Independents’ Day? Political Campaigning on Social Media in the 2022 Australian Federal Election
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Paper by Axel Bruns, Ehsan Dehghan, Daniel Angus, Nadia Jude, and Phoebe Matich presented at the ECREA 2022 pre-conference "Digital Election Campaigning Worldwide", Aarhus, 19 Oct. 2022.
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Independents’ Day? Political Campaigning on Social Media in the 2022 Australian Federal Election
- 1. CRICOS No.00213J Independents’ Day? Political Campaigning on Social Media in the 2022 Australian Federal Election Axel Bruns, Ehsan Dehghan, Daniel Angus, Nadia Jude, and Phoebe Matich Digital Media Research Centre Queensland University of Technology a.bruns@qut.edu.au – @snurb_dot_info
- 4. CRICOS No.00213J Australian Politics since 2007 • Instability: • First PM to last a full term since 2007 • Extreme importance of opinion polls for internal party politics • Deep divisions between factions within Labor and Liberal parties • PM Morrison survived mainly because there are few genuine leadership contenders left in the Liberal partyroom (https://www.9news.com.au/national/aus tralias-main-national-sport-is-leadership- spills-according-to-wikipedia/0b3e8ed0- d0e8-4522-863a-ce650a72706d)
- 5. CRICOS No.00213J Time for Change? • The Late Late Show: • Election called on 11 April 2022 • Election day is 21 May 2022 • Why so late? • Parliamentary terms not entirely fixed • Prime Minister sets the election date • Usually set to maximise re-election chances • In this case, hoping for any kind of late change to the opinion polls (https://www.pollbludger.net/fed2022/bludgertrack2022/)
- 6. CRICOS No.00213J • Key features: • Three(ish)-year terms • Bicameral system: • House of Representatives (151 seats, local electorates) • Senate (76 seats, half(ish)-senate elected each election, 12 per State / 2 per Territory) • Compulsory voting: ~97% of eligible Australians enrolled; potential fines for non-participation • Preferential voting system (House of Reps): • Lowest-ranked candidates eliminated, votes redistributed to next preferred candidate • Strongly favours major party candidates: usually receive preferences from minor parties Australia’s Political System
- 7. CRICOS No.00213J Parties and Independents • Major parties: • Permanent Coalition of Liberal Party (neo-liberal), National Party (agrarian protectionist), Liberal National Party (merger between the two, Queensland), Country Liberal Party (Northern Territory) • Labor Party (broadly progressive) • Minor parties: • Greens (progressive) • Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party (far right) • Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (populist protest party) • Various micro-parties • Independent candidates: • Including ‘teal independents’ (liberal), loosely organised and supported by Climate 200 initiative (https://www.climate200.com.au/)
- 8. CRICOS No.00213J • Australia in 2022: • Long list of grievances against the government: pork-barrelling and misuse of funds; climate inaction and 2020 bushfires; slow vaccine and RAT roll-outs; misdirected COVID assistance; sexual abuse in Parliament; French submarines; China relations; etc. • Prime Minister Scott Morrison seen as out of touch, unreliable, a liar, a misogynist • Ministers accused of sexual abuse, historical rape, misuse of funds, lying • Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese seen as inexperienced, uninspiring • Labor seen as divided, untrustworthy, unstable, radical • (‘Teal’) Independents seen as strong local voices or Liberals / Labor in disguise • … plus evidence of electoral mis- and disinformation circulation The Vibe (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-07/clive-palmer-united- australia-party-election-spending-influence/100973064) (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-25/behind-the- candidates-for-palmers-united-party-election/100858058)
- 11. CRICOS No.00213J Social Media Analysis • Organic social media data, from 4 April 2022 to 20 May (i.e. excluding election day): • Twitter: tweets by / at all identified candidate accounts (same as 2013/2016/2019 elections) • Facebook: posts and engagement metrics for all identified candidate pages • (account identification process supported by Twitter-funded project, led by Ehsan Dehghan) • Advertising data: • PoliDashboard, gathering political ads from Facebook Ad Library (led by the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University) • Australian Ad Observatory data donation project, gathering ads from participants’ Facebook newsfeeds (ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society) • Election Ad Data Dashboard, gathering Facebook Ad Library spend data (University of Queensland)
- 16. CRICOS No.00213J
- 17. CRICOS No.00213J Discussion of the candidates Climate change Corruption / misappropriation of public funds Critique of the media for overtly biased campaign coverage that was disproportionately favourable towards the Coalition (incumbent), and that was also silencing voices of minor parties and independents • Discussion of the candidates, • Climate change • Corruption / misappropriation of public funds • Critique of the media for overtly biased campaign coverage that was disproportionately favourable towards the Coalition (incumbent), and that was also silencing voices of minor parties and independents. Voices directed towards candidates on Twitter
- 22. CRICOS No.00213J Facebook Ad Spend per Day (https://election-ad-data.uq.edu.au/)
- 23. Lower House Seats – Top 5 Meta Spend
- 25. CRICOS No.00213J Facebook, Twitter, … and Beyond (https://theconversation.com/facebook-youtube-games-and-grindr- what-we-know-about-online-ads-in-the-federal-election-182137) (https://twitter.com/earleyedition/status/1517020734928785408)
- 27. CRICOS No.00213J So What Happened? • Key observations: • Limited willingness to amplify Coalition messaging on Facebook, even less on Twitter • On Facebook, engagement patterns broadly followed eventual results • Very active campaigns by Labor, Independents, Greens • Facebook ad spending works (Teal Independents: strong, local, female – white – faces), … • … until it doesn’t (Queensland Senate: unpopular right-wing and protest party candidates) • Experimentation with new platforms for key target groups (Grindr) • Quirks of the electoral system provide more seats for Independents (10) than Greens (4), despite percentage shares of the popular vote (Independents: 5.3%; Greens: 12.2%)
- 28. CRICOS No.00213J Weekly updates at https://research.qut.edu.au /dmrc/tag/election/ @socialmediaQUT – http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au/ @qutdmrc – https://research.qut.edu.au/dmrc/ This research is supported by Australian Laureate Fellowship project “Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate”, the ARC Discovery project “Evaluating the Challenge of 'Fake News' and Other Malinformation”, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, and the Development, Institutions, and Public Policy Research Group. Facebook data courtesy of CrowdTangle. PoliDashboard courtesy of the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University. Election Ad Data Dashboard by the University of Queensland. Thank you!
Editor's Notes
- Top bigrams (taking note that post frequency is uneven across parties), for the candidate’s own Twitter accounts. On issues of policy, climate change is prominent for all parties except for the Liberal and National Parties who have avoided talking about this substantial and pressing existential issue throughout their campaign. That the Coalition is avoiding this issue not surprising given that it is a source of significant internal party tension, and that their woeful record on this issue is placing pressure on traditionally safe inner-city Liberal seats where ‘teal’ Independents and the Greens offer credible alternatives. On the topic of the Independents and minor parties like the Greens, there is a significant push on topics surrounding balance of power, and a rejection of the major parties, placing themselves in a position to pick up protest votes from disgruntled voters.
- Bigrams again, from Candidates own Twitter accounts, but this time to understand topic focus and how it has ebbed and flowed. While much of this messaging has remained consistent throughout the campaign, issues relating to cost of living, and in particular interest rates have featured late in the campaign. While the Coalition have framed much of their online advertising campaign through the lens of the economy, this may have begun to backfire given the interest rate rise decision made by the independent Reserve Bank of Australia mid-way through the campaign. Labor in particular shifted to strongly focus on interest rates, cost of living pressure, and wage stagnation in these last two weeks.
- The top 5 seats (in terms of total Meta spend) for the campaign were: Kooyong, Wentworth, North Sydney, Mackellar, and Hume. The significance of these five seats is that they are all seats where ‘teal’ Independents ran well-resourced campaigns against incumbent Liberal MPs (fig. 2). Of the 5 all but incumbent Angus Taylor were able to hold their seats. Here we see the successful challenges from the ‘Teal’ Independents. Qualitatively, the Teal’s focussed on positive messaging around key issues of measures against corruption, action on climate change, and local voice and representation. Their Liberal counterparts however went low, running scare ads designed to sow doubt regarding the integrity and intentions of their independent challengers, that they were unknown and perhaps being financed in some shadowy conspiratorial manner, ironic given that most of the LNP’s own funding derives from ethically compromised industries such as fossil fuel, and the banking/finance industry (which was the subject of a major national inquiry for a series of significant regulatory breaches and unethical conduct).
- One of the hottest Senate races was in our home state of Queensland, with a total spend on Meta of around $343,000. It is in this state that a rogue’s gallery of far-right populists were vying for a Senate seat. Interestingly the biggest spenders on Meta advertising proved to also be the big losers here.