You’re clearly comfortable talking about your faith, but also a prolific user of social media. How do you use it, and what platforms do you use? I’m on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. I use them differently. I am very comfortable about ‘being my faith’ because I decided it’s very hard to hide behind it when you’re in The Salvation Army. Facebook, I use an awful lot – it’s funny – it’s a really personal thing, but an informative thing as well. I find it really informative. I find that I can have incredible conversations, but also find that there are people who can just use it as a place to moan. I’ve made a concerted decision that I wouldn’t use it as a place to moan and to moan about situations. I decided that, genuinely, a lot of people use Facebook as a distraction. So I want to make sure that when they see something I’ve put on, it’s going to be a positive post. That can be comedy, that can be a silly meme, that can be a story. But I try to use it as a place that’s just encouragement as much for me, because I do have friends, and accountability partners and prayer partners. So if I need to get rid of any frustration, I can tell them. But that’s a private thing. As much as anything, yes, my life is public. I mean someone once said to me ‘you are prolific in Facebook’, and I said ‘yeah, but if you just type my name into Google, you’ll see hundreds of articles written by The Salvation Army’. So there’s no point in me trying to hide. I love Twitter for catching up on soundbites, and use that much more as a professional thing. I’ll often use that to pick up on bits and pieces – a good way to follow politicians as they have to say something in a short space of time, rather than a longwinded thing. It’s been quite funny – I went, in the UK, to a hustings a couple of elections ago, and I’d been following our candidates. I asked a question at the hustings and the first thing the candidate said was ‘you’re the person on Twitter who asked me that question’. I’ve found it’s given me the chance to connect with politicians and people of different influence in a safe way – for them and me. So that’s that. And then Instagram… I have an absolute passion for photography, and I tend to use Instagram as well to give people just a glimpse of what I was doing in England, in the UK; part of my work, but also my life. And also part of what we do in Italy. Everyone has an image of Rome and every city you go to. It’s good to be able to show opposite sides of that city. Like the area of Rome we live in at the moment is filthy – it’s dirty. I don’t care – that doesn’t worry me. It’s also a Communist area – that doesn’t worry me. It’s full of students – that doesn’t worry me. But it’s full of everyday people. But I think it gives another option as to what Italy’s like as a place. So part of what you use social media for is to dispel people’s preconceptions of a situation or place? Yeah. And I think about a population. When people say to me ‘when you first came to Italy what was your theory?’ I used to say ‘pizza, pasta and the Mafia’. And I wasn’t far wrong to be honest with you! The first three months I was in Italy, I was at kids’ camps, and I ate pasta at lunch and dinner time – twice a day! And then pizza on a Saturday.
Putting Your Faith in Social Media
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