ECREA 2022

Independents’ Day? Political Campaigning on Social Media in the 2022 Australian Federal Election

Axel Bruns, Ehsan Dehghan, Daniel Angus, Nadia Jude, and Phoebe Matich

• 19 Oct. 2022 – Paper presented at the ECREA 2022 pre-conference "Digital Election Campaigning Worldwide", Aarhus

Presentation Slides

Abstract

The Australian federal election on 21 May 2022 follows a period of near-constant turmoil involving major bushfires and floods, the COVID-19 pandemic, the sexual abuse of staff in federal parliament, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and Chinese military encroachment on Australia’s zone of influence in the South Pacific – all of which the incumbent conservative government has been accused of mismanaging. Yet it also marks a return to political stability, with Scott Morrison emerging as the first Prime Minister since 2007 to seek re-election – his four predecessors were each replaced by their own parties before they could complete a full term in office (one by Morrison himself), following unfavourable opinion polls.

But Morrison’s ability to retain power for a full term has more to do with a lack of credible leadership alternatives in his own party and a similar weakness in the opposition Labor Party than with his own, and his government’s, popularity, which has declined precipitously since 2019. In 2022, therefore, he and his MPs face a challenge not only from their traditional opponents on the left, but also from a new, loosely organised group of independent candidates representing socially progressive yet pro-business politics, with strong ties to their local electorates. More than 20 of these candidates are financially supported by Climate 200, a group founded by Australian entrepreneur and ‘climate philanthropist’ Simon Holmes à Court. It is distinctly possible that these independents could hold the balance of power in the next federal parliament.

This paper investigates the use of social media in the 2022 Australian federal election, with a particular focus on the campaigning styles of and popular responses to this group of independents. We evaluate their activities on Facebook and Twitter, assess the engagement with other users that such activities produce, and analyse the Facebook ad targeting undertaken by these candidates themselves and ancillary groups from Climate 200 to the fossil fuel lobby. Against the backdrop of the election results themselves, we explore whether the independents’ campaign produced the ‘tectonic shift’ it envisaged, and to what extent social media campaigning contributed to this.