With Australia full tilt into a federal election campaign, one question keeps arising: Is the election campaign forcing the media and government to come to terms with creators?

As I made the point a few weeks ago, we’ve known this moment is coming for a while – just take a look at the rise of so-called “newsfluencers”. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle when it comes to who holds the influence and, spoiler alert: it’s no longer just the traditional media.

And while the Australian political parties are looking to follow the podcasting model used to great success by the Trump campaign in the US election, the reality is there are very few podcasts that have the scale in Australia to make a difference.

The one thing that has both engagement and scale are influencers in Australia. Creators have been slowly but surely eating into the space once dominated by legacy outlets, and it appears the media is not happy about it – just look at many of the media stories the media headlines generated when a dozen Instagrammers were allowed into the Federal Budget lock-up.

Yesterday’s news that the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is investigating Abbie Chatfield’s political posts on social media is also a sign that it’s not just the media who aren’t sure how to deal with the rising tide of creators. Government and regulatory authorities like the AEC........

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