Harry McGee on Twitter: Nothing to see here.

Harry McGee is the hot young thing of the Irish Times political reporting staff. Having proved his thrilling modernity by running a blog while working for the Examiner, he moved to the Times and was one of their founding Politics bloggers. He lists amongst his interests on his new site ‘New Media and Technology’.

A lucky break for the nation- a political journalist who’s well placed to understand the internet and explain its political significance to the nation- and to other politicians. We’re not exactly swimming in journalists who give the impression they could bridge those gaps.

Which makes his most recent article “Politicians learn value of chirpy, chirpy Tweet greet” all the more disappointing. It takes an old media view of the significance of Twitter in Irish Politics, seeing it as just a new way for politicians to broadcast out their ‘message’ to voters.

But, in fact Twitter (contrary to my expectations when I signed up to it in 2007 to have a poke and prod at it) has become something very new and very subversive of that centre-out model of communications. Far from being passive receivers of political messages, voters are talking amongst themselves about politicians and with politicians on an equal footing.

This is a difficult experience for some Tweeting members of the Oireachtas who find themselves suddenly able to hear all the comments made about them and find them a bit harsher than what people say to their faces.

Here’s @midnightcourt putting this idea to Senator Dan Boyle;

And here’s Senator Dan Boyle replying;

Which only confirms the point.

But, then, we can hardly be too surprised if Harry missed the shifts in the national conversation which have been brewing in the last few months. Here are his most recent two tweets;

Yes, that second one is dated July 24th.

What was aggravating about Chirpy Chirpy Tweet Greet is that we really do need someone to explain and describe the real meaning of this strange, organic, Twitter-powered alternative to the dead meaningless world of centre-out ‘messages’.

Instead, we ended with Harry approvingly quoting DIT lecturer Ian Kilroy;

he says it should not be oversold. “The message is the same. The platform is alternative but incidental. It’s a new way of conveying the message.”

On the contrary, ‘the platform’ creates a new way of communicating, sharing, learning and deciding. Sure, you could just use it as another place to pump out links to your press releases. But good luck trying to plough on with the same dead message as everything changes around you.

Ask the Home Rule party how that works out.