“The volume and speed at which we consume content, what that content is, and where we find it, is changing political strategy in ways that is both fascinating and scary to observe,” writes political columnist ANDREW HUGHES. 

Mid-term winters are always a time for reassessment in politics. Communication and brand strategy is one area always given a good hard look, where parties and candidates take stock of where they are, where they’d like to be, and where they are heading before the slow wind up to election fest in 2028. 

What is emerging is that there have been some hits, some misses and some okay. We are also seeing how our system is changing in this aspect with a third party competing for poll leadership in a new era where the primary vote numbers of the two voting blocks in Australia will no longer guarantee either majority. 

New strategies and methods are being live tested, important when refining messaging for when the campaign proper starts. Leaders, faced with increasingly negative attitudes to themselves and their parties, are finding it harder to get us to engage and are pushing boundaries in the attention race. 

We, as spectators, are in the front row watching this dynamic change happen in our democracy. 

So, what has been the most interesting on a comms front? 

Digital and social media dominate 

Some background here. According to digital marketing research firm Meltwater, we spend close to 20 hours a week on social media. Nearly 97 per cent of us spend most of that on a mobile device. Check your time use on your devices. 

We aren’t busy, we are just time poor and our devices are the number one reason why. 

How we spend time online is also changing. While Google is still the most visited site by far, we also spend less and less time on it thanks to AI, which so many of us now depend on for reliable and valid information in seconds. One big open door right there for the darker operators. 

YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Reddit make up the top five sites. The top Australian account on YouTube, actually based here, has more than 35 million subscribers. Karl Stefanovic is on 300,000 for contrast. That top account also belongs to the biggest adult demographic group (14.9 per cent) in Australia, the 30-39 year olds. 

Facts aside what this means for political communication is a tough but fluid market. 

Example? None of our top three leaders in the polls are under 59, with Angus Taylor closing in on 60. That makes age resonance harder from the start, let alone engagement on issues such as housing and cost of living. 

Parties and leaders have few options but to chase engagement in experimental and colourful ways, primarily via influencer content, such as podcasts, which are popular with those between 30 and 49. The battlers. 

It is high-risk, high-reward because it is social media. So much less control than a traditional ad on TV. 

The plus? Less control = more authentic and more honest content, so great to listen to or watch. The negative? It can be perceived in ways you can’t control and which can very, very, quickly move sideways on you. Just ask Anthony Albanese and that interview on what may very well become one of the worst public moments of any PM this century. 

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Policy explainers 

KISS should be on whiteboards/group chats/linkedin chats everywhere in politics. Keep. It. Simple. Stupid. 

If you can’t be perceived as communicating effectively then it’s likely you won’t be perceived as governing effectively. Correlation can be causation. 

Example? Labor had no worries on dropping $20 million on fuel saving tip ads, which most of us do anyway, but then did little to communicate how the big three tax changes in the Budget would apply tangibly. It was inconsistent in strategy and narrative. 

They weren’t helped either by lack of impactful content from friendly influencers. By contrast their opponents were very game on. Influencers and creators from the small business and start-up sector used the simplicity, speed, and virality of witty content on social media to effectively change policy. 

Labor’s strategy to try and slow down the impact through measured responses ultimately made it look sluggish and dated. 

That one example shows the sheer speed and power of effective messaging in modern politics in Australia. A point all should have learnt after the comms disaster that was the Voice Yes campaign, and the Opposition’s failed shop-a-docket campaign in election 2025. 

These are signs too of just what a fragmented media landscape is doing to political messaging in 2026. 

The volume and speed at which we consume content, what that content is, and where we find it, is changing political strategy in ways that is both fascinating and scary to observe. 

We can only hope though it stays more fascinating, and less scary, because the darkness growing in some areas of digital and social media right now is becoming the biggest threat to our democracy. 

Dr Andrew Hughes lectures at the ANU Research School of Management, where he specialises in political marketing.

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