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Robo-Call Usage by Australian Political Parties: The Case of the Spooky Vote-Hunting Robot
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 02:28 authored by Kefford, GWhile internationally, pre-recorded telephone messages, often referred to as robo-calls, have been used for some time, their use during Australian election campaigns goes back less than a decade. This article tracks the emergence of robo-calls and a complementary technology known as telephone ‘town-halling’ in Australia. It explores the way Australian parties are using telephonic technology as part of their election campaigns and compares this use to the experience in the United States and Canada. While these countries have seen a push for increased robo-call and telephonic regulation as a result of a number of controversies, this article argues that any regulatory changes in Australia should reflect the different way the technology is being used here. In particular, the evidence shows that it is the telephone ‘town-hall’ technology which is set to grow most significantly and regulatory changes need to reflect the distinction between the two forms of telephonic political campaigning.
History
Publication title
Communication, Politics and CultureVolume
47Pagination
1-16ISSN
1836-0645Department/School
School of Social SciencesPublisher
R M I T * School of Media & CommunicationPlace of publication
AustraliaRights statement
Licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/Repository Status
- Open