“There is an important conversation going on in social media and we are not listening,” Austria's Patrick Swanson told the Media2020 conference this week.

Don't ignore those who are criticising you on social media, urged Swanson, “you have to counter the haters and propagandist critics on social media to stay relevant in this new media age,” said the 27 year old social media journalist.

He told the story of criticism of the national broadcaster's coverage of riots in Austria.

Critics said the broadcaster was ignoring them for political reasons. They were getting hammered for bias, but that was not true.

“We researched our archives and looked into how many times we had covered these riots… it turned out is was a lot, we had 12 stories on these riots… so we decided to turn it around.

“We made a 2 minute video where we cut all these 12 stories together and put it on facebook, saying we had some critical comments but maybe you would like to see this video… we have covered this.

“Within an hour there was silence, the criticism stopped… we had re-established credibility…

“80% of young people don't trust media, we should all be doing something about that,” said Swanson.