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.
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% on the week before.
While that might sound like a lot – and it is – it still only constitutes 4.2% of all weekly media coverage in Australia. To put that in perspective, mentions of outgoing Qantas CEO Alan Joyce constituted 1.6% of total weekly coverage, while mentions of the AFL amounted to 2.2%.
