Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
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| Fr. Patrick Mulemi S.J Deputy Director of Loyola Television in Lusaka, Zambia |
“If you are not on social media you don’t exist,” Fr. Patrick Mulemi S.J. the Deputy Director of Loyola Television in Lusaka, Zambia, told communication directors drawn from AMECEA conferences during his facilitation and added, “In this time and age social media is a tool that is quite appropriate and we cannot ignore its use.”
Highlighting the goals and mission of using social media as channels of communication in the Church Fr. Mulemi said, “These tools help us introduce the Church to the public, we may take it for granted that the public knows about the Church, but it is our responsibility to help the public understand who the Church is,” and so the use of “social media in this current age will help us fulfil this mission.”
“Through social media we are also able to gather information on what people say about us,” said Fr Mulemi who served as director of communications during the previous Chapter of the Society of Jesus (S.J) in Rome, adding, “Communication is a two-way process, so through social media we also receive from our recipients their reactions about the Church and this is very important.”
“When information is posted on social media, you will get all the positive and negative comments,” he said and acknowledged, “Social media therefore provides us a platform that helps us get feedback which we need for the growth of the Church.”
Reminding the eleven communication participants from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia that social media influence user’s actions and beliefs Fr. Mulemi said, “The young people are influenced through social media in various ways… it is through these tools they get to learn some of the things they do.”
“Therefore social media is the place we need to be at the moment to talk about the Church if we need to influence the opinion and behaviour of young people and even older people because they too use social media,” The Jesuit cleric emphasised.
While speaking about positive impact of social media as a tool for evangelisation, he noted that communication coordinators should be cognizant of the negative effect the same media can cause to the Church.
“It is very easy for us to loose integrity through social media,” Fr. Mulemi disclosed to participants and narrated further, “When using social medial networks, we need to learn how to package our messages to ensure consistency across platforms and ensure that the brand of the Church retains its integrity.”
“The Church is a brand like any other brand, we need visual identity and we have the responsibility to protect this brand as we ask ourselves, the goal of our communication,” The cleric expounded.
The three-day meeting held at Zambia’s capital Lusaka brought together Communication Coordinators and other Coordinators from the Promotion of Integral Human Development departments from the AMECEA region where the departments had some joint forums and other forums conducted separately.