Time to Rethink the National Election Campeign

 As the ABC's Swingers program recently pointed out, the modern election campaign as we know it in Australia, with a single national headquarters, message and slogan, began in the 1970s with the Australian Labor Party's "It's Time" campaign. Prior to this, the parties' state branches and local offices organised and campaigned relatively independently. It was common for there to be different slogans, strategies and tactics used in different parts of the country. 

The It's Time campaign followed the proliferation of television as a mass medium consumed nationally, which had begun in the 1950s and was by that time ubiquitous. Television allowed a single unified message, composed by a party, to be beamed into almost every living room in Australia, and for the activities of the Prime Minister and Opposition leader no the campaign trail to be shown to Australians on national news broadcasts. The campaign buss following the leaders around the country to document their activities both in national newspapers and for national television meant that their activities affected not only the electorates they visited, but also the ones they didn't. Interaction with the public became increasingly stage-managed over the years, with staffers visiting shops and businesses before the leaders, often without identifying themselves, and getting to know the political persuasions of their proprietors before the leaders arrived. 

With half of Australia having already voted now, on election eve, as I write this, it is clear that not all Australians have been willing to wait and listen to and watch the campaigns. There may be a wide variety of reasons for this, including the AEC relaxing early voting rules, as well as generational change. Many commentators are also suggesting it may relate to voter disengagement or apathy toward campaign content. More on this later. 

Fragmentation of Broadcast Media 

Television news bulletins and newspapers are less central to the way the average Australian stays informed than was the case prior to the advent of the internet and social media. In the past decade, the decline in viewership has been substantial. For example, Neilson reported that in 2017 82.6% of Australians watched a TV news broadcast at least once a week. By contrast, ACMA reported that in 2024, this number had reduced to 58%. That's a drop of nearly a quarter. Simultaneously, consumption of news from other sources has dramatically increased, so that even those who access news once a week on television are now typically accessing news from other media as well, with Statistica (2024) reporting that 52% of Australians consume online news at least weekly, and print media fare even worse, being accessed at least weekly by only 17% of the population. 

Television itself has also become more fragmented. The days when SBS, ABC, 9, 10 and 7 were the only channels that had passed, each broadcaster now had multiple digital broadcast channels, as well as streamed versions of their content via various apps. While this means there is often a dedicated news channel, each broadcaster also has other forms of news, often mixed with entertainment, on other channels. Sky News has become significant for a certain subset of the population, and it includes Sky News After Dark, which is far more extreme and right-wing than its daytime broadcasts. 

The Effect of Audience Segmentation and Algorhythms on Broadcast and Print Media

Apart from fragmentation, there has also been a race toward extremely and blatantly partisan media. The two are no doubt related. If you no longer have any hope of having a national audience due to fragmentation, then why not target a specific group of people to raise a loyal following? Make news the way your target market wants it and tell them what they want to hear. You want to hear the truth, you say? Well, you'll think that's what you're getting, since the media targeting you will tell you what you already think is true, regardless of how little relationship that may have to reality.

This stems, of course, from the social media algorithms, which show people more of what they choose to interact with, but the advantage they have in online media, where the interaction is multilateral, is that interaction increases as much or more where there is dislike for content as where it is liked. By contrast, with a one-way medium such as television, the only response from a person who doesn't like what they are hearing is to change the channel/stream. This means that broadcast media are far more of an echo chamber than social media themselves, but their descent into being so can be attributed at least in part to the fact that they are losing ratings to social media. 

The Pandemic, the Cookers and the Dissalusionment of Middle Australia 

During the Covid-19 years, there was an extreme polarisation in much of Australia between those who supported the public health measures being implemented by state Premiers and those who opposed them. The mainstream commercial media primarily appeared to side with the opposing crowd. The ABC and SBS, both of which have far lower viewership numbers, attempted to inject some commonsense into the population by giving a voice to healthcare professionals and government leaders, but their commentators still showed substantial bias toward the Liberal Party on political matters. The negativity of commercial media (both print and television) toward the Premiers was so overwhelming that many people predicted they would influence voting outcomes as the various elections came about. By contrast, the Premiers who had implemented the public health measures steadfastly and patiently in the face of all the attacks from the commercial media and their audiences were voted back in with increased majorities in their respective Parliaments. 

In Victoria, where we had had some of the longest and strictest lockdowns in the world, and where some of the most vicious rhetoric from commercial media had been levelled at the Premier and Health Minister, we voted our state government back in with a substantially increased number of seats. In Western Australia, the majority given to the Premier at the next election was so overwhelming that the main opposition party ended up with fewer seats than their Coalition partner and could no longer even claim second place. 

Indeed as shown here the Liberal Party, who were so openly and blatantly backed by the mainstream broadcast media as well as the newspapers, were relegated to only Tasmania in a situation a bit like the democratic equivalent of the Chinese civil war in which the Nationalist party had to retreat to Taiwan. 

Yes, Labor did win the 2023 election in New South Wales as well by the way. That map image was circulated on social media in the leadup to it. 

Covid-19, I believe, resulted in a decoupling of public opinion from broadcast and print media influence. People were faced with, on the one hand, politicians who were following scientific and medical advice and urging us to do the same, and journalists who were, for the most part, mocking them for doing so and urging us to risk each other's lives and our own. Our media went from being an important check on political power designed to, as we say, keep the bastards honest, to being seen as little more than a tool of disinformation used by political extremists to try to lure us away from those who were genuinely protecting our interests. 

The thing about trust is that it takes a long time to build and a very short time to destroy. Since the destruction of our belief in the word and goodwill of broadcast and print media during the Covid-19 years, there has been little or no effort to regain our trust, or to pivot away from the niche audience of anti-Dan, anti-vax covid cookers and back to what was once a mainstream, middle Australia audience. This means that the ability of broadcast and print media to influence public opinion has declined far more than even the substantial reductions in viewership and readership would suggest. 

So what now?

It is clear that much has changed in the political and media landscapes and in how political leaders now use those two former powerhouses of mass communication, broadcast and print, to communicate and to be communicated about. 

The question that I want to pose here, and I do not necessarily have the answer to it beyond a bit of early speculation, is whether there is a need to rethink political campaigns. The national campaign is less effective than it once was, as evidenced by the trend toward early voting and the relatively small amount of change in polling accomplished by both parties since the official start of campaigning and thus the commencement of national campaigning activities such as the national roadshow and the leaders' debates. So should leaders continue to pursue it in future elections or would it be more effective to try a new approach? 

It is clear to me that there is a relationship between media fragmentation, media disillusionment and reduced campaign efficacy. Firstly, messages conveyed through the broadcast and print media are no longer regarded with the same credibility as was the case prior to the pandemic. Secondly, where messages are being consumed and believed, it is not because they have persuaded anyone, but because they have reached an audience of people who were already likely to agree with them, due to the echo chamber effect caused by broadcast media fragmentation. 

One tantalising prospect is that if the unified national audience no longer exists, then surely future campaigns must become an echo of what was done prior to the advent of the national campaign, before the It's Time campaign pioneered what later became mainstream. Back then, local members and candidates campaigned on local or regional issues, with some state or area-level messaging coordination and activities. The trouble with this is, of course, the efficiency and rapidity of communication brought about by the 24-hour news cycle and social media. Now, a local MP appealing to a niche audience in their electorate and perhaps espousing a view or policy position that is popular there, but unpopular elsewhere, will soon find their comments being discussed by people all over the country in social media groups brought together by some other shared interest. We also have a lot more national and global level awareness of problems than was the case in those times. 

Things, therefore, are unlikely to resemble too closely how they were before the advent of the national campaign, but are also unlikely to stay as they have been since. We face an uncertain future, and no party necessarily wants to be the first to risk experimenting with new methods. Perhaps after one or other party has a very long stint in government, the opposition will become desperate enough to try, just as the Australian Labor Party had done before it launched the It's Time campaign. After all, necessity is the mother of invention. 

The Government's Battle with Facebook Isn't Just About Targeting Tech Giants

Today Facebook blocked every news site in Australia in response to legislation due to be voted upon by the Australian Senate, having already passed through the lower hiuse.

The Government claims the legislation is about taxing tech giants such as Facebook and Google that indirectly profit from content created by mainstream news organisations. It is true that journalists have rediced in number in recent years and the quality and quantity of news content has suffered as a result. 

However, the legislation is unlikely to bring about any increase in revenue for mainstream news organisations. Users have shown an unwillingness to pay for news content that is shared online; preferring to shop around for free content rather than spend their hard earned money to pass through a pay wall. Paywalled news publications such as The Australian have seen enormous declines in readership over the past decade. Whether the news articles are located through a search engine like Google or shared by friends through a social media platform like Facebook has no demonstrable bearing on this phenomenon. 

Indeed without these means it is unlikely that news content would be located and read by anywhere near as many readers as currently occurrs. Smaller media organisations have complained in the last 24 hours that Facebook's ban on news posting has taken away their main source of readers. If any are still reaching them it is almost certainly by means of a seatch engine such as Google that they are doing so. The government's legislation, by the way, makes no attempt to compensate small media organisations at all. It is solely focussed on the large media corporations whose obviously biased agenda has helped them to power. 

So we know that large media organisations are probably deluding themselves if they think the legislation will gain subscribers for them. On the contrary, it will redice readership for them and thereby reduce their advertising revenue. We know that meanwhile it will strangle small media organisations out of the market and offer them no compensation in return. So what is the legislation actually going to do, if anything? 

The true agenda is clear. The legoslation is about setting a precedent that will violate and undermine one of the most fundamental and assential principles of the free internet; the right to link to content in the public domain. 

Why is this right important? Why should internet users be able to link to publicly available content, for example, on blogs, on library pages, on websites, within the text of their own artocles or, as the case in point, on social communication media? Because without this right, the majority of what makes the internet meaningful, its interconnectedness, would be gone. 

Linking enables a piece of content to ve discussed equitably and in context. It enables arguments to be based on published evodence that can be cross-checled effortlessly by readers. No, it is not as rigorous as a scholarly citation style, but it is instant and accessible and feasible for the average internet user with only basic digital literacy. 

The principle that linking does not equate to reprodiction is a line that has so far never been crossed. It is a orinciple that must be defended if the internet is going to remain a meaningful and democratic public sphere. The soread of internet access brings with it the potential for the realisation of that great enlightenment ideal of a public sphere that is truely accessible to all. That accessibility equates ro democracy. Linking is essential to the democratoc function of holding power to account. Without it, the internet is rendered inept at doing so. 

Facebook, for all its users, is not popular. Many use it grudgingly because it os the space our friends inhabit. But like it or hate it, Facebook is the one entity that, right now, represents our only realistoc chance of thwarting the government's effort to set the utterly unacceptable precedent of imposing a cost on linking. Today they target a tech goant, but once the precedent is set we are all fair game and nobody else will have the power to fight back the way Facebook does, right now. 

So before you get outraged at Facebook for not paying taxes or supporting journalists, think of what is really at stake right now. No, it is not journalism. It is the free internet as a public sphere. It is every student and library and citizen and theor right to freely direct each other's attention to content that has been placed in the public sphere, willingly and without coersion, by its creators. That is what matters here. So even if you hate Facebook, now is the time to put differences aside and stand with them, just this once, for a pronciple that truely matters. 

We Can't Share News on Facebook in Australia Now

Facebook has blocked sharing of news articles, according to news articles such as this one. I can vouch for it as they would not let me share. Just follow my blog for news from reliable sources. 

Here is a (not so) Faddish Diet Tip

Food is energy. There you have it. Now what on earth does that mean? Well, you may find it ironic seeing dietary advice from a blogger who also wrote a brief ode to Cheesy Nuggets. Also, you may object that the statement has little meaning, or even that it is incorrect, since in addition to energy, food contains other important things like vitamins, trace elements, fiber etcetera. This is all very true. Well, this three word statement is not much good on its own, that is true. Where I found it useful as as a 'handle' for referring to a whole lot of other thinking around diet and around values associated with diet. Please bear with me while I explain.

The term 'energy' here can be read not as a nutritionist may read such a term, but as a physicist may do so. Energy is the potential to do work. The potential to make the human body operate, with all that that entails, but meeting all of its very complex requirements. It is that simple, and that complex. Now, if the term is including all of that meaning, then what, if anything does it exclude? What other dialogue exists around food that is not at play here? Well, there are several and they relate to the social and aesthetic properties that food also carries. Food is a signifier. It is part of systems of communication and of the forming of culture. 

Now hang on a minute, you are saying: how can any way of viewing food exclude those very important qualities, which determine so much of what food actually IS?! Well of course it can't. We are social and aesthetic beings. That is key to our identity. It is what separates us from the auditors (meaning no offense anyone in that line of work. I imagine if you are reading this you are not there by choice). So what then? What possible use can a term devoid of this meaning possibly be? 

Well, it can be of use for one thing: It draws into focus the dual nature of food. Food is both nutrition and meaning. By being aware of this and by carrying with us this three word phrase that can be instantly called to mind to remind us of it, we equip ourselves with the ability to interrogate our food choices as follows: Is this my hunger for meaning or my hunger for nutrition that is calling  to me and to what extent do they coincide? That ability is absolutely fundamental to bringing about lasting dietary change. Most dietary advice focuses on what to eat, rather than on actually changing one's self so that one will naturally eat differently and that is arguably where it fails. Use the three words. Think differently. The eating and the interest in what is known of nutrition will follow. 

Use Your Loaf: Poor Quality Discussion Over Bike Helmet Legislation

Today during my drive home, I heard Professor Chris Rissel of the University of Sydney's School of Public Health giving an interview on ABC Radio. 

Professor Rissel said that he had been conducting research into whether legislation that requires cyclists in Australia to wear helmets is beneficial to public health. He said that there is evidence to suggest that the reduction in fatalities and brain damage achieved by the legislation is outweighed by its contribution to other health issues relating to obesity, through the decline in the rate of bicycle usage in the Australian population.
Yesterday, according to The Drum he cited statistics indicating that the number had of bicycles had grown only 21 percent between 1986 and 2006; a period in which the Australian population grew by 58 percent. In his radio interview today, he said there were many studies internationally citing Australia as an example of "what not to do to encourage cycling." 

The interview was followed by another interview with a Professor of Medicine, who was asked to give a detailed description of the kinds of brain injuries that can take place during bicycle crashes. This he did, in rather graphic detail.

Many radio listeners called after that and gave descriptions of injuries they had sustained themselves and stories of how bicycle helmets had saved their lives. The only slight interruption to this narrative of 'helmet as savior' and 'bare headed rider as irresponsible' was a single caller who described how he survived a bare headed bicycle crash into the back of a car and was told afterwards by a surgeon that had he been wearing a helmet he would have certainly been either dead or paralysed, based on some form of wedge effect that may or may not be applicable to other such cases.

There was no discussion of the public bicycle stations around Melbourne, the possible nature of a relationship between the helmet requirement and rates of usage, the actual rates of bicycle related head trauma and other conditions or changes therein since the introduction of helmet legislation. 

Now my aim here isn't to argue either way. All I would like to point out is that the outcome of the discussion occurred, whether right or wrong, had far more to do with the rules of newsworthiness than it did with any actual understanding of the research that had been conducted. How so? I shall endeavor to explain. 

Imagine for a moment that Professor Rissel's interview had been followed by an interview with a heart surgeon and the journalist (in this case it w as Libbi Gorr, but let us not blame her for the nature of her occupation) had asked him to describe, in graphic detail, the effects of various heart conditions upon a person't well being and the gradual process of one's internal organs being overwhelmed and choked with fat until they are no longer able to function and we die. Imagine then, if a number of people suffering from obesity were to have called and given testament to the debilitating effects of their condition and their constant fear of death through heart failure or diabetes. After all, as a report later in the evening pointed out, one in four Australians are obese and those are two of the most common health risks to the population, with numbers vastly greater than the incidence of those particular cycling related head injuries that could have been survived through the use of a helmet. Would that have left listeners feeling rather differently about it all? Might the percentage of listeners who spent this evening thinking 'well, perhaps professor Rissel may have had a point' have been somewhat larger?

Maybe, maybe not. After all, people do have other means of forming views on such matters. What is very clear is that we are far, far less likely to hear the kind of radio broadcast I just described than we are to hear shows that run something like Libbi Gorr's effort. Slow and gradual processes cannot compete for news worthiness with the immediacy and impact (if you'll excuse the unfortunate pun) of a head hitting a hard surface. Complex social relationships with multiple causes have no chance against the obvious causality of a simple, blow by blow description of a physical event. A disease is relatively shrouded in mystery when compared to physical trauma. This means that inevitably public sentiment must be distorted. It means that a first hand description of an evocative but statistically inferior (perhaps statistically inferior: Professor Rissel didn't get a chance to tell us whether or not he was able to identify a statistical correlation between helmet legislation and obesity) can influence what we think more than the presumably careful and meticulous work of a researcher over several years. Professor Rissel has been looking into the matter at least since 2010 which is the date given on his public profile for 'Safer cycling: A partnership project to better understand cycling patterns, hazards and incidents' and probably for longer. Though it is right that journalists should question what he is saying and compare it to other sources, the treatment that actually eventuated in this case, and in many such cases where the complex seeks to be heard amid the chorus of simplicity that dominates mainstream media (even the ABC) was dismissive and misleading. 

Prof. Rissel's profile on the University website can be viewed here:http://sydney.edu.au/medicine/people/academics/profiles/crissel.php

A relevant ABC article can be viewed here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-11/phillips-cycling-boom/4122046

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VC and PM Have Heartwarming Public Talk about Education

http://www.vu.edu.au/news/education-at-the-starting-line

  "He said that Victoria needed the “best higher education, secondary and vocational education we can offer”"  (See linked article)

This is very true. So why are our state government refusing to honor their election promise to make Victorian school teachers the highest paid in Australia? Why are universities still facing financial pressure and reducing staff numbers? All this rhetoric is heartwarming, but there  seems to be somewhat of a gap between the rhetoric and the reality of the situation. Getting the federal government on side is a great start, but they need help (rather than hindrance) at a state level and university governance also needs to be improved.

Universities need to invest more in pure research. It's always easier to get funding for applied research, but most of that relies on pure research that has been done before. We need social theorists in this country too. At the moment there really aren't any. There are many scholars who do social research, but the theory theories they study come predominantly from Europe, the UK and the US. Politicians can easily see the link between developing certain skills in graduates and the economic benefits they provide in the workforce. They can also see the benefit of applied research because it leads relatively directly to new industrial processes and practices. It is far harder to demonstrate that the original concepts being applied are a finite resource and that replenishing that resource also requires investment, as does the building of the expertise for doing so, which has been all but lost.

Semester

Not much time for blogging at the moment. More updates when things are less busy.