Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she often feels misunderstood by journalists, telling 612 that the 24-hour news cycle means there is "more schlock, more horror" in the media.

Ms Gillard has also shared her tips on social media etiquette, saying her mother's advice never to write to someone in anger had taught her "tweet at haste, repent at leisure".

Asked by 612 ABC Brisbane Mornings presenter Steve Austin if she could name a particular event where she and her government had been completely misunderstood, Ms Gillard laughed and joked, "Oh how long have you got? We'll be here all day!"

She said the media coverage of the recent resignation of two senior ministers, Nicola Roxon and Chris Evans, had been "absurd".

"Two wonderfully competent ministers who have decided to go and do something else with their lives, seamlessly replaced by two fantastically competent ministers. And this is written as crisis. Like, excuse me?

"I'm sure that every day here at the ABC you hear about someone... who's decided, 'I've loved my job at the ABC, I've been here 10, 15, 20 years and now I'm going to go and do x and guess what, Sally's got the promotion'.

"And you all go, 'it's sad to lose Bill, but Sally will be fantastic'. And does anybody write up, 'gee, the ABC's in crisis, Bill's gone!'... So that [coverage of the resignations] was complete silliness."

Ms Gillard said the growing focus on personalities over policy was not limited to Australia, but was part of a global trend for more news, delivered through more competing media outlets.

"I think there is a lot in this time of change in the media industry that pushes the cycle towards more schlock, more horror. And I think we tend to look at this as if it's about us and about Australia and about today's politics here. Actually, it's about a change across the world in the media industry.

"Even you and I today, we've had a picture taken so you can tweet it, there's a TV camera here. More and more content... And that means you need more and more drama, or you can't sustain it. So even the simplest things get puffed up in a way that's really pretty absurd."

The Prime Minister has around 350,000 followers of her @juliagillard Twitter account - only around a third of her predecessor and prolific tweeter, Kevin Rudd, whose @KRuddMP profile has nearly 1.2 million followers.

Ms Gillard says social media platforms such as Twitter can be "a fantastic way of engaging people" - but that "there are some things that are too serious and too weighty to be dealt with by Twitter".

"I joked with you before, you cannot put your whole strategy for the war in Afghanistan in 100-and-something characters. Some things require bigger engagements than that.

"But I think Twitter, those things... At their best, they're a new way of enlivening conversation in our democracy; at their worst, they're just terrible, anonymous ways of putting vile things about people out in the public domain. I hope it ends up that the good ends up overwhelming the bad."

Offering her tips for reluctant social media users - including Steve Austin - the Prime Minister said that old-fashioned advice was often the best.

"My mum would say something like 'if you're going to write a letter in anger, put it aside, read it again 24 hours later and then think about whether or not you want to put it in the postbox'," Ms Gillard said.

"I think for the Twitter world, there certainly is a [saying]: 'tweet in haste, repent at leisure'. You know, maybe if you're really steamed up, put it aside, come back to it later."

Listen to Steve Austin's full interview with Prime Minister Julia Gillard here.