00:00Social media will matter more than ever this election.
00:06Just under half of Australians get their news from it.
00:09It's the main source of news for nearly two-thirds of Gen Z.
00:13At ABC News Verify, we compared Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton's TikTok feeds.
00:19The data was captured in early February.
00:21Peter Dutton is way up on average plays on his TikTok videos, despite Mr Albanese posting
00:27more.
00:28There's not much data to compare, as the PM only joined in December.
00:33The Liberal Party's TikTok is also ahead, filled with lots of memes.
00:38You're very much seeing this separation between party-mementic humour and individual political
00:43authenticity, which I think is really strong and definitely being noticed.
00:50They look at it and go, OK, right, we're not going to reach you on TV, we're not going
00:54to reach you on radio or other forms of media, where I can really get you on is TikTok.
01:00Claiming to have 8.5 million active monthly users, TikTok will be crucial to winning voters,
01:07especially younger ones.
01:09The incumbents are faring better on meta-platforms Instagram and Facebook than they are on TikTok.
01:15ABC News Verify calculated average interactions on the platforms by dividing the total number
01:22of monthly interactions, for example, comments, shares and likes, by monthly posts.
01:28The numbers show the Prime Minister far ahead on Instagram over the last year.
01:33If we take a look at the graph on Facebook interactions, he's in the lead there too.
01:37Though when we look on party pages, the Liberals have an edge on Labor.
01:43Some of those could be negative emojis.
01:45And then also the comments, there could be very, very negative, nasty comments added
01:51in that.
01:52So that's still adding to the engagement, which then adds to the algorithm, which then
01:56pushes it out further.
01:58On polling day, whenever that is, we'll know if any engagement is good engagement.
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