Social media platforms crucial to winning over voters in 2025

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Social media, like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, will be crucial to winning the 2025 election. The official campaign isn't yet underway, but ABC News Verify has been investigating the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader's use of digital platforms.

Transcript

00:00Social media will matter more than ever this election.

00:06Just under half of Australians get their news from it.

00:09It's the main source of news for nearly two-thirds of Gen Z.

00:13At ABC News Verify, we compared Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton's TikTok feeds.

00:19The data was captured in early February.

00:21Peter Dutton is way up on average plays on his TikTok videos, despite Mr Albanese posting

00:27more.

00:28There's not much data to compare, as the PM only joined in December.

00:33The Liberal Party's TikTok is also ahead, filled with lots of memes.

00:38You're very much seeing this separation between party-mementic humour and individual political

00:43authenticity, which I think is really strong and definitely being noticed.

00:50They look at it and go, OK, right, we're not going to reach you on TV, we're not going

00:54to reach you on radio or other forms of media, where I can really get you on is TikTok.

01:00Claiming to have 8.5 million active monthly users, TikTok will be crucial to winning voters,

01:07especially younger ones.

01:09The incumbents are faring better on meta-platforms Instagram and Facebook than they are on TikTok.

01:15ABC News Verify calculated average interactions on the platforms by dividing the total number

01:22of monthly interactions, for example, comments, shares and likes, by monthly posts.

01:28The numbers show the Prime Minister far ahead on Instagram over the last year.

01:33If we take a look at the graph on Facebook interactions, he's in the lead there too.

01:37Though when we look on party pages, the Liberals have an edge on Labor.

01:43Some of those could be negative emojis.

01:45And then also the comments, there could be very, very negative, nasty comments added

01:51in that.

01:52So that's still adding to the engagement, which then adds to the algorithm, which then

01:56pushes it out further.

01:58On polling day, whenever that is, we'll know if any engagement is good engagement.

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