The no campaign in the Indigenous voice referendum is running three different social media strategies, each targeting different groups of Australians with apparently contradictory messages, a Guardian Australia investigation can reveal.
The lobby group Advance, one of the lead organisations in the no camp, runs one Facebook page highlighting conservative criticism, another highlighting progressive complaints, and a third portraying itself as a neutral news source.
The main Facebook pages of Advance and its offshoot, Fair Australia, are strongly critical of the Labor government and the voice, regularly mocking politicians and campaigners supporting the referendum, and claiming the voice would be “radical”, “dangerous”, “a big deal” and “completely changes the way our democratic parliamentary system functions”.
But Advance is also running two other, vastly different, referendum Facebook pages.
One is titled “Not Enough”, which is pushing quotes from prominent Indigenous people including Lidia Thorpe and Celeste Liddle that “we deserve better than just a voice” and notes that the concept of constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people “came from the conservative side of politics”. Not Enough highlights so-called “progressive no” arguments against the voice, including that the voice should be much stronger, and that the current model is too weak to change outcomes for Aboriginal people.
The other page is Referendum News, which portrays itself as a neutral news source about the vote, but only posts news articles highlighting criticism of or scepticism about the voice.
In essence, it means Advance is simultaneously highlighting conservative and progressive arguments, as well as running a page that on first glance could appear to be a neutral information source.
In an email to supporters last week, the Advance director, Matthew Sheahan, wrote: “Our strategic digital advertising has been inundating Aussies who are on the fence.”
Thorpe and Liddle are among those to have complained about their quotes being used in Not Enough’s posts. Thorpe said she did not want to be associated with the Advance campaign; Liddle said her words were taken out of context, and Not Enough’s post featuring her quote now carries an RMIT FactLab fact check warning that the post is “missing context and could mislead people”.
Guardian Australia analysis shows Not Enough has spent between $29,900 and $40,000 on boosting its Facebook advertisements into people’s feeds; Referendum News has spent between $20,000 and $39,840 (Facebook’s ad library does not give an exact amount of advertising spend, but instead a broad lower and upper limit).
Beyond a legally required authorisation message, there is no information on either Not Enough or Referendum News that would immediately connect it to the no campaign.
Analysis of Facebook ad data from the main no campaign pages suggests each page is being used to target different demographics with their specific types of content.
Not Enough, the page highlighting “progressive no” viewpoints, is exclusively targeting younger people, with all its ads being shown to people aged under 34.
Referendum News is focused on middle-aged voters, with all ads shown to users aged between 35 and 64, with a greater skew towards a female audience.
Fair Australia’s page, which contains the most partisan messaging, is mostly targeting middle-aged and older audiences, with about 33% of ad impressions going to those over 65.
Analysis of state targeting data shows that all of the no campaign pages are essentially ignoring New South Wales and Victoria, two states that polling consistently suggests are likely to vote majority yes. Of the three pages, only Not Enough is targeting voters in the largest two states, but all of the pages are primarily targeting audiences in Tasmania, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland.
Not Enough has placed its major focus on SA, then Tasmania and WA; Queensland, which is federally a conservative stronghold and expected to be the state with the strongest no vote, is some way behind.
The analysis suggests Advance is most heavily targeting conservative voters in Queensland, but hedging its bets by pushing more progressive or centrist ads in SA and Tasmania.
SA and Tasmania are expected to be key battlegrounds for both campaigns; the yes campaign chose SA to launch its field operation, while the campaign and federal government have regularly highlighted the support of Tasmanian Liberals in federal MP Bridget Archer and the state’s premier, Jeremy Rockliff.
In contrast, the parliamentary “Liberals for No” campaign is led by the Tasmanian senator Jonathon Duniam and SA’s Kerrynne Liddle.
The Country Liberal party senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who is the spokesperson for Fair Australia, has also spent about $46,000 on Facebook ads in the last 90 days. That compares to $10,500 for the prime minister, Anthony Albanese – on all ads, not necessarily relating to the voice – and $6,500 for the opposition leader, Peter Dutton. The senator’s ads, which all focused on the referendum, are being served up in major numbers to Queensland and WA – on a raw number, not weighted for population, 35.86% of her impressions were recorded in Queensland and 34.64% in WA.
Ed Coper, a global expert on misinformation and director of marketing agency Populares, who has advised the yes campaign and the government’s referendum working group on misinformation, said the no campaign was using tactics seen in the US by having “one group coordinating several pages making it seem like they’re all different”.
“They are transparently running several social media accounts for different purposes – one to have an appearance of a neutral news site, another to appeal to the so-called ‘progressive no’ on the referendum.
“The reason you set up a ‘Referendum News’ page is to dupe people into the mistaken belief they are seeing neutral info. Of course that’s not what they’re seeing, they’re seeing no campaign messages masquerading as news,” he said.
“It’s straight out of the Republican playbook in the US in the last several years. It’s very effective.”
A Spokesperson for Advance defended the campaign’s social media strategy.
“We absolutely reject the incorrect assertion that these social media campaigns are in any way misleading,” they said. “It is not misleading to present arguments against the voice using the words of those who oppose or question it, even if they come from diverse ideological backgrounds.
“Referendum News does nothing more than present news content that shows there is more than one side to the voice story.”
The spokesperson said Advance’s Facebook pages and advertising were “transparently authorised” and complied with AEC and Meta’s requirements.
Axel Bruns, a professor at Queensland University of Technology’s digital media research centre, said QUT’s early analysis of referendum data had shown the no side was more active on social media.
“It has an easier case to make. It has to sow doubt, make people uncertain about whether it’s the right way forward, whether the voice is meaningful and whether Indigenous people are actually behind it,” Bruns said.
“We know most Indigenous people are behind the voice, but that’s not getting as much visibility as the criticism. They’ve been effective in sowing that level of doubt, making themselves visible in mainstream and social media.”
