Australian audiences are losing trust in, and drifting away from, traditional news media. At the same time they increasingly get their news and journalism content from podcasts, youtubers, streamers, and tiktokers, with a quarter of (mostly younger) Australians getting their news from social media. As we saw in the 2024 US election, politicians are aware of this and are following the audiences.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has recently dedicated significant time to interviews with podcasters such as Abby Chatfield and Mark Bouris. The opposition leader Peter Dutton also appeared on Mark Bouris’s podcast, where they discussed topics that included wokeism, Trump, and Rugby League. However, despite podcast appearances, both are still dedicating time at traditional media outlets.
Some suggest that politicians see podcasters and youtubers as ‘friendly’ outlets – a way to get public attention without scrutiny. But the Australian Prime Minister is not restricting himself to mostly ‘friendly’ media, as can be seen in his recent interviews with Sky News, 2GB, and 60 minutes. There is also no guarantee that scrutiny can be avoided with podcasters. In his interview with the Australian PM, Bouris asked complex and difficult questions on topics including the housing crisis, national security, and antisemitism.
On YouTube, Australian channels such as friendlyjordies, Punter’s Politics, and Swollen Pickles are increasingly adopting the role of the Fourth Estate. Although they are sometimes openly partisan, channels such as these go beyond expressing political opinion, holding power to account through detailed investigations that uncover potential corruption and wrongdoing amongst those with political and economic power. Examples include a Punter’s Politics video, with over 337,000 views, on transparency issues involving a billion-dollar government contract, and a friendlyjordies video, with almost 300,000 views, investigating alleged connections between a Labor politician and property developments in Sydney. But these channels also reject many norms of traditional journalism, instead adopting the overtly non-corporate norms and visual aesthetics common to YouTube. This gives a sense of authenticity and in turn leads to increased trust amongst the YouTube audience. As well as politicians and corporations, they also make efforts to hold major news organisations to account. In the context of Australia’s concentrated media ecosystem and a time of declining trust in traditional news outlets, many Australians may well see this media critique as a good thing.
What does this mean for elections? One takeaway is that politicians cannot afford to ignore the huge – and growing – audiences that get their news and political information from non-traditional media sources. But, although our major-party leaders are clearly dipping their toes in, it would be exaggerating to conclude that they are about to jump right in and wholeheartedly embrace digital content creators.
Chris Hall, UTS HDR Student