Everyone has there own preferred way of accessing information --- and for people who are heavy users of social media if an organisation is not using social media effectively they will automatically think that the organisation is out of date and that information is hard to find. I believe that this is similar for most media - for example if you listen to the radio all the time if something is not mentioned on the radio you will not be aware of it. Social media is only one of many tools that we can use to communicate for public diplomacy and I think we should still try to use as wide a variety of methods to communicate our messages as possible (tailored to our target audiences) so that we reach as many people as possible.

Source author: Alison Reilly alison.reilly@dfa.ie