You hear that? It’s the sound of a politician on your favourite podcast.

Abbie Chatfield became a familiar name on the seventh season of the Australian Bachelor in 2019. Six years later, on a tram on my way to work, I found myself tuning into her pop culture podcast, ‘It’s A Lot.’

Photos of a young Anthony Albanese on the ALP TikTok account. Credit: Rani Fletcher

Except the episode I was listening to was an interview with the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese.

Since the Prime Minister’s appearance on the podcast in February, former Greens leader, Adam Bandt, and Senator, Jacqui Lambie, are among those who have been guests on Chatfield’s podcast. 

They’re all players in a changing electoral landscape, where campaigning on social media and podcasts is rapidly increasing.

For the first time this election, Gen Z and millennials were a greater portion of voters than Boomers, and parties went to lengths to reach them.

The Guardian reported The Labor Party (ALP) were the biggest spenders on digital advertising, pouring more than $4 million into Meta and nearly $7 million into YouTube. This was almost half a million more than the Liberals spent on Meta, and almost $4 million more than they spent on YouTube.

Former Labor member for Lyons, Brian Mitchell, says social media campaigning has grown rapidly in recent elections as Australians move away from traditional media.

“Even in 2016, social media advertising was a very, very small part of the budget,” he says. 

Mitchell says some money went “into print but mostly TV and some into commercial radio”.

In the 2016 federal election, the ABC reported the ALP spent roughly $4.7 million on free-to-air TV, radio and print advertising.

This year, they spent $3 million more than this figure on YouTube advertising alone.

Mitchell blames the lack of a shared media experience and says the fragmented media landscape makes it harder than ever for politicians to reach voters.

“It's tough…finding a way to communicate to lots of people all the time. Because of that fragmentation, you've got to be in every single space that you can and just repeating those messages,” he says.

Podcasting is one of these spaces, soaring in popularity in recent years.

The 2024 Australian Podcast report shows monthly podcast listeners in Australia increased by 8.5 per cent last year, with 70 per cent of 2023 podcast listeners being Gen Z or Millennial. Given these demographics were the largest voting bloc in this election, podcasting quickly became the link between politicians and traditionally politically disengaged voters.

Things get more interesting when we consider almost half of these podcast listeners are male, with news, politics, and international events being the second most popular podcast genre among Australian men.

This makes it unsurprising young men are more prone to being swayed to the right, and Mitchell says it’s a struggle for Labor.

“They’re generally not tuned into politics at all…young regional men are increasingly tuning into right-wing political ideals, which is a problem for us in the party,” he says.

But it’s not just an issue Australia’s dealing with.

Research by The Conversation suggests podcasting in last year’s U.S. federal election effectively swayed young men to the right, with Donald Trump’s appearances on podcasts like Joe Rogan, increasing his support by up to 2.6 per cent.

But Mitchell says podcasting isn’t all bad news, and can be “positive and affirming” because of its “direct audience participation”.

“It’s not necessarily a bad thing sometimes to bypass the traditional brokers of information and power,” he says.

University of Melbourne lecturer and co-host of ‘Truth, Lies and Media’ podcast, Dennis Muller, says the rise in influencers hosting podcasts has created new podcast sub-genres.

“[Influencers] don’t do journalism. They do propaganda, they do engagement,” he says.

“All the politicians are now onto the fact that they’re not reaching the younger demographic and here’s an opportunity to do so,” he says.

Despite this, Muller believes they’re still a valuable “contribution to the democratic process”, through engaging people otherwise disengaged from party politics. He says it’s the lack of scrutiny and transparency on the platforms creating issues.

“The problem with this particular sub-genre of podcasts is there is no transparency around the relationship they [influencers] have with the political party.”

“You don’t have to be aggressive to scrutinise people but you do have to ask them pointed questions,” he says.

He highlights the “enormous time” given to politicians in podcast interviews, saying “no way” would a traditional media interview slot ever get “90 minutes”.

And he wasn’t the only one to flag this.

RMIT Podcasting Professor, Janak Rogers, says the depth podcasts go into means people are “quite happy” to listen for extended periods, where they previously wouldn’t via traditional media.

“If you had listened to Jacqui Lambie in the past, the most you'd probably have gotten would be at tops, a seven-minute flagship interview. Eight minutes on TV. Tops eight to nine minutes on Radio National,” he says.

But Rogers says despite criticism of podcasts lacking pushback and having poor adversarial quality, the depth and length of them exposes the interviewee to more scrutiny.

“[Talking for an hour] exposes them to a lot more scrutiny… where they have to really demonstrate who they are at a personal level and defend quite a lot more ideas,” he says. 

Rogers says politicians don’t have a choice but to keep up with modern campaigning, at risk of compromising their political power if they don’t.

“The simple truth is the world has changed, and mainstream media is one place to find an audience and there's plenty of others. If you ignore that, you risk being irrelevant and you risk excluding people from the democratic process.”

“Because those people are listening to Abbie Chatfield, but they're not watching the Seven Thirty Report,” he says.

University of Canberra and Australian Communications and Media Authority shows Gen Z interest in politics has fallen six per cent in the past year, with nearly half of 18 to 24-year-olds and 25 percent of Aussies using social media as their main news source.

Credit: Rani Fletcher

The Digital News Report says TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform for news since 2021.

University of Melbourne student, Alice Boyle, has used TikTok for five years and says she’s noticed an increase in political content in her algorithm during the election.

As a first-time voter, she says tactics employed by politicians and parties on TikTok influenced how she voted.

“Something I found was a lot of the advertisements that were quite hateful towards other parties, I really didn't like.”

“I did see the Anthony Albanese thirst traps, and I think that was quite unprofessional. It did make me question the credibility of the Labor Party a little bit...but it wasn’t necessarily misleading,” she says.

University of Melbourne Arts student. Alice Boyle Credit: Rani Fletcher

Ms Boyle says she’s careful to distinguish misinformation from fact, but expecting content creators and podcast hosts to be completely impartial in disseminating political content is unrealistic.

“ I think it is important to some extent for podcasters and reporters to have somewhat of a viewpoint…you just can't get rid of bias, especially when it comes to social media,” she says.

In the case of Abbie Chatfield, Ms Boyle says podcast hosts are “of course” going to “share opinion”, and the “people who are listening to that inherently probably are voting for Albanese anyway”.

The Australian Electoral Commission’s  review into content posted by influencers is one step in managing the changing political media landscape, but Mitchell says more can and needs to be done.

Mitchell says there’s a valuable role for the government in regulating media, so independent journalism doesn’t only exist on social media and podcast platforms.

“We don’t want a state media. But I certainly think there's a role there for the government to ensure that independent journalism is alive and kicking.”

So at what point will it stop being influencers reporting on politicians, and instead influencers as political representatives?

With Cheek Media founder and influencer, Hannah Ferguson, announcing in her National Press Club address that she will run as an independent Senator next election, it might be sooner than we think.