As Queensland approaches its election day on Saturday, the social media campaign for votes continues alongside – and in combination with – the candidates’ doorknocking efforts and mainstream media advertising. But over the final two weeks, the focus of that campaign has gradually shifted. First, as I reported a fortnight ago, Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s …
Continue reading “Queensland election: One Nation dominates Twitter debate in the final weeks”
There’s still plenty of time to go in the current Queensland state election campaign, but early signs from the social media trail offer some encouragement for Labor premier Annastacia Palaszczuk: she is receiving considerably more retweets than LNP challenger Tim Nicholls, and chatter about the controversial Adani mine project has declined in recent days. Twitter …
Continue reading “Early tweets favour Labor in Queensland election campaign”
As the world turns its attention to the slow-motion car crash that is this year’s U.S. presidential election, September in Australia was a comparatively ordinary, intermediate month for news. A number of continuing scandals and controversies – including the donations affair engulfing Labor Senator Sam Dastyari, the Country Fire Authority pay dispute in Victoria, and …
Continue reading “ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, September 2016”
As the 2016 federal election campaign recedes into memory, online engagement with the news in Australia has returned to what passes for normality these days. This is also reflected in the news sharing activities we are able to observe in the Australian Twitter News Index for August: the long-term patterns of how Twitter users’ attention …
Continue reading “ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, August 2016”
This instalment of the Australian Twitter News Index covers the business end of the Australian federal election campaign, which culminated in election day on 2 July 2016 and was followed by a brief period of uncertainty over whether the Coalition government had in fact held on to enough seats in the House of Representatives to …
Continue reading “ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, June-July 2016”
As we conclude this very lengthy Australian election campaign, let us review how the candidates fared on Twitter these past two weeks. Our research tracks all tweets directed at or posted by the candidates’ Twitter accounts. This provides a more comprehensive picture than the comparatively more self-selecting election- and politics-related hashtags #ausvotes and #auspol. The …
Continue reading “#ausvotes: A Final Update from the Social Media Hustings”
We’re now well into one of the longest Australian election campaigns in recent memory, and close enough to election date that we should expect the general public and not just the usual political junkies to begin engaging with the parties’ campaigns. Time, then, to examine how the parties are faring on social media to date. …
As Australia commences one of the longest federal election campaigns in living memory, much attention will be paid again to how parties and politicians are utilising the latest tools available in their campaigning arsenal: social media. We’ve seen Facebook and Twitter used as emerging campaigning tools in the 2010 and 2013 elections already, and even …
Continue reading “#ausvotes Revisited: Social Media in the 2013 Australian Federal Election”
By any measure, it’s been an extraordinary weekend here in Queensland. The same electoral tsunami that brought the LNP to power in March 2012 has washed the government away again in January 2015. Premier Campbell Newman has lost his own seat of Ashgrove, and Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk looks poised to form government – although …
This year’s Queensland state election campaign may be very brief, but it’s certainly been action-packed. In my previous post I provided an overview of what were roughly the first two weeks of the campaign; mid-way through the final week, here’s a further update of how the social media campaign has unfolded. As a reminder about …
Continue reading “#qldvotes: Final-Week Update on Social Media Activities”
