Social media personalities, such as Simon Harris, Mary Lou McDonald, Leo Varadkar, and even Taoiseach Micheál Martin, can reach well over 100,000 people with each tweet they send out. However, online platforms can also significantly raise the profile of backbench TDs, senators and councillors who would usually face an uphill battle to get any media attention.

With the exception of perhaps Sinn Féin, political parties have adopted a mainly ad hoc approach, leaving individual politicians to forge out an online constituency of their own.

"We're in a bit of a transition period where social media is evolving from something that was a bit more of an optional extra at the start but now it's becoming a key part of public relations and campaigning," says Dr Kirsty Parks of DCU's Institute of Future Media, Democracy and Society.

She says there has been an increasing professionalisation of social media by our politicians but we are "not fully there yet."

Just last week, Fianna Fáil members were sent out a 'let's get social!' email, encouraging them to follow all of the party's social media channels and to become an "online canvasser."

Members were told to "like, share and comment on our posts as much as possible. Your contribution online is invaluable.

"By liking a single post, it will appear on many other newsfeeds and help us grow our audience. Maybe you could invite a few online contacts to like the Fianna Fáil page? Any support will be most appreciated."

As part of new social media guidelines issued to members last October, the Labour Party stated that online platforms "create new opportunities for personal expression" but also "create new responsibilities".

"Please remember that the internet never forgets. This means everything you publish will be visible to the world for a very, very long time. Commonsense is a huge factor here. If you are about to publish something that makes you even the slightest bit uncomfortable, review," the Labour Party guidelines states.

In 2016, then Taoiseach Enda Kenny raised a few eyebrows around Leinster House when he took to Twitter to announce the date of the General Election. It was dubbed a snub to those both in his own government and in the opposition not to make this announcement in the Dáil.

Of course, this was considered a minor faux-pas and some even agreed with Mr Kenny's approach, others, including Sinn Féin's Brian Stanley, have sparked far greater fury online.

Mr Stanley was forced into making a Dáil statement as a result of his tweets regarding the IRA and Leo Varadkar.

Fine Gael TD Joe Carey also had to apologise when he 'liked' a tweet that described Social Democrats TD Holly Cairns as an “ignorant little girl.”

Those who play the online game well can gain a celebrity-like status, with massive followings on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and more recently TikTok.

However, just as social media influencers aim to present themselves and their life through a specific lens, Dr Parks says politicians are undoubtedly cultivating the 'best version' of themselves as well.

"Successful branding on social media often looks like an individual who is very authentic and relatable, it doesn't look like somebody who's reading from a script because that's not actually what people link to or find appealing on social media.

"So, even if we look at somebody like Simon Harris you could ask is he posting the way that he is because that's just who he is and that's how he likes to share? Or does he have some media-savvy advisors who are shaping his social media brand?

"That's something that you don't really know, you can't get that just by looking at it."

Showing a side of the person that the general public might not usually see can massively increase an individual's popularity online — pre-Covid, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe often spoke about gigs he attended, former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams famously included his rubber ducky in posts, while Taoiseach Micheál Martin more recently posted a selfie while out on a cliff walk in Ballycotton, Co Cork.

Mr Varadkar has recently taken to providing 'behind the scenes' clips of his daily work from Government Buildings or Dublin Castle through live streams or video clips. 

He famously posted a picture of him filling a dishwasher in the office when he was Taoiseach with the caption: "No-one gets away without packing the dishwasher around here."

However, it seems practice does make perfect when it comes to social media.

Dr Kevin Cunningham, lecturer in Politics at TU Dublin, points to research from the University of Amsterdam which found that when a politician or candidate is active on social media they are more likely to be asked onto traditional media such as television and radio.

Coverage in traditional media tends to lead to an increase in activity on social media, thus increasing the person's profile in a circular manner.

While the platforms we use may change and evolve, social media is here to stay and will become an integral and essential part of every politician's working life.

New media used to set political agenda

We’re just over a decade into the application of social media in political campaigns and the question persists: Does it matter? The academic evidence presents a nuanced picture.

Social media has proven to be effective for increasing the visibility of potential political leaders. The emergence of Barack Obama as a candidate in the 2008 US Democratic primaries through the medium of Facebook was the first and most obvious example.

More recently, research from the University of Amsterdam highlighted the role of social media in increasing the visibility of candidates.

It showed the reciprocity between the traditional news agenda and the social media agenda.

Increased activity of a given candidate on social media tends to lead to a significant increase in coverage in traditional media and vice-versa.

A notable aside is that this effect is even greater for candidates located at the extremes of political discourse.

However, there is still little evidence of any strong relationship between social media activity and electoral outcomes.

The problem with social media is that it does not (and probably never will) offer a stable, unbiased, representative picture of the electorate.

Those who use sites such as Twitter are a distortion of the general public: Notable studies in the UK show that Twitter users lean towards Remain over Leave.

Content producers are an even greater distortion. The vast majority of the content one sees on Twitter comes via users with a large following.

Polling conducted in July 2020 by Ireland Thinks revealed supporters of small left-wing parties (Labour, Green, Social Democrat and Solidarity-PBP) accounted for 42% of users with more than 500 followers — vastly exceeding the 15% of the general public that supports these parties. On the other hand, Sinn Féin supporters accounted for just 6% of those with over 500 followers, while polling 30% nationally.

However, this isn’t the biggest issue. When it comes to a general election, the focus is on the undecided voter, who is interested just enough to vote, but not enough to have any strong allegiances.

The problem with social media for a political campaign is that the most intense users of social media are politically aligned and, therefore, extremely unlikely to change their views. To this end, many campaigns view social media as merely a mechanism through which to recruit volunteers to help them to contact the undecided voters on the doorstep.

However, to dismiss social media in this way makes the mistake of dismissing the media more generally.

All media has its own distortions, but nobody would dismiss the press or broadcast in terms of getting the message out or setting the agenda.

Indeed, one would never presume that merely the more articles written about a politician, the better that politician was likely to do in an election.

While social media may not be particularly useful in the constituency-by-constituency battle, it is fundamentally a core part of any party’s attempts to set the political agenda. Furthermore, it is a core part of the ambitions of future leaders.

Kevin Cunningham is a lecturer in politics at TU Dublin.

Fears that abuse may drive some to suicide

Former Independent TD for Waterford John Halligan has said he fears a future TD may be driven to take their own lives if something is not done to protect politicians from online abuse.

Mr Halligan said that because of their position in the public eye, there was a perception that politicians were somehow not subject to the same sensitivities as anyone else.

“There’s a perception that you don’t feel pain or hurt, that you don’t go to a quiet place and say, ‘Jesus, why am I getting this abuse?’,” he said.

Drawing on his own experiences, Mr Halligan said he had once received online messages from someone warning him that they had tampered with his car.

He said the issue had got worse since he left politics.

If nothing was done, he said, a vulnerable politician might consider hurting themselves.

“If you look at the abuse, and people might not like me saying this, but you look at what online abuse has done to some people, it has led to some people committing suicide,” he told Brendan O’Connor on RTÉ Radio One.

“TDs are not above ordinary people, they suffer and they have feelings and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that if something is not done, that is what might happen. That is my fear.”

Mr Halligan said his daughter thought for a time about entering politics, but reconsidered after reading and seeing interviews in which female politicians described the personalised online attacks made against them.

“This will prohibit younger people and particularly young women from coming into politics if it cannot be stopped. And to be quite frank with you, I don’t know how it can be stopped.”

Agreeing with Mr Halligan’s points, former Labour senator Lorraine Higgins spoke of the “relentless, continuous bombardment” she endured in her relatively short political career.

She said she received countless online messages threatening her with sexual violence and rape. She also received death threats.

Ms Higgins reported several incidents to gardaí, the most menacing of which ended in a suspended sentence for the perpetrator.

“I was sent videos of people shooting guns, I was told what gun they were going to shoot me with. I was told how they were going to shoot me.

“I was told they were training over a bank holiday weekend to make sure that they had their target perfected,” she said.

The former Labour senator said her parents were also threatened.

Mr Halligan said what happened and continued to happen to Ms Higgins and other female politicians was “beyond belief”.

“It will drive people out of politics and stop people entering politics,” he said.

There was a “sinister element” whose thought process was “if we can beat down a politicians one way or another, we’ll do it,” he said.

Mr Halligan and Ms Higgins called for additional supports for politicians from inside and outside the Government.

Harris happy to get his message across any way

From gardening videos on Tiktok to personal press conferences on Instagram and commentary on Line of Duty on Twitter, Simon Harris seems to have political social media sewn up.

The minister for higher education says it is “illogical and a little out of date” not to take these online platforms seriously and brushes aside claims that this type of interaction is vacuous.

“It’s a space that can’t be ignored because that’s where an awful lot of my constituents are getting a lot of their information from. I actually like using social media, particularly Instagram, I like using it and keeping in touch with people that way,” he said.

Mr Harris, who has amassed 170,000 followers on Instagram, quickly took advantage of the online platform when he moved out of the Department of Health mid-pandemic.

While the Government lectern may have been taken away from him, he has continued to provide Covid-19 updates through regular live streams on the social media site, prompting jokes that he maybe doesn’t realise that there is a new minister for health.

However, he says the reaction to his Insta stories has been hugely positive: “People liked the idea, or certainly somewhat connected with the idea that I wasn’t reading out a script or delivering a party political broadcast. I was just genuinely sharing my views, whether they were right or they were wrong, whether they agreed or disagreed with me, I was just genuinely giving my view of the day and what had happened. It’s a chance to be authentic.”

Harris, who now has
88.9k followers on TikTok after being one of the
first TDs to join the platform which allows users scroll through short, snappy
clips, knows how to
use each type of social media and to tailor his message to specific audiences.

“I do all my own tweets and I do all my own Instagram and I even do all my own TikTok now.”

While he sometimes shares insights into his personal life, including pictures of his young daughter, Mr Harris is also careful not to 'overshare' and stresses that family pictures are only posted for specific reasons such as a birthday or a special occasion.

“It’s not enough as a politician to just do things the way you used to do them.

“It used to be if you were on Morning Ireland and you got on the front page of a couple of the papers you had got your message out to everybody.

“They are all still important mediums. .. but equally you have to recognise that there some people — particularly younger but not just younger people — who get their information in different ways and look for information in different ways. I find it odd not to be on that.”

Mr Harris also finds it odd that being on social media would be criticised, but he hasn’t given up on more traditional ways of communication any time soon.

“I am a politician that uses a lot of shoe leather as well, it’s not an alternative to knocking on doors, I hold a constituency clinic every Saturday.

“So it’s an addition,
as opposed to an alternative. I do radio interviews and TV interviews and newspaper interviews, it’s an addition, not a substitution, it’s probably an important way of getting information out and to keep in touch.”

Levels of engagement with Cairns’ online presence unsurpassed

Holly Cairns is of the Bebo generation, so taking her political campaign on to social media was a natural progression.

The Social Democrat TD said: “Almost nobody walks around with a radio or newspaper in their hand all day, but everybody you find has their phone in their hand all day.”

The Cork South West politician still sees merit in more traditional forms of communication and was surprised at the impact posters had during her general election campaign.

She said that there was no way of knowing how much of a part her online presence played in getting her elected or whether she would have won the Dáil seat without it.

“You can never tell what gets you votes or what engages people,” she said.

However, with 31,000 followers on Twitter, 24,700 followers on Instagram, her own Inside the Chamber podcast and, of course, a Facebook page, it is clear that the backbench TD has a significant online reach.

She recently joined TikTok and has amassed thousands of followers, despite only posting two videos so far.

“I got 5,500 over the weekend without me even looking at it”, said Ms Cairns, whose following on the video-sharing site has increased by another 1,000 since.

“I don’t know if you can actually get that level of engagement from any other form of media.

“I don’t know, but when you are putting up Instagram stories and they’re getting over 10,000 views, hundreds of thousands of reactions and you can see how many engagements you have on a Facebook post, I have no idea but I suspect you reach far more people through social media.”

Ms Cairns, who often appears on current affairs TV and radio shows, said there were benefits to using these traditionally trusted media online.

She doesn’t go in for gimmicky posts and instead uses contributions from the Dáil, again sharing more traditional parts of the job with a new online world.

“It’s great content. Content from TV programmes is effective.

“Sharing clips from, for example, The Tonight Show or The Week in Politics is good because people can see that it’s TV, but they don’t have to actually tune into RTÉ or Virgin at 10pm,” Ms Cairns said.

She also believes social media helps new candidates to gain a profile and she said online campaigning was used extensively by the Social Democrat’s candidates during last year’s general election.

“We didn’t have that on the ground campaign like other parties did, so we kind of had an air campaign — a lot of it on social media and that was really effective.

“So it’s definitely a strength to have and I definitely would encourage people to use it,” she said.

“It feels like an obvious platform to me. I grew up with it, so age would be an advantage in that I guess, being of a younger generation.

“But there is no replacing the newspaper and radio, it’s just a nice addition,” she said.

Chu: Social media a crucial add-on

Hazel Chu has had her fair share of nasty trolls, but she still sees the positive side of social media.

“There was once upon a time I would have said ‘you don’t feed the trolls no matter what’, but then having experienced the last couple of years that I’ve had, there are some you should definitely not feed, and then there are others you should just call out,” she says.

“I have definitely used social media to my advantage and it has helped in a lot of ways, it has been an issue in other ways, but it definitely has helped.”

The current lord mayor of Dublin and Green Party chair has been attacked over her gender and has received racial abuse online, but she has learnt to face the bullies head on.

Ms Chu says she does not block anyone, which she admits may be an “added problem” for her.

While many politicians see social media as a tool to get their message out, Ms Chu also uses online platforms as a way of gathering information herself.

For example, she said members of a Facebook page have been a massive help with a breastfeeding campaign she is working on.

“I can talk to people on that group, and find out their views and actually connect with them. Through that group I’ve been able to connect with a few of the more organised breastfeeding advocacy groups like Bainne Beatha and Friends of Breastfeeding.

“I find that kind of engagements really good through the likes of Facebook,” the politician says.

She uses Twitter differently and sees that as a place to seek out news or ask for assistance with particular issues from her 46,200 followers.

“For Twitter, what I’ve noticed what works really well if you have an ask for something or if you are requesting help with something, Twitter tends to be very reactive that way.”

Meanwhile, Instagram is more of a personal platform and she tends to share pictures of her family or behind-the-scenes snippets of her life in the Mansion House.

Since becoming lord mayor, she has also started up her ‘Chu and chats’ sessions — a lunchtime online get-together which is aimed at encouraging public interaction at a time when face-to-face meetings and visits cannot go ahead.

However, she says she is not yet brave enough to join TikTok, claiming, “I don’t dance that well”.

While Ms Chu still believes a person could get elected without being on social media platforms, she says being engaged with an online audience certainly makes it a lot easier.

“I think it’s a crucial add-on now insofar as you can dismiss it, but you will have to work harder somewhere else if you don’t use it.

“I know a lot of people go: ‘Oh it’s just social media, people shouldn’t use it or should ignore and it’s not that important’, but there’s a reason why the likes of Simon Harris are on it, it connects to a different group of people and it’s also that instant form of communication as well.”

Eoin’s cooking posts not to everyone’s taste

Social media can be very fickle place, as Eoin Ó Broin learned when he prompted a very crabby response to a picture of one of his home-cooked meals.

The Sinn Féin TD put out a picture of the spider crabs he had purchased from a seafood wholesaler during the lockdown, adding that he was planning on having them with a Jerez sherry and cream sauce.

“For those that don’t buy crab, it’s a very cheap fish which is one of the great things about it, and I cooked a lovely stuffed crab and I put it up and I got this kind of blizzard of abuse,” he said of the incident.

The Dublin Mid-West TD who has 41,900 followers on Twitter, knows the power of social media, but also isn’t afraid to have fun with it and get into discussions about cooking, books he has read, and more recently Irish hip-hop music.

He also recognises that what works for social media won’t necessarily translate to television, radio, or newspapers in the same way, saying elected representatives also have to take a different approach to each platform they use.

For example, the Sinn Féin spokesman on housing says Facebook is used as an online constituency office by many voters and so his content matches this.

“Those of us who would be very active on social media, we use different platforms differently.

“Facebook is increasingly a form of communication directly with your voters.

“So I would get a lot of people contacting me via Facebook, particularly through Facebook Messenger, who are constituents, particularly people in their 40s and 50s using Facebook to contact you about constituency work that they want you to get involved with. The kind of people that follow me on Facebook, in general, are more likely to be constituency.”

Mr Ó Broin says broadcasting via Facebook and Instagram is a great way of communicating with voters and supporters — short and to the point is key.

On his feed, you will find the famous pictures of home-cooked meals — such as a tasty looking West Cork shrimp omelette and some sort of slow-cooked lamb dish.

However, Mr Ó Broin also uses his social media page to update his 3,130 Instagram followers on any media appearances or work he is doing as part of his role as Sinn Féin housing spokesperson.

“The challenge of Instagram is it’s much more personal, and it’s much more visual. So I say I’m not as proficient in terms of using that tool to engage.”

When it comes to Twitter he says it’s mainly used as a tool by other politicians, journalists, party members, and political analysts and anoraks.

It’s also very good for news and information and keeping up with tallies and results during election counts.

“Twitter is a platform I really like. If I wasn’t a TD, I probably wouldn’t be on Facebook whereas I would remain on Twitter.”

Thankfully, the abuse over his lavish crab dinner hasn’t put him off and he has since promoted more Irish produce and cooking.

“It’s not necessarily politics with a big-P, it’s just I like to cook and I put it up on Twitter for a bit of craic, it hasn’t done me any harm and you are promoting some local businesses.” he says.

Social media ab-solutely essential now

As a backbencher social media is the only way of getting noticed according to Richard Bruton who almost followed in the footsteps of Kim Kardashian in breaking the internet last summer.

The Fine Gael TD is not as devoted to his online platforms as some of his colleagues, but he likes to dabble online with entertaining cook-along videos and, of course, the now famous swimming clip.

The online video displaying his impressive abs, has been viewed almost 378,000 times since he posted it last July.

The 68-year-old says he was “amazed” at how the post, which highlighted the cultural and tourist pleasures of his north Dublin constituency, took off.

“I have been swimming and cycling for 40 years but when it went into a package like that it suddenly became a story. But it was just a bit of fun.”

He adds: “What I like about it is you can show a wider dimension of your personality than you can on the television or radio.”

Mr Bruton easily got media attention as a minister in the last government but he says social media for backbench TDs like himself can be the only way to raise a point.

“The only way a backbencher can be noticed is by building up some sort of a level of influence in what they have to say.

“It’s very very hard and you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times a backbencher puts out a conventional statement that gets coverage, unless it’s reacting to some story that’s happening.

“It’s very hard to initiate anything in traditional media, so your only chance if you’re an outsider trying to break in or an apprentice, is to initiate things of your own to get noticed. So I think it’s an essential part of political life,” he said.

The move to social media has been a significant departure for the TD who was first elected to Meath County Council in 1979 before becoming a senator in 1981.

“When I started in politics there were the three dailies [newspapers], and they recorded what was going on in the Dáil, there were three or four pages devoted in each of the three dailies on what happened in the Dáil, like the notion of that happening today is so far from the reality,” says Mr Bruton.

He believes we have not yet fully figured out the parameters for using these platforms and more oversight will be required in the future.

“There is a huge amount of change going on and I don’t think we as a community have fully caught up with it.

“It’s very interesting area and I think everyone is groping along wondering how we will manage it all.”

While he says the internet and social media can be a “powerful tool” these platforms will never replace more traditional methods of communication.

“I still am a big believer of knocking on doors. It’s the only way of really talking to people,” he says.

Scenic walks, dress-up, pets, and children a hit

Some members of the upper House are getting inventive with social media, from clips of scenic walks, to dress-up, and pictures of their pets and children.

Eugene Murphy

The Roscommon senator documents his daily scenic walks with puppy in tow on social media.

“I think it brings joy to people when they see nature. There is so much negativity around so I think it’s important to give a bit of light and bring a feel-good factor to people,” he said.

The Fianna Fáil politician is relatively new to social media, but has become hooked on creating uplifting content for his followers.

“I now actually go out in the evening time looking for nice things to post, like the sun setting on Sliabh Bawn,” he said.

“If I was out of politics in the morning, I would still do it. For me, it’s not about using it for political pointscoring, I hope I bring a little bit of joy and happiness.”

Annie Hoey

Lots of people dress up for Halloween, but Labour senator Annie Hoey took it one step further by doing a whole month of online dress-up. The first-time senator went viral when she started posting pictures of her dress-up each day.

She went to work co-ordinating her outfits with that of famous cartoon and real-life characters, including Barney the dinosaur, Kermit the Frog, Aladdin, and Kim Kardashian.

Martin Conway

The Fine Gael senator has used the pandemic to raise awareness around disability and to show off some stunning Co Clare beaches as part of his fitness regime.

“When the pandemic hit, I made a very conscious decision that I was not going to distribute newsletters in my constituency.

“I wasn’t going to attend any events, even socially distanced events, and I wasn’t going to hold clinics.

“So I had to look at the options available to me to keep in contact.

“I would have embraced social media in that perspective.”

However, being visually impaired means screentime can be difficult and it puts extra strain on his eyes.

While online platforms can provide greater access to politicians, he says they are restrictive to others who may have a disability or literacy problems.

“There are a lot good elements to social media, but there are also bad elements and the trolling of people can be terrible.

“The other thing about it, it is time-consuming and the break-up of your time is very different now,” he said.

Catherine Ardagh

The Fianna Fáil senator gave birth to twin boys just days before last year’s general election campaign kicked off, and often gives an honest insight of how she juggles politics and motherhood.

She describes herself as an “Irish mammy” who “likes to use Twitter to amplify amazing women in all walks of life”.

However, it is the two little men in her life who regularly steal the show on her social media pages. Her cat Piper is also a big hit.