 So hello, my name is Billy Phillips. I'm the communications officer for international IDU in the Asia and the Pacific region I'm joined on the sidelines of ANU's Upser Conference by Professor Andrea Carson of La Trobe University And we're here to talk about digital campaigning and democracy Professor Carson, thanks so much for joining us. What can you tell us about digital campaigning and why should democracy defenders have it on our radar? Great to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Digital campaigning is fairly broad It's any sort of political communication that occurs by political parties or by Governments or political actors and even third party campaigners About political messages during election campaigns that happens in the online space So we can think about things like Facebook could be paid advertising like Facebook ads it can be very targeted with Messages and posts that are in the free media space But it can also be the use of databases in order to do that targeting Which might also include automated behaviors such as bot activity in other countries beyond Australia It can occur in more closed spaces such as encrypted sites like WhatsApp We're sharing of messages between friends where political parties and other actors infiltrate those spaces and send out messages about the campaigns Whatever the method is and whichever platform it's used on the purpose of it is to try to persuade and to mobilize voters To be supportive of whoever's doing the messaging. Yeah, that makes sense So the title of the report you've co-authored with international idea is a new age for an old problem What does that mean exactly? Well, what we recognize is that while digital campaigning is relatively new and is a function of the internet era What isn't new is how money gets spent on political campaigns and the ways that governments deal with the way that money is spent So for example over time there's been a lack of transparency about who's spending what and how much is being spent And there's been a lack of accountability in some countries So the voters don't really get to see how much money is swirling around in politics and the reason we've called the report a New age a new age for an old problem is because these are foundational problems that are probably Amplified in the digital era. Yeah, so would it be fair to say then that perhaps a lot of voters don't even know They're being influenced by digital campaign when they're kind of living within a political campaign Oh, I think that's absolutely true to say Political actors can be really good at campaigning in ways that build on personal narratives So you might see a story about a politician talking about Their wedding or about their son's first birthday and it feels like a heartwarming story We don't necessarily as voters or citizens instantly think we're being targeted with a political message here All these stories are there to try and indeed voters towards particular Politicians and political candidates. Yeah, that makes sense. So one of the particular risks then to democracy or an election campaign period Add its transparency and legitimacy. What are those risks associated with a digital campaign versus traditional campaign? Well, there's some pros and cons on one hand digital media Can be an equalizer because it doesn't cost much. You only need an internet connection to be able to Provide these messages and send them out. So it feels like in that way it flattens the playing field However, what we also know is that political parties and some candidates for established parties have a lot More money at their disposal so they can buy databases. They can do greater targeting They can reach voters at a much higher level than those that don't have the funds And this is what this report does is look at the connection between digital campaigning and political finance Who's got the money? How's it being spent and what regulations are in place to make sure that at the end of this The voter has an understanding of how they're being targeted and who's paying for it Yeah, so in terms of then regulations which you mentioned what kind of regulations or interventions should Electoral management bodies or policy makers more broadly really be implementing or having a real conversation about implementing So that's a great question. This report looks at the Asia Pacific region So lots of different countries and of course that means that we don't have uniform regulations in place And there's obvious gaps across the region. Some companies countries are better at Providing upper limits on spending and having greater transparency of reporting measures so that political parties have to document What they're spending money on? Other countries are not so good at that. So we're seeing inconsistencies across the region What would be ideal is to have more consistency across the region and to aim for accountability and transparency So that voters get in a timely manner an idea of how much money parties are spending on targeting them And sending out these messages and that they're accountable for it that there's not loopholes where it might be filtered through a third party So that they're not obliged to report it. Yeah, so speaking of voters having access to this information Would it be fair to say that maybe media are a little bit behind the eight ball here and reporting to voters What actually is digital campaigning and how political financing can be swaying their vote? It's a really important point because professional media are a conduit to Provide a space to give information to voters most voters are pretty Well citizens are busy. They're raising families and they're doing their jobs And so they're relying on the shortcut of the media to bring this information to them And if the media is unable to perform that role for a number of reasons Which might be because the regulations are not in place to provide Measurements of how much campaign Finance is being spent on digital campaigning then they can't bring that information to voters to make an informed choice at the ballot box Yeah So we've just had a pretty contentious election here in australia Um, would it be fair to say digital campaigning was highly utilized by The two major parties and the kind of independence and third party being the greens or we're not quite sure yet to what extent It's been really adopted by parties here in australia We probably look at third parties more as trade unions rather than the greens, which is a minor party And you're right. Um, australia has a really high uptake in digital campaigning and that's been building Since probably 2007 when kevin ride was the first australian politician to get over a million followers on twitter and it's been building since by 2013 studies had shown that all federal australian politicians had a facebook presence and now It would be uncommon for them not to be putting messages out on multiple platforms instagram facebook Trying to reach different sections of voters because we know younger people tend to be on instagram or snapchat and so the Politicians want to reach those voters But they also want to reach older voters so they might go for older women Aiming through facebook because they know that's that demographic Uh, the digital uptake is really high in australia for both parties And parties are getting very good at using different types of messaging to be able to make their messages attractive So we see memes and cartoon activity. We see videos And it alternates between each election who's best at this. So for example in 2019 scott morrison and the coalition We're doing a lot more video content than what labor was And one might think that Help them with that victory in 2019 where scott morrison had a very low user base That had much greater digital reach than what bill shorten did in the 2019 election Fast forward to 2022. We saw the reverse. We saw labor doing much more video Working across the different platforms and getting greater reach than the coalition did So does digital campaigning work? Well, we need better measures on that to be able to tell But it looks from just the usage and the prevalence that those that do more of it And spend more money on it tend to have electoral success Yeah, so they tend to have electoral success But we're not quite ready to make a call yet to where there are high spend definitely results in a big impact Well part of the problem there is that we don't have Enough transparency. There's no reporting obligations for the parties to say how much The spending on their political ads or their messaging and how they're putting these messages out We do have some insights though facebook has set up an ad library Which came into play for the first time in australia in the 2022 election Where we can look at what the political parties are spending and when they're spending And what sort of messages they're putting out and that's pretty fascinating when you drill down into electorates That are highly contested like those by the independence or That's commonly become known as the teals You see this big ad spend on facebook in the last week by the former treasurer drosh friedenberg When he realized his seat was under threat So we do get some insights as researchers through those mechanisms But we need something that's more comprehensive than just one snapshot through facebook Yeah, so the report touched on four other countries. Which countries were they and can you tell us anything any takeaways from perhaps india or japan? So we tried to look at different types of countries across the asia pacific region. This included japan indonesia krakistan india austria Is it five? That's five. Yeah Got the five. And what did we find? Well, we know that some of these countries have very high social media use austria in japan or austria being one of them japan has great internet connectivity But it doesn't have the same level of engagement with digital campaigning compared to austria I spoke about how most politicians have a presence in austria We don't see that in japan and part of that is a hallmark that it was illegal to do digital campaigning up into 2013 so the culture is quite different there And it might have flow and effects for political engagement with the public voter turnouts much lower in japan compared to Other countries with voluntary voting austria, of course, is an outlier because it has not it has compulsory voting krakistan we see social media interaction It looked like at the beginning. It was a great level. It allowed political rivals to be able to put their messages out But in more recent years Some quite sinister dis information and misinformation has been penetrating that space Which has really skewed the digital campaigning messages If we look at somewhere like india and indonesia There's a preference there for their users to use encrypted sites like whatsapp And so we see more political messaging happening in those spaces This is problematic because of the nature of being encrypted. We can't see what the messages are We don't know if they're truthful messages or not if that's becoming a space for spreading disinformation during campaigns And we can't see the volume to be able to get an idea of how much is being spent on these messages In terms of political financing, how does that play into digital campaigning? Do we see parties or candidates that are perhaps using political financing or dubious political financing methods Now kind of stepping into the digital campaigning space and doing a similar thing What we find pretty much across the board with the exception of new zealand that i'll come to in a moment Is that there's no special Allocation of consideration given to digital campaigning that it's dealt with under the broad remit of how Fund money is spent in politics and different countries have different laws or regulations around that Some could caps on spending Some require Real-time declarations of what's being spent and then some like austria have what we call very laser fair laws That we don't have any limitations on how much political parties can spend Nor do we have limitations at the federal level on how much they can raise And this creates problems of an even playing field for those Political parties and actors that are able to get a lot more political donations and funding That makes it much more difficult to campaign against Say smaller political actors that don't have access to those funds So what's required is more transparency and more accountability so that the public can make judgments about who's influencing their vote And often it can be third parties. It might be mining companies or it might be other organizations that have a An agenda within a political campaign And it's useful for voters to know if they're having Undue influence in the campaign by donating large amounts of money So how would a voter be able to discern the difference between a digital campaign and a traditional campaign method? What does that really look like to someone like you and me who's living under an election campaign period? Well, I guess in the old days where you had analog media the campaigns Would be billboards up around the streets and we need to be clear. We still have both types of campaigns. It's just that digital Puts it really on steroids all the type of campaigns were radio ads television advertising even debates such as election debates in the free space and a media commentary would constitute that the broad brush of what it was a analog campaign The difference with digital campaigning is it's not geographically limited So if you're in a city and you see a billboard, you're not going to see that if you're in another city But or you might if they're prepared to spend more money and ensure there's billboards right across the country digital campaigning can go viral and it can Not be limited to just one particular geographical area, which makes it really potent Now there's some democratic benefits for that. It's getting messages out to the public which is a positive the Things that we need to be concerned about though is when there's a lack of transparency About who's providing the messages and who's funding it and that's the area that policymakers need to focus on Yeah, and have you found that political parties? either small or large Reluctant to really engage in more transparency or accountability methods when disclosing who's funding them Yes, so what we find is that when parties are in opposition They identify this as one of the biggest challenges of the time and promise to do action and we've seen this in various countries And then if they're elected they get the benefit in competency and recognize just how powerful it is to Be able to use digital campaigning and other forms of campaign tools without having Tight regulations around how they do it So often we see in action once these political parties and politicians come into power That's what makes change so difficult And that's why this is a an old problem for a new time that it hasn't been resolved And it's not just Australia that faces this problem. It's right across the Asia Pacific region I did mention New Zealand. They have singled out digital campaigning To have separate provisions in place Which might be a way forward to look at an exemplar model of what better regulation looks like in this space So what kind of advice would you give to a voter? And how can they look out for or discern a digital campaign method being applied to them versus a traditional method being applied? Well, it's a really good question because it's difficult, isn't it? The more sophisticated campaigners become Using things like personal narrative in their political campaigning. It's difficult to tell whether that's A story that's being told by a politician or whether it's with the purpose of persuading voters I think the onus needs to come off the voter and it needs to go with Governments and policymakers so that there is regulation in place that there's transparency. This might be things like having Notices on campaigns to say when it was produced how it was produced and who's producing it The Australian electoral commission does some of that around official election campaign periods There might be avenues to do more of that level of transparency There certainly needs to be more effort put in to documenting for the public and also for the media to report How much money is spent on these campaigns? Who's providing the funding for it and and how it's being spent what sort of areas are being targeted? So would that be the key recommendation from the report as for policymakers lawmakers generally to Implement more regulation in the space. Yeah, our key recommendations are greater transparency and greater accountability and then with that also comes compliance making sure that the political parties third parties and Individual candidates are complying with regulation that's in place We don't think that digital campaigning should be have its own separate set of laws It does fall into campaigning more broadly But the regulations can be sufficiently nuanced to understand that there's some new challenges that come with digital campaigning In that it can cross boundaries Geographical boundaries really quickly and can go viral to make sure that there is the transparency around who's producing these messages Professor. Thank you so much for your time. You're welcome. Thank you