Liberals’ digital ascendancy

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As the Review found: 'Labor faces an urgent need to dramatically improve its digital campaigning capability… Labor’s digital campaign needs to be more agile and effective in countering disinformation on digital platforms of its political rivals', This 'countering disinformation' reveals the dual nature of digital campaigning – the difference between public social media postings and clandestine targeted sledging. Social media postings can range from over-statement, exaggeration, misrepresentation, distortion, denial and outright lying or all of the above – and need no Party authorisation. Unofficial volunteers can invent dozens of fake IDs on various social media platforms and let rip. Of course, this is easier with negative messages than with positive messages, and when sprayed publicly across the entire platform. Such twitterstorms can be dismissed and sometimes even countered with the correct information, but when the disinformation is targeted to a particular demographic or sent in a direct message, even the most vigilant social media monitor will find it very difficult to know that the misleading messaging is even occurring, let alone counter it. A great advantage of targeting is the ability to direct messaging away from the politically-engaged, thus keeping one’s rivals in the dark as to what one is up to, and tailoring the message to those who do not support either of the major parties, now the largest group of voters and closer to a majority than either of the major parties. The demographic research which enables targeting is invaluable for digital campaigning. The Review therefore recommends that 'The National Secretary should commence a research procurement process before the end of 2019… and Labor’s research program should inform its campaign strategy independent of day-to-day tactical demands and… should deliver a set of strategic principles that guide the next campaign'. The short series of Labor Values speeches by Anthony Albanese suggests that this part of the Review, at least, is being implemented. Labor’s digital campaign, however, suffered from 'the lack of digital literacy within Labor’s senior ranks' and the consequent lack of a 'digital first' strategy – the digital campaign being merely a distribution mechanism for messages composed for other media. Digital natives, then, were not spoken to in their own language. The Coalition, on the other hand, ran a clearly superior digital campaign. The Liberal Party Review of the 2019 Federal Election Campaign, chaired by Arthur Sinodinos and Steven Joyce, recommended 'further development of the Party’s digital campaign' and that 'the Federal Secretariat engage with polling companies between now and the next election to learn and apply new techniques and best practice to maximise the accuracy of the Party’s quantitative research for the next election'. They may have dropped the American i360 app (previously outlined in this column), but they certainly understand the importance of its functions. The recommendations of this Review include the setting up of 'a small and informal grouping headed by the Federal Deputy Director to update its campaigning methods in inner-city seats in Melbourne and Sydney'. The Federal Deputy Director then was Sir Lynton Crosby’s protégé, Isaac Levido, who was widely credited as the digital mastermind (along with New Zealander digital content experts Sean Topham and Ben Guerin) behind the digital campaign which won Boris Johnson and his Conservatives their historically massive majority in December 2019. Dominic Cummings, digital architect of the Leave campaign which gave Boris Brexit, and now Chief Adviser to PM Johnson, once said that Isaac Levido was '100 times' as good as he himself at digital campaigning. Certainly, someone in the camp of the Coalition and their allies had some digital smarts during the May 2019 campaign in Australia. Instance the speed and ferocity with which the Labor policy on electric cars was catastrophised into 'Shorten will take away our utes' and 'Labor will destroy the weekend' – initially surreptitiously targeted to all owners of Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger utes in Queensland. Or the manic lies about 'Labor’s Death Taxes' in graphic memes on social media platforms. In the 2016 election, Labor outdid Liberals on social media. In the 2019 election, Liberals outdid Labor in digital campaigning and Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP) outdid Labor in media campaigning, both in size and strategy. The $83,681,442 which Palmer donated to attack Bill Shorten and keep Labor out of power was by far the biggest donation in Australian political history – and it was successful, despite UAP not winning a single seat. For the foreseeable future, Palmer can knock on the door of any Minister of the Government and be made welcome. Palmer’s media strategy was very efficient. Aimed at the growing number of politically disengaged, it included billboards and a tsunami of mass media spots of mounting negativity towards Shorten and Labor, thus confirming their contempt for politics and politicians, and keeping them uninformed and vulnerable to the last advertising slogan they heard. They dash through the political supermarket, ignoring all the goods for sale, and make an impulse buy at the check-out on their way to the politics-free zone for another three years. ◆ Pat Wright is a Foundation Life Member of NTEU, a former President of the Adelaide Branch, former President of UACA and Head of Labour Studies at Adelaide with a lifetime interest in the labour movement's use of ICTs. The Review of Labor’s 2019 Federal Election Campaign, chaired by Dr Craig Emerson and Jay Weatherill, provides a comprehensive analysis of the many factors which led to Labor’s defeat at the hands of the Liberals and their associates. A key factor which has gone almost unnoticed was Labor’s digital campaign, which had been superior, but by 2019 it was inferior to that of the Coalition and its allies.