Election season: clicks, cash and chaos

 The links were found between seemingly grassroots Australians for Natural Gas and Tamboran Resources, a gas company involved in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin fracking projects. Advance, another nominally grassroots organisation with affluent backers, recently used friendlyjordies videos–without permission–as part of its anti-Labor social media advertising campaign. Australians for Prosperity, a group that received donations from Coal Australia, was pulled up by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) for running unauthorised content on social media. The AEC is also closely monitoring the Community Independents Project over concerns it may be violating electoral laws by failing to register as a campaigning organisation, despite running online ads for teal independents, soliciting donations, and recruiting volunteers. In other developments, the AEC has issued updated guidance on authorisation statements for social media content.

Australian major political parties have collectively spent a record $1.4 million on digital advertising through Meta and Google platforms in the opening week of the federal election campaign. This spending spree underscores the increasing importance of micro-targeted digital outreach. 

While New Zealanders cite 'Trump fatigue' as the key reason for avoiding the news in 2025, and despite Peter Dutton’s approval rating hitting its lowest due to his perceived alignment with Trump-style policies, Australian free-to-air evening TV news is experiencing a notable resurgence due to heightened interest in Trump, environmental incidents, and upcoming federal election. Contrary to global trends favouring streaming platforms, 7NEWS and 9News witnessed increased viewership in the first quarter of 2025.

On another front, we have seen far-right ideologies infiltrate various media platforms around the world. ABC News Verify has uncovered that several Australian politicians have shared content from The Noticer, a news platform linked to neo-Nazi ideologies and supported by the National Socialist Network members. In Sweden, violent far-right groups have been found actively recruiting children as young as ten by leveraging racist memes and videos on social media. And in Germany, far-right actors affiliated with the Alternative für Deutschland have been documented “taking advantage of the EU’s Digital Services Act limitations” and using AI to create and distribute propaganda that aligns with their ideologies.

These are turbulent and fascinating times of political upheaval CMT has been following closely. In this newsletter, Derek examines the Federal Trade Commission’s action against Meta. Chris analyses YouTube’s role in ‘electioneering’. I connect the dots between Meta past scandals and Australia’s upcoming youth social media legislation. And Alexia shares a must-listen digest of CMT’s latest podcasts.

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