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In the first week after the prime minister revealed October 14 as the Voice to Parliament referendum date, the Yes and No campaigns recast their messages, resulting in unprecedented news coverage and public engagement with the debate.<\/p>\n
Using data from Meltwater, a global media monitoring company, we are looking at the messaging and media coverage of the two campaigns. In the second report in our series, we identified more than one quarter of a million media mentions of the referendum on print, radio, TV and social media in week one, up 11.5 per cent on the week before.<\/p>\n
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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese launching the Yes campaign.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Getty<\/cite><\/p>\n While that might sound like a lot \u2013 and it is \u2013 it still only constitutes 4.2 per cent of all weekly media coverage in Australia.<\/p>\n To put that in perspective, mentions of outgoing Qantas CEO Alan Joyce constituted 1.6 per cent of total weekly coverage, while mentions of the AFL amounted to 2.2 per cent.<\/p>\n Australians woke up on September 3 to TV programs ringing out with John Farnham\u2019s 1986 Aussie classic You\u2019re the Voice<\/em> as the soundtrack to the Uluru Dialogue\u2019s new ad launching their Yes campaign.<\/p>\n The night before, TV personality Rove McManus had hosted the ad launch in Melbourne. The packed crowd, some wearing T-shirts featuring the ad\u2019s core message, You\u2019re the Voice<\/em>, cheered organisers Megan Davis and Aunty Pat Anderson and applauded songs from Paul Kelly, Jess Hitchcock, Mitch Tambo and The Farnham Band.<\/p>\n Farnham\u2019s headline-grabbing gifting of his famous song was celebrated by Yes supporters. However, the ad (and even Farnham) faced a backlash from some of the No camp on talkback radio and social media. As La Trobe University historian Clare Wright, the instigator of engaging Farnham, posted:<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton on Sky News competed with the Farnham scoop with his promise of a second referendum if the first one fails and the Coalition is elected.<\/p>\n Dutton\u2019s pledged to return Australians to the ballot box to recognise First Australians in the Constitution, minus the Voice to Parliament mechanism. His timing was likely aimed at diverting attention from the Yes campaign and eroding support for the constitutionally enshrined Voice by offering an alternative. He did this without the support of the Coalition\u2019s Indigenous Australians spokesperson, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.<\/p>\n Tracking the impact of the two messages, we find the Farnham ad story far outpaced the \u201csecond referendum\u201d in the free media sphere, as shown below.<\/p>\n But despite the Farnham ad getting media traction (although not all positive), it has not stopped the declining \u201cyes\u201d vote. That said, the next polls later this month will better capture the ad\u2019s impact on voter intention. Pooling the most recent commercial polls in a blog post on September 11, political scientist Simon Jackman calculates the Yes campaign has fallen to 42.4 per cent support nationally (with a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points), from 46 per cent recorded in our first report.<\/p>\n No campaign figures Warren Mundine, Michaelia Cash, Jacinta Nampijinba Price and Kerrynne Liddle at an event in Perth.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Trevor Collens<\/cite><\/p>\n To win, the Yes campaign needs to get a majority of voters nationally and in a majority of states (four of six). This poll result is bad news for the Yes side.<\/p>\n The analysis of X (formerly Twitter) data shows the Farnham ad and \u201csecond referendum\u201d stories also created a new high in public engagement about the Voice on the site this year.<\/p>\n This week, however, our focus is on the campaigns\u2019 reach and engagement on TikTok.<\/p>\n According to TikTok\u2019s 2023 data, its largest audience share is aged 18-24 and the second largest is aged 25-34. Together, these two age groups make up 71 per cent of its global users.<\/p>\n While there are no public Australian age profiles of TikTok consumers, we know 8.3 million Australians aged over 18 use TikTok. Further, of Australia\u2019s 26 million population, nearly one quarter (23.3 per cent) are aged 18\u201334. With no reason to believe the Australian TikTok\u2019s age profile is different to its global audience, TikTok is a logical space to reach younger voters with campaign messages.<\/p>\n We see the No campaigns recognise this and are having much greater engagement and visibility on TikTok than the Yes campaign.<\/p>\n The right-wing activist group Advance Australia\u2019s Fair Australia campaign topped the charts with the most views and engagements relating to the Voice coverage on TikTok (as seen in the Meltwater data) in week one. This is largely owing to Price\u2019s TikTok, which garnered 1.2 million views and 83,100 likes.<\/p>\n To put this in a broader context, Fair Australia has attracted tens of millions of views of its Voice content since it started using TikTok in May. While engagement does not necessarily impact voter behaviour, Fair Australia\u2019s strategy is a direct attempt to influence younger voters who are far more likely to vote Yes, according to some polls.<\/p>\n So far, Fair Australia is successfully engaging Australians on TikTok by combining volume (posting multiple TikToks a day) with three key elements:<\/p>\n In contrast, the two formalised Yes campaigns, Uluru Statement (43,000 likes) and Yes23 (49,000) fail to get close to the top-viewed TikToks.<\/p>\n More generally, their content is noticeably different, relying heavily on news snippets and didactic speeches from prominent Yes figures. While the Yes campaigns have amassed 92,000 likes combined since they were created this year, they are well behind Fair Australia\u2019s 860,000 likes.<\/p>\n Certainly, this is just one snapshot of an aspect of the campaign and tells us only so much. The major Yes campaigns have strong followings on other social media sites (Facebook, X and Instagram), and other Yes supporters are individually posting to these platforms with varying success.<\/p>\n However, the formal Yes campaigns lag noticeably behind on TikTok, a key social media platform for reaching young people.<\/p>\n This may be because the Yes organisers feel confident about their strong appeal to the youth vote and are committing resources elsewhere. In any case, the No camp is pitching to this social media-savvy youth audience and is getting noticed.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s happening in the news<\/h3>\n
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What\u2019s trending on social media<\/h3>\n
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