How does the Facebook news ban in Australia impact defence communications?
Almost a week has passed since Facebook banned Australian users from sharing news on its platform as a response to proposed legislation aimed at establishing a news media code in Australia.
How does this currently affect communications in the defence area?
Let’s take coverage of the recent Cope North 21 exercise in Guam as an example. This is an annual exercise involving the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and United States Air Force (USAF) that involves exercises in humanitarian response as well as combat training.
As a Facebook user in Australia, I can’t post links to news.com.au or Australian Aviation articles about the exercise. Nor can I post links to the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes about the exercise. Anyone outside of Australia can see the Stars and Stripes article on Facebook: but the Australian articles would be blocked for everyone.
While the ban initially impacted quite a few health, emergency and government Facebook accounts, most defence accounts were not impacted: namely the Department of Defence, Australian Army, Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and RAAF. However, defence industry publications such as Defence Connect have also been caught up in the ban.
So really, the big impact from the current news ban is that on earned media: any news coverage of defence operations in Australia is going to be essentially zero. You can learn about the RAAF’s Cope North operations on Facebook from their account — but you’re not going to hear anything from any other news outlet from within Australia.
The most recent development in this spat between Facebook and the Australian Government has seen a ban on government advertising campaigns on Facebook. This is quite a big impact on paid media given Facebook’s huge reach — over 11 million Australians use Facebook each month.
But is that a problem in the world of defence communications? It’s unlikely paid media will be used to promote exercises like Cope North 21. But one area that this paid media restriction might impact defence is recruitment. With the Department of Defence spending well over $10 million on recruitment advertising in 2018–19, this is clearly a vital part of defence recruitment strategy.
While defence recruitment advertising might be the biggest impact from this ban so far, it’s an ever-evolving situation, and one not likely to have a resolution any time soon.
