Morrison warned foreign interference campaign on social media is a serious risk to Australia?s election

The Morrison government has been warned a coordinated interference campaign unleashed by foreign states or malicious actors through social media platforms is a serious risk to manage in the looming federal election campaign.

With the federal contest now imminent, a Senate select committee established in late 2019 to investigate the risks posed to Australia's democracy by foreign interference through social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and WeChat has used its first report to urge the Coalition to adopt better protocols before the poll.

The new report concludes Australia currently lacks some of the institutional architecture needed to respond effectively and proactively to the threat of foreign interference.

The Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media notes federal parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has concluded that there was limited evidence of social media manipulation within Australia, including minimal use of bots, during the 2019 federal election.

But analysts from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute told the inquiry financially motivated actors from Kosovo, Albania and the Republic of North Macedonia used nationalistic and Islamophobic content to target and manipulate Australian Facebook users during the 2019 election.

Australia's home affairs department also warned in a separate submission that foreign interference activity against Australian interests was now occurring at an "unprecedented scale".

The new report also references a Queensland University of Technology study that concluded there were a substantial number of bots tweeting election related content in 2019, with a majority originating from New York.