media output from Irish politicians any time soon. Although John Breslin told us that the mayor of Galway has started to blog, I’ll check that out later.
Technorati Tags: Damien Mulley, Piaras Kelly, Stuart Bruce, TechCamp
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There’s quite a few politician blogs at the moment, I saw Liz McManus has one at lizmcmanus.blogspot.com. No podcast though!
I stand corrected. I’ll be keeping an eye out for her blog in the future, let’s hope the rest of them can get on the bandwagon soon.
Although after another quick look, I don’t see a subsription link, despite her two links to Irish Blogs and Planet of the Blogs. Obviously someone with a bit of know how is behind her site though.
Most TDs hold clinics once or twice a week, generally on the weekends since they finish up Dáil duties on a Thu (I think). It would be good that the main points of each of the clinics would be posted online. A form of Zeitgeist of what is happening in the constituency. A TD with a blog doing this would engage the public a lot more, as would a blog from one of them NOT written by their handler. Comments (hypocrite alert) on their blog are crucial too. There are a few politicians posting on various webforums too, including Dan Boyle TD who posts on the Cork forum on boards.ie from time to time.
At the end of a post here: http://www.mulley.net/archives/000692.html which was in reply to Richard, I wrote about something myself and Dave were discussing about creating a fact-checking site for the next general election:
“On a slightly similar note, myself and Dave were discussing the upcoming Irish General Election and that an unbiased and neutral fact-checking site is needed. Monitor all the hot-air that comes from politicos and see does it match what they said and what they did. This might be a way of reeling in those that may not have had an interest until now to get involved in political debate. Certainly would help make politics more transparent.”
If all the developers who attended TechCamp got together and built this project it would make politics and participatory democracy a lot more fun in Ireland.
Unless a politician was into full transparency though putting their thoughts online would result in serious self-censorship or every faux-pas they made would be thrown in their face by their rivals. Personally I’d still trust a politician that was more open even if it resulted in attacks. A TD that takes criticism and evolves their views and policies as people comment on them would be most refreshing.
David Norris has a blog of sorts; largely concerning his involvement in Senate proceedings.