Objective

In 2023, Australia prepared for its first referendum in 24 years. Referendums are an important part of Australia’s democracy, but it had been a while… the Museum of Australian Democracy saw a chance to help people engage in their democracy.
 

Research indicated that many Australians were confused and overwhelmed by the process of

referendums. Analysis of referendum-related search terms in Australia showed a high and

consistent volume of queries, the majority of which indicate the need for explanations of basic terms.

With a commitment to remaining neutral, accessible and relevant, the Museum developed a digital civics education campaign designed to:

- improve Australians’ understanding of the Constitution and referendums,

-  explore why the Constitution and referendums matter in everyday life, and

- demonstrate why each Australian has an important role to play in a referendum.

Strategy

The 2023 Referendum asked Australian voters to consider the Constitutional recognition of the country’s First Nations peoples.  In the lead up to this vote, MoAD received funding through an appropriation from government, with the intention of creating accessible and neutral digital information about referendums.

As a ‘people’s place’ aiming to inspire, encourage and equip all Australians to participate in our democracy, we saw this as an opportunity to reach more people and provide more than just fact sheets.

We worked with Icon Agency to develop a social media campaign driven by evidence-based insight into audiences’ feelings of overwhelm and confusion regarding the Constitution, referendums and other ‘democracy 101’ basics.

The ‘A to Z of Australian referendums’ presented 26 key words to understand referendums and the Constitution.

We recognised the importance of community and online conversation surrounding this referendum, so we also engaged Quiip, a social media moderation specialist, to moderate and foster engagement on our channels throughout the campaign.

The primary target audience for the digital campaign is young people living in Australia, aged

18-30, who are considered ‘social connectors’ and active in their communities. The digital campaign was also designed to be adaptable and flexible, meeting the needs of interested audiences regardless of their demographic.
 

Outputs

• Organic Instagram and Facebook posts on MoAD social media channels (Instagram and Facebook), including memes, explainers and stories from history.
• Paid graphic-based Instagram and Facebook advertisements.
• Long-form articles on MoAD’s website explaining what referendums are, why they matter, what the Constitution is and why it matters; and articles exploring significant historical referendums.
• Digital toolkit to be distributed to community groups across Australia. This digital toolkit included shareable social media assets, fact sheets, and FAQs.

Challenges

• Our primary challenge was to make the Australian Constitution and referendums simple and engaging, while and also factually accurate.  We used simple, arrested graphics and ‘no-nonsense’, direct and personable language to cut through the noise surrounding the politically contentious referendum and explain concepts without patronising people or adding to the confusion.
• We faced some unique challenges due to our position as a Federal Government entity. In the lead up to a referendum, Australian legislation (specifically the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984), imposes strict regulations on government spending in the lead up to a referendum, and its application in a social media environment had to this point been untested. We navigated a complex risk environment, negotiating between historians, curators, copywriters and Constitutional law experts.
• The 2023 Referendum was particularly fraught and politically contentious. While the Museum is consistently neutral and welcoming of all views, we faced a considerable challenge navigating layers of mis and disinformation, a highly emotional public conversation, high levels of confusion regarding the Constitution and referendum processes, while being unable to comment on the nature of the 2023 referendum question itself. We overcame this by focusing on the facts, cutting through the noise, and developing a rigorous campaign-specific response matrix to handle a wide variety of community behaviours.

Results

This campaign far exceeded our initial, internally ambitious, goal of a 500,000 person reach. Overall, it garnered:

• 9 million people reached on Facebook and Instagram
• 112,000 total clicks
• 49,000 clicks to visit MoAD’s referendum web content, far exceeding many average benchmarks for clickthrough rates on Facebook and Instagram

Beyond the numbers, we consider this campaign an immense success because of the clear need the Museum was able to meet, and the potential ongoing impact of our work in this space.

• Audiences were eager to learn more about Australian democracy, with many thanking MoAD for objective information and helpful ‘last minute reading’.
• We received numerous comments and direct messages asking about democratic processes, including the difference between referendums and plebiscites, state and federal referendums.

An unexpected outcome was the level of mis- and dis-information present across social media, both throughout the referendum and on our campaign specifically. Misinformation comprised 49.7% of moderated comments on our campaign, and, as we saw, tactics for sharing false information are evolving, increasingly sophisticated in their attempts to bypass social media moderation tools.

However, in several instances, commentators questioned those unintentionally sharing false information and pointed them to accurate sources.

Our campaign demonstrated the strength in the Museum’s online community and approach to community engagement. We are exploring methods of amplifying this strength, fostering a ‘museum for the people’ in the online spaces where this work is most crucial, at a time when democracy is more fragile than ever.

Media