The only positive I took from Donald Trump’s shock victory in the 2016 US presidential election was that I was able to collect on a wager I had made, at very long odds, that it would happen.

The rest of the country was stunned into uncharacteristic silence. You could hear a pin drop the next morning on the usually cacophonous streets of the very liberal Brooklyn neighbourhood we lived in.

What had given me such confidence in this outcome? The wall-to-wall media coverage of the “novelty” candidate and his attention-grabbing campaign — even when it was to deride or dismiss him.

All told, over the course of the 2016 election it was estimated Trump received almost $US9 billion ($A12.7 billion) worth of free media (how much this airtime would have cost him if he paid for it). By comparison, Trump spent $595 million on his entire campaign, all advertising included.

With its relentless obsession with Trump’s scandals, stunts, and notoriety, the US media rocketed him into the White House; America’s first reality-­TV president fit for the outrage era as cable news thundered “why is he so popular?!” into its 417th straight hour of blanket coverage of his campaign. It pays to be controversial.

Hanson’s attention-grabbing burqa stunt in the Senate. Photo: Mike Bowers

That’s why our own local upstart political punchline wears a burqa into the Senate, or claims there are no good Muslims, or lodges an “It’s OK to be white” motion in Parliament … She has taken the lesson from Trump’s experience, much more so than the media has, that attention is the only political currency that now matters — and any attention, negative or positive, will do. The wall-to-wall coverage of her confirms her gambits.

We’ve seen this play out before. By persistently wondering how One Nation is in a position to potentially win at the next election, the media may be complicit in making that outcome a self-fulfilling prophecy — just as it did for Trump.

How? We live deep in an era of what I call “angertainment”, fuelled by the reality that our opinions are formed on platforms that mine our attention with algorithms that reward outrage and shock-value: social media. The new winners in this era are those who understand How to hack our attention and game the algorithms of both social and traditional media: In politics, that’s right-wing populists like Trump and Pauline Hanson.

Hanson follows the same playbook all ascendent far-right politicians are doing worldwide: From Nigel Farage, who is dominating the polls in Britain, to Alice Wiedel or Marine Le Pen who are doing likewise in Germany and France respectively. They win the battle for our attention.

Social media is dominated by pro-Hanson content that doesn’t look or feel like traditional political communications — AI-generated videos of her playing AC/DC on the tray of a ute; the Please Explain cartoons or Super Progressive movie that lampoon her political opponents, South Park-style; deepfake clips of her wrestling Anthony Albanese. Hanson trails only the Prime Minister in the number of followers on social media.

In 2024, a One Nation video used Robert Irwin and Bluey to focus on issues in Queensland.

Social media attention drives mainstream media attention. By eschewing the traditional conduits of political communication — a press release, a press conference, a press tour — politicians who shock through outrage can bypass all of these to generate attention.

In turn, traditional media must compete for that attention and do so by harvesting that social media outrage into click-bait, which must also succeed in the competition for attention on the same platforms. Right now, there is nothing more clickable than the latest Hanson headline.

Roy Morgan’s poll last week shocked us into more rounds of headlines and relentless coverage: If an election were held in NSW today, it showed, One Nation would win more primary votes than Labor and the Liberal or National parties, and would likely hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.

There is a vacuum for politically homeless conservatives and politically disengaged Howard “battlers”, which One Nation is clearly rushing to fill. “Surging”, “soaring”, “roaring”: These are all wonderfully positive and energising terms with which we regularly describe the current rise of One Nation.

Platforming Hanson normalises her and her views. Disproportionately covering her elevates her status. Superlatively framing her oxygenates her support at a time an unprecedented number of voters are looking for an answer to their grievances.

And yes, angry letter writers can be assured I already understand the irony of publishing an article about a topic I am arguing we should ignore — this is a call to action from someone who lived through this story playing out in America, and knows all too well how the story ends. We mocked, dismissed and obsessed all at the same time that which we could never imagine actually eventuating; and in so doing ensured it did.

Trump was a joke, and the US media treated his campaign as such. In their frenzied efforts to do so, it turned out the joke was on us.

Ed Coper is a political communications expert and CEO of Sydney-based agency Populares. His next book, Angertainment: How Social Media Outrage Ruined Everything, will be published by Simon & Schuster in May.

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