This paper aims to provide direction for campaigners looking to inoculate voters from the culture war division on climate change, and to build and sustain further public support for climate action.

In this paper, the author examines the issue of judicial independence and judicial politicisation in a comparative perspective. The paper starts with some general observations, then turns to the United States and moves on to the United Kingdom, before distilling some lessons — and perhaps...

Effective political finance regulation has multiple dividends - it promotes political equality, curbs corruption and enables climate action, writes Joo-Cheong Tham.

The outcome the authors investigate in this paper is the initiatives and policies targeting Indigenous populations in the context of Australia. They ask whether and how politicians’ and voters’ identities, defined based on a range of their observable characteristics, shape initiation and support of Indigenous-focused...

The authors of this paper suggest that Indigenous communities around Australia could wield significant electoral power if they mobilised the large cohort of non-participating eligible Indigenous vote.

This research debunks speculation that a major state-backed campaign was deployed to influence political discourse in Australia on social media. The research analysed more than 69,000 tweets, from two low-points in Australia-China relations in 2020, and found no evidence the CCP was using bots to...

2022 is shaping up as a pivotal year across the economic and political spectrums and it comes at a critical time, in terms of the need for policy action in Australia. This report argues that governments around the country must make tough policy decisions in...

This publication explores the changing nature of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) engagement with Australian states and territories, local governments, city councils, universities, research organisations and non-government organisations nested in Australian civil society.

This report includes summaries of the evidence received about the motivations for foreign interference, the forms that it can take, the elements of social media platforms and their usage that foreign interference attempts often seek to exploit, and the social and cultural features that foreign...

In the last parliamentary sitting weeks of 2021, the Morrison Government passed 'political campaigner' legislation. This briefing note explains what the laws are, how have they changed, and what the consequences might be for the charities sector.

This report analyses two Chinese state-linked networks seeking to influence discourse about Xinjiang across platforms including Twitter and YouTube. This activity targeted the Chinese-speaking diaspora, as well as international audiences, sharing content in a variety of languages.

This paper looks at what’s wrong with politics and policy-making - why the basic way we make decisions is undermining our ability to navigate this age of exponential change.

This report provides a primer on the roots of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) within China’s policy system, and sheds light on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) intentions to use cyberspace as a tool for shaping discourse domestically and internationally.

In light of current conversations about the need to rethink and redesign online public spaces, researchers from the Pew Research Center and Elon University asked experts how they expect the digital public sphere to evolve by 2035. This report outlines the findings.

This report is the culmination of a project undertaken over the last year. The report seeks to understand what key ingredients enable movements to realise significant change – as well as what we can learn from movements associated with partial or little change.

This publication documents a timeline of major events over the course of Facebook’s history that demonstrate the unprecedented power the platform wields over politics and information systems globally. The authors argue that Australia remains vulnerable to mis- and disinformation, and does not have effective safeguards...

Independent federal MP Zali Steggall claimed that, in contrast to consumer law, it was “perfectly legal” to lie in Australian political advertising. Experts told Fact Check there were no catch-all federal laws to prevent lies in political ads, though they said existing laws might apply...

The approach recommended in this report will need to be regularly reviewed to ensure that it is effective and appropriate. Government funding for research into the impact of social media on elections would assist future policy reviews, as would several of the transparency measures recommended...

In this paper, UK historian Simon Heffer argues that much of the power of identity politics is to make normally rational people who consider themselves part of an oppressor majority behave in an irrational and self-hating way.

The rise of both left-wing and right-wing populism presents a serious challenge for liberal democracies. This paper explores the psychological needs that populism exploits, and the reasons it so easily attracts followers.