Latest news with #OzzyManReviews
New Straits Times
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Straits Times
Australian voters tuned out online politics this time
When Australian podcast host Nigel Marsh booked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for an interview on his show, Five of My Life, he expected a surge of listeners due to his guest's high profile and the fact that an election was looming. Instead, his audience numbers came in at half their usual level. "I was expecting a bump in the figures," said Marsh, who first posted the 35-minute sit-down in the lead-up to the last election in 2022, and again three weeks before last Saturday's vote which returned Albanese to power. "Truth be told, I was surprised that the listener downloads for the prime minister were noticeably lower than for other popular culture figures." A campaign dominated by podcasts, TikTok and other non-mainstream media was widely credited with US President Donald Trump's win last year. But an attempt by Australian politicians to do the same fell flat this year, according to publicly available data and an analysis of social media activity conducted exclusively for Reuters. Australia's 2025 election was its first where all major party leaders went on podcasts and ran personal TikTok accounts. But voters largely tuned out of online political discussions, particularly since Trump sent geopolitical shockwaves by announcing sweeping tariffs on April 2, the analysis shows. "While there is no question that social media and podcasts do play an important role, I think in this particular election, that has to be viewed as secondary to the most dominant political trend in the world, and that is Trump," said Gordon Flake, chief executive officer of the Perth USAsia Centre, a foreign policy think tank. After Albanese's March 26 appearance on lifestyle podcast Happy Hour with Lucy and Nikki, "comments per 100 likes" for the show's TikTok account — a closely watched measure of audience engagement — fell by two-thirds by late April. A 48-minute interview with Albanese on popular YouTube channel "Ozzy Man Reviews" ranked 18th out of the channel's last 20 videos. It had just over half the views of a post called Why Sheilas Live Longer Than Blokes and about one-third the views of a video about Olympic breakdancer Raygun, according to data published on the streaming website. "Ozzy Man" presenter Ethan Marrell said the decline was due to fewer overseas viewers and his Albanese interview reached the same number of Australians as his other content. The opposition conservative coalition generated one-third more likes on its heavily meme-driven TikTok page than the governing Labor Party, according to published data, but still lost Australia's first election where most voters were aged 44 and under — the platform's main demographic. The left-wing Greens party also performed poorly despite some high-profile influencer support, losing at least two of their four House of Representatives members, including TikTok's most-followed Australian lawmaker, Max Chandler-Mather. "Often social media is a useful way of setting the agenda in mainstream media," said Jill Sheppard, a political scientist who works on the Australian Election Study, the country's biggest research project on voting behaviour. "That does not seem to have happened in this election." Plus Australian influencers were typically inexperienced political interviewers and candidate campaigns had become "so risk-averse and so scripted that the audiences can't be really enjoying it", she said. After the conservative opposition led most polls for nearly a year against a government accused of failing to fix a cost-of-living crisis, an abrupt turn-around coincided with the start of the campaign and Trump's constantly changing tariff regime which roiled markets — and pension fund balances. Engagement with politics on social media plummeted around the same time, according to US disinformation tracker Cyabra. Analysis conducted for Reuters showed an 84 per cent decline in Australian election-related posts, likes and comments from the start of April, compared with the month before — from 13,000 posts across 6,000 accounts on Facebook and X. The downturn suggested "a deeper behavioural disengagement from political discourse in Australia's online ecosystem", the company said. Decisions by social media giants to cut content moderation had enabled more misinformation, "creating voters that are sceptical and, frankly, exhausted by the deluge of political messaging being aimed in their direction", said Adam Marre, chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf.
Daily Mail
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Aussies react after Welcome to Country ceremony was hijacked by neo-Nazis on Anzac Day
A group of apparent neo-Nazis who booed a Welcome to Country during an Anzac Day dawn service in Melbourne have sparked a fierce criticism from Australians. Thousands of people travelled in the pre-dawn darkness on Friday to commemorate those who paid the ultimate sacrifice. But a group of between six and ten people, allegedly including prominent neo-Nazi figure Jacob Hersant, heckled and booed during Bunurong elder Mark Brown's Welcome to Country at the start of the event. 'It's our country!' one yelled. 'We don't have to be welcomed,' screamed another. The boos and shouts lasted the entire three minutes of the address. When Victorian Governor Margaret Gardner delivered the official Anzac Day address afterwards, which acknowledged Aboriginal Australians, there were further boos. Hersant, the leader of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network, was later seen in a heated exchange with a reporter. 'This is a day for Anzacs, it's not for Aboriginals,' he said before police intervened. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ozzy Man Reviews (@ozzymanreviews) The incident has attracted condemnation from across the political spectrum and sparked debate about Welcome to Country ceremonies in Australia. Asked if there should be a Welcome to Country at the service on Friday, 90 per cent of almost 8,000 respondents to a Daily Mail Australia poll answered 'No'. Social media star Ethan Marrell, whose Ozzy Man Reviews accounts have 6.2million followers on YouTube and 2.3million on Instagram, slammed the hecklers in an angry spray on Friday. 'Yeah nah yeah, Neo-Nazis, f*** off,' Mr Marrell said, after watching footage of the heckling taking place. 'No matter what ceremony they perform for, you'd probably whinge. 'Indigenous people could call it Enjoy Your Country and the Caucasians will go 'why do I need to be told to enjoy me country, this isn't the time of the place for it'. 'They could call it Leave the Country and your smooth brain would definitely pop a f***ing aneursym.' Reaction to Mr Marrell's video was mixed, with some praising his defence of the Welcome to Country, while others argued it had no place at the Dawn Service. 'Good on you Ozzy Man thanks for not sticking to comedy,' one supporter said. 'I'm so confused, why are they booing?' asked another. 'White settlers (and let's be real, prisoners serving a sentence of transportation) arrived in Australia only a handful of lifetimes ago, how can anyone think they're anywhere other than on another people's land?' But others disagreed. 'We voted no champ. Today is not about some made up ceremony,' one said. 'Stick to your tired old jokes, instead of leftist politics,' said another. Anthony Albanese on Friday labelled the behaviour of the hecklers a 'disgrace'. 'The disruption of Anzac Day is beyond contempt, and the people responsible must face the full force of the law,' the Prime Minister said. 'This was an act of low cowardice on a day when we honour courage and sacrifice.' Opposition leader Peter Dutton also condemned the hecklers, branding them 'mentally unwell'. However, Mr Dutton has previously suggested Welcome to Country ceremonies are being used too often, describing how 'five or ten speakers' might each do an Acknowledgement of Country at a function. Meanwhile Liberal frontbencher Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who is Indigenous, has previously claimed Australians were 'getting sick' of the ceremonies. 'There is no problem with acknowledging our history, but rolling out these performances before every sporting event or public gathering is definitely divisive,' she said. Victoria Police confirmed a 26-year-old Melbourne man had been directed to leave Melbourne's Dawn Service. The suspect had been interviewed over an allegation of offensive behavior and would be issued a summons to appear in court, a spokesperson said. Police did not identify the suspect, in line with their usual policy.
