“We want to be careful that the notion of cyber bullying exists in any circumstance. In terms of how people relate to politicians, politicians are fair game to be criticised on policies, on their actions, whether they’ve acted hypocritically.
What’s needed isn’t regulation I think, it’s a kind of an etiquette. There are areas that people shouldn’t stray into: comments about family life, personal comments about appearance or whether people are corrupt or not and that’s where the dangers arise.
But…for instance, I find it difficult to find out where the justified anger is? There is..people have plenty of reasons to be angry. But some of it are people looking for someone to be angry at and if you make yourself available that causes some of it.
And some of it are people acting in a partisan, political way. Some political parties actually have units and they ring in to radio programmes, they send in texts, they go on social media, to try to influence the agenda for themselves.”
Dan Boyle (above) on RTE’s Frontline last night.
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