By Emilie Ng
CATHOLICS struggling to navigate social media for the Church can find Scripture-based inspiration in a new book by journalist Beth Doherty.
Commissioned by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, “Tweet others as you wish to be tweeted”, is a beginner’s guide to social media and an attempt to highlight the good work of the Internet.
Wollongong Bishop Peter Ingham inspired the book’s title after encouraging delegates at a Proclaim Conference to “tweet others as you wish to be tweeted”, making reference to social media website, Twitter and Luke 6:32, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
The book was launched at the Australian Catholic Communications Congress on May 5 by Pontifical Council for Social Communications president Archbishop Claudio Celli.
Ms Doherty, who has worked for the ACBC since 2009, said she wrote the book to disarm fear about using social media for the first time.
“It tries to encourage people to not be afraid to try [social media] and once people do, they realise that it’s quite intuitive,” she said.
Ms Doherty said Catholics who wished to use social media “should do something well”.
“With social media it doesn’t take a lot, as it’s not expensive to do something well; it’s not expensive to have a nice website,” she said.
“But so many people sometimes just do it really badly because they think it doesn’t really matter or you need thousands of dollars to pay a graphic designer.”
On the contrary, Ms Doherty said Catholics should put effort into making websites and other social media material “beautiful” by using engaging photography and simple designs.
Each chapter explains social media in light of a Scripture passage, and includes simple instructions on starting a Twitter and Facebook account.
Readers can also learn more about crowd-funding websites such as Kickstarter or Go Fund Me, as an alternative way to raise funds for various missions or projects.
Ms Doherty wrote the book while visiting religious communities in the Amazon jungle, Peru and Paraguay, and completed it at her home in Canberra.
“Tweet others as you wish to be tweeted” is part of the resources available for parishes ahead of World Communications Day, celebrated in Australian dioceses today (May 17).
The resources can be found at www.worldcommunicationsday.org.au.
The book can be purchased on Amazon or at the ACBC website, www.catholic.org.au.
