As Australia gets closer to the referendum polling date on 14 October, both the yes and no campaigns for the Indigenous voice to parliament will be targeting voters with advertising and social media posts.
There will also be pamphlets and posters used across the community, some authorised and others not, making a range of of claims about the voice.
Campaigners have been particularly active on platforms such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook and TikTok allows advertisers to tailor ads to specific groups, based on people’s interests, age and location.
If these ads don’t appear in your feed, you may not be aware of them. This makes it difficult to fact check their content or determine if they breach any laws around disclosure, as we saw during the same-sex marriage survey.
During the same-sex marriage survey, anonymous flyers, posters and websites were widely used, despite new laws aimed at curtailing unauthorised material.
You can make referendum advertising more transparent and help monitor potential misinformation by documenting this material, either by using our form below or our dedicated email address.
Submit photographs of material through our form or via email (gaus.contact@protonmail.com)
For Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or another social network, please also submit screenshots of the ad in your feed using the form below, following these instructions.
1. Take a screenshot of the ad content with the “sponsored” text clearly visible. If this doesn’t cover all of the important ad content, feel free to then take multiple other screenshots.
2. Take a screenshot of the ad-targeting information. On Facebook, click on the three dots “…” at the top right of the ad and select “Why am I seeing this”, then “Advertiser choices” and screenshot the ad-targeting information. On Twitter, click the arrow at the top right of the ad and select “Why this ad?”
3. Finally, send us the screenshots using the form below (you can fill it out multiple times if you have more than three images) or the email address.
For pamphlets or posters, please photograph the relevant material, include any authorisation text if it is present, and send it to us using the form or the email address gaus.contact@protonmail.com
