Australian government departments should develop an engagement strategy with online influencers and invite them to join the press in attending international and security events.
In a society increasingly dominated by social media or other content-sharing online platforms, issues of security, defence and international affairs are still obscure to many. This is an issue that weakens our democratic processes, it must be addressed, and it can be addressed in part by engaging with increasingly influential influencers.
Traditional media sources no longer have a monopoly on coverage of government. It’s time to widen access and strengthen the muscles that the government already has—for example, when it chooses media organisations to attend briefings.
Politicians have been embracing this trend for quite some time, but a strategy coming out of a government department should look quite different from that of a politician’s public relations team. There are plenty of examples of mistaken failure to engage with influencers, such as in the Yes case of the Australian referendum for an indigenous voice to parliament. The Yes campaign failed to liaise with social media heavyweights, who soon became critical in swaying public opinion. The government lost the referendum.
Several institutions are coming to terms with how the online influencer economy is shaping how people consume information, and some have already made engaging with influencers part of their media strategies. Such approaches, especially in relation to domestic and international security, need to be taken with extreme caution, but they are necessary.
Australian federal and state governments have begun experimenting with this, but initiatives have been ad-hoc and issue-specific. They haven’t amounted to a strategy, and they’ve usually been run as marketing, rather than as strategic engagement campaigns aimed at improving access to reliable information.
As for international affairs, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is trying to engage with Pacific island influencers. Public diplomacy officers in Australian embassies and high commissions across the Pacific see the growing impact local influencers can have on perceptions of external partners and foreign countries, including Australia. Officials are seeking to more actively engage with them, but often the efforts have been ad-hoc and limited by staff rotations. The work thus far hasn’t been directed from the centre, or across the board. Instead, there should be a framework to improve how Australia shows its initiatives in the region.
Other governments and international bodies offer stronger examples of how such a strategy should work. The United States appears to be a frontrunner in this among democratic countries. The US State Department reportedly has established regular influencer partnerships, coordinating and allowing access to select influencers at major national and international forums, such as the NATO summit that took place in July. NATO itself followed the lead and has coordinated access to this year’s summit for its own set of influencers. Another earlier instance saw influencers getting briefed online by the White House on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That was a good way to test and trial engagement without too much risk involved in the process.
People will and should have questions about this strategy. But there are several ways to ease concerns about information manipulation and propaganda.
The government needs to publicly stipulate terms of engagement. Influencers must disclose any costs covered by the government or event sponsors. Before access is allowed, influencers should agree that the content they will produce reflects only their opinions and that they will keep the copyright.
The departments should publicly explain the communications strategy and its goals. That should include an explanation of the process used to filter out undesirable attenders. Such vetting should not be based on political lines but on whether influencers have spread false or misleading information, whether they have violated platforms’ community guidelines and whether they are willing to commit to sharing only facts and honest opinions.
Such a strategy would create wider access to a wider range of information and thereby promote increased awareness of international and national security initiatives. Greater diversity in information sources would also increase visibility of policies. They’d become more accessible to people who otherwise would not engage with them because they don’t consume mainstream media or don’t see themselves represented in traditional government messaging.
Increased visibility is meant to show both positives and negatives. The point is not to pay influencers to praise the government but to get more people interested in and talking about issues of domestic and international security. Ultimately, more transparency and discussion across a broader section of the population would create better accountability, cracking into policy areas that are often criticised for excessive secrecy.
A democratic society should stand strongly against heightened information control. Influencers shouldn’t be guided in what to say; they should simply be allowed into rooms to witness events, meet the people in power and tell their worlds about them.