Submission to the Electoral Matters Committee of the Parliament of Victoria’s Inquiry into Elections and Social Media

Social media has rapidly and radically changed our communication landscape with regards to how citizens engage with each other, with politicians, political parties, government departments, and other institutions. Among other changes, social media has provided us with more immediacy in our daily communication and media consumption, and increased the proximity between citizens, institutions and institutional actors. Social media platforms themselves are a key part of the shift in the broader communication landscape as they largely determine the conditions for interaction (affordances), what speech is permitted (via their own moderation guidelines), who is permitted to be part of their platform, whether communication is public, private, or semi-private in nature, what advertising is permitted and how it is served, among a host of other conditions.A result of this rapid uptake of social media as a de facto communication mechanism is that politicians, political parties, lobbyists, unions, industry groups, civil society, and domestic and foreign third parties have adapted their communication tactics around political elections. These various political actors utilise social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, WhatsApp, Youtube, TikTok, etc.) for a variety of purposes including:• Publishing policy materials and responses to specific issues;• Organising ‘on the ground’ activities such as meetings, candidate drop-ins, doorknocking, protests and activations, etc.;• Publishing advertising, including authorised and unauthorised material;• Engaging in online discussion and debate.These social media-enabled activities present a combination of new possibilities and challenges to liberal democracy. They offer possibilities for increased engagement and participation by citizens and political actors, but there is also the possibility that weaponised mis/disinformation or other tactics may be used try to influence public opinion and election outcomes. We discuss these issues throughout the remainder of our submission