My final session for today at the AANZCA 2025 conference is a panel on mis- and disinformation in the 2025 Australian federal election, and starts with Kieran McGuinness, whose focus is on a survey of Australian adults during May and June 2025, conducted on behalf of the project by YouGov.
Respondents were asked about their access to and understanding of news during the election, Mainstream news, face-to-face discussions, political ads, and social media were the most prominent sources. Amongst social media users, mainstream news brands, politicians and parties, ordinary people, individual journalists, and alternative voices on YouTube were most prominent here.
Young men paid more attention to YouTube videos from alternative sources, with a substantial gender gap to women. Influencers and content creators emerged as important amplifiers of election-related content – they are not a dominant source of information, but certainly help in its redistribution. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok were prominent here, with a considerably older audience fro Facebook.
Some 60% of respondents came across mis- and disinformation about the election at least occasionally, but there was also considerable uncertainty about what constituted such problematic information. The majority of sources cited were politicians, news media, journalists, activists, and ordinary people; cost of living, nuclear energy, climate change, and other topics were prominent. Political deepfakes remained rare, but there was also substantial uncertainty about what deepfakes are or how to identify them.
Mis- and disinformation encounters largely led users to ignore it, discuss it with trusted people, and check trusted sources for background information. Fact-checking sites were rarely consulted, and this may be related to a lack of fact-checking and general digital literacy. Age and gender had a significant influence on participants’ confidence in fact-checking abilities.
Only half of respondents could identify fact-checked examples of mis- and disinformation. Abilities are unevenly distributed: Labor voters are more likely to identify problematic information about Labor, and LNP voters more likely to identify problematic information about the LNP. Identifying problematic information is therefore contextual and positional.
Overall, respondents felt that more needed to be done about mis- and disinformation, including strong support for greater media literacy training. There were strong beliefs that governments should go further to restrict problematic information on social media, even if this restricts freedom of speech, and similarly greater action by platforms was favoured. There was also overwhelming support for the introduction of truth in political advertising laws.
