The real election fight right now is less the one for our votes between Labor and the Coalition (or even between the Coalition and what was once its base). It’s the fight for our attention between traditional media and social media — particularly Twitter.
It’s not a new fight, just another round that each federal election highlights. And round by round, it’s changed the way Australian politics works, meshing the offering of actual reporting and in-depth analysis that journalism holds out into a more public square.
This 2022 round is triggered by a hard truth: Twitter has captured the public square, at least for political elites, including the media. It’s now where agendas are set and debate takes place — sometimes genteelly and sometimes in a gladiatorial rough and tumble, mixed up with bots and trolls.
Sure, as journalist after journalist says, Twitter is not the real world. But nor is journalism.
We’re seeing Twitter’s agenda-setting power over and over again this election. Take the leaders debate on Sky. The immediate media commentary focused on Anthony Albanese’s stumble on the question about border security. Across the networks, the journalistic kneejerk was to brush off Scott Morrison’s “Jenny and I have been blessed” misstep as irrelevant — well-meant, even. Certainly not rising to the level of a “gaffe”.
Online, on the other hand, “blessed” exploded. Influential players — such as Dylan Alcott — used the platform to announce he felt “very blessed to be disabled”.
Initially Morrison followed the comfort held out by the media, pushing back defensively on morning radio with Ray Hadley. But by lunchtime Twitter had run over the top of the agenda, forcing Morrison to do what the traditional media never seem able to achieve: apologise — “deeply”.
Or take this week’s attempt by the Nine Network to mediate a debate between Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and his teal independent challenger Monique Ryan after she insisted on a debate in the electorate with local questioners. Its political editor, Chris Uhlmann, ventured on to Twitter to prod her: “Given the call for more transparency in public life, Dr Ryan should reconsider.”
Twitter wasn’t having it, rolling over him with critical quote tweets and replies. His company’s mastheads hurried to move on from the “debate impasse”.
Traditional media are caught in a battle for influence: do they trade their journalistic capital — their brand for news, their reputation for quality built up over a century — for the necessary social media clout now required for the influence they once monopolised through old media channels?
Any journalist — particularly any political journalist — can translate their craft status into an impressive following. Some use that following lazily as a broadcast medium for their (or their colleagues’) journalism. Others embrace the opportunities of engagement and some get understandably sick of the messy interplay with bots and trolls.
It’s hard work — on top of the actual, you know, reporting. As outgoing executive editor of The New York Times Dean Baquet advised his staff this month: “Tweet less, tweet more thoughtfully, and devote more time to reporting.”
News Corp has encouraged its journalists to withdraw from the Twitter challenge, relying on a more sophisticated approach that pushes its social media output through platforms that provide reach without debate, such as YouTube.
Journalism has been here before. Election by election since 2010, the media has shed its control of the megaphone to amplify and spread election trends. Traditional outlets are no longer must-go-to for the campaign trail’s what’s-happened-today news, other than the free-to-air broadcast of the doing-something images of the leaders in hi-vis for the disengaged who are watching (if that’s not too strong a verb) the news with the sound down.
The media have lost control over distribution as the serendipity of discovery through search and sharing replaced the front page of the print product and then the home page of the website.
Most painfully, the advertising reach that once provided a triennial boost to old media’s bottom line has now shuffled over to Facebook and Google, where it keeps company with conspiracy theories, fake news and misinformation.
The Twitter moment may be short-lived. There will be more than a touch of journalistic schadenfreude in the implications of the current takeover attempt by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. But right now it’s shaping the election we have.
