In the days before the camera phone, the rules around “doorstepping” were simple. The broadcast media, equipped with expensive and unwieldy TV cameras, would occasionally follow a politician or public figure down the street.

Questions would be directed at them, usually about an issue of general public interest. Typically reporters would only resort to the “doorstep” after a period of time in which the individual had sought to avoid answering the questions or addressing the issue by a more formal channel such as questions emailed directly or through a spokesperson.

The doorstep footage would then be edited and broadcast.

Nowadays anyone in possession of a smartphone and a social media account can conduct a doorstep and have that footage streamed instantly to millions of viewers.

Enoch Burke and members of his Co Mayo-based family have used the doorstep technique extensively over recent years. The family are well known for their Christian evangelical and socially conservative views, the assertive manner in which they express them, primarily in public protests, and their legal entanglements in court.

The schoolteacher claims he has been unlawfully dismissed from Wilson’s Hospital school in Co Westmeath after refusing to follow a direction to refer to a student by a different pronoun. He has been imprisoned and faced heavy fines for continuing to turn up at the school in breach of court orders.

[ Security employed