Blogging politicians...

Politicians who blog, chaired by Suzy Byrne brought us three blogging politicians;
Damien Blake, Letterkenny Town Council Member
Ciarán Cuffe, TD for Dún Laoghaire
Dominic Hannigan, Meath County Councillor

Damien, spoke about how he has blogged for the past 18 months, and how it proved useful during his term as mayor of Letterkenny. He tries to be open on his blog and gives his honest opinion about issues concerning his constituents. He has found that people are less interested in policy and the grand ideas of politicians, when they come to you they want to know "what will you do for me?". He also believes that blogging leads to a clearer line of communication, you don't have journalists changing the tone of your post press release by quoting you out of turn...

Ciarán spoke about how he has always followed the advancement of technology and how blogs allow politicians to communicate with new audiences that may not participate in the traditional "dead tree" media. He believes that his blog allows him to be more free with his opinions and casual in the way he communicates.

Dominic admits that he has only been blogging since March. He is involved in the run for a marginal seat in Meath for the Dáil. He emphasised that he does not normally moderate his comments unless they involve libel/slander. When he deleted a comment earlier in September (over the Laytown school issue) he immediatly incurred the wrath of the blogging population. I guess a key learning from that is, explain, explain, explain....

Personal Opinion: There was a bit of an air of a pissing contest between the three politicians... "I post and get loads of comments very quickly", "I get lots of hits"... although they do get kudos for asking for feedback from the attendees to explain what they could do better on their blogs...

Tags: IrishBlogCon IrishBlogCon1 IrishElections2007