Far-right leader Pauline Hanson’s crafty social media use in Australia fuels surging popularity

SYDNEY – Australia’s anti-migrant populist Pauline Hanson presents herself as a staunch conservative leading the fight against changes, such as multiculturalism, that she believes are destroying the country.

Like far-right groups in Europe, the veteran politician has projected her messages to great effect on social media, which she is using to grow a vast online following that is helping her One Nation party to surge in opinion polls since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor party won the last federal election in May 2025 in a landslide.

The most recent Resolve Political Monitor survey on Feb 15 found 32 per cent of voters backed Labor, followed by 23 per cent each for One Nation and the Liberal-National Coalition, 11 per cent for the Greens and 11 per cent for others.

The result was the strongest standing One Nation had received in Resolve polling. A separate Newspoll survey in January even found that the party was ahead of the Coalition for the first time.

Analysts say that Ms Hanson’s famously consistent stances since she first became an MP in 1996 – including her opposition to foreign investment, immigration and environmental action – are now spurring the growth of her online following.

Ms Hanson has 917,000 followers on Facebook, her preferred platform, compared with 652,000 for Mr Albanese.

The Federal senator also has a huge following on YouTube, where she recently released an animated movie – available online for A$15 (S$13.40) – in which she appears as a heroic prime minister of Australia, saving the country from “woke” activists.

An expert on the use of social media in Australian politics, Dr Susan Grantham, from Griffith University, told The Straits Times that staunchly consistent politicians such as Ms Hanson tend to do well on social media because would-be followers can browse a large body of online content that presents clear and constant messaging.

“She is a politician who has not changed much in her career – her approach, her attitudes and her policies have remained consistent,” Dr Grantham said.

“In social media campaigning, there needs to be some level of consistency. If someone is exposed (to One Nation) for the first time, they can go back to previous posts and see what they stand for.”

Analysts say One Nation’s rise has largely been fuelled by infighting in the Coalition, which has split twice and reunited twice since the election. For voters looking for alternatives, One Nation has been assisted by its strong, carefully crafted social media presence.

Dr Kurt Sengul, from Macquarie University, who has studied media populism in Australia, told ST that One Nation and Ms Hanson were early adopters of communication technology and had been “remarkably successful at using social media”, particularly in the last decade.

He said the party’s use of different platforms has been strategic and innovative, including using YouTube to post comedic animated videos that regularly generate hundreds of thousands of views.

“Facebook has been their primary platform and they’ve used it very effectively, utilising both visual and textual communication and posting several times a day,” he said.

“YouTube has become a really important platform for One Nation. They use it to post their animated online series Please Explain... They also cross-post clips of Hanson delivering speeches in Parliament to their Facebook and YouTube accounts which greatly expands the reach of those parliamentary speeches.”

According to analysts, One Nation’s use of social media reflects a trend seen around the world that has enabled other far-right groups such as Mr Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in Britain and AfD in Germany to promote messages that would have been shunned by traditional mainstream media.

Dr Sengul said far-right leaders such as Ms Hanson had used social media to communicate directly with voters and supporters “without journalists acting as intermediaries”.

He said Australian far-right influencers and groups used social media to develop followings or to coordinate with other figures and movements overseas, such as British far-right anti-Muslim activist Tommy Robinson.

“Social media/digital media has been central to the rise of far-right groups in Australia,” Dr Sengul said.

“Online far-right communities have made effective use of visual media like memes to ridicule and target political opponents and increasingly are weaponising generative AI too.”

Other forms of technology have helped such groups as well.

Dr Sengul noted that encrypted apps such as Telegram and Signal allow extreme right-wing groups such as the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network – an Australian group that said in January it would disband to avoid being banned under new hate speech laws – to “communicate, organise and mobilise supporters beyond the reach of security agencies”.

Dr Grantham said the global rise of far-right populism and of online communities such as the “manosphere”, which often promotes misogynistic and sexist content, had increased the demand for groups such as One Nation.

Simultaneously, she noted, the party was producing the sort of “comedic and sometimes quite bizarre content” that appealed to younger viewers. These developments, along with the declining appeal of the Coalition, are helping to fuel demand for their content.

“Their content is more likely to be brought forth in the algorithm,” she said. “It is a perfect storm.”

Ms Hanson first gained national and international notoriety in the 1990s over her attacks on Asian immigration, multiculturalism and Aboriginal welfare. Despite her recent rise in popularity, she has not moderated her messages.

She caused a stir after saying in an interview on Feb 16 that there are no “good” Muslims and that people cannot visit Lakemba – a Sydney suburb that is majority-Muslim – without feeling unsafe.

Mr Albanese on Feb 19 described the comments as “disgraceful”, linking her comments to recent death threats received by Lakemba Mosque.

“Pauline Hanson is a divisive figure,” he told the Nova radio station. “She’s made a political career out of seeking to divide Australians against each other.”