Toni Mackey
SYDNEY (Pacific Media Watch / Griffith University / Sydney Morning Herald): The Australian government has been monitoring the activities of netizens and dissidents on social media and the Department of Immigration has sent threatening posts to one activist over Twitter.
Events started with a tweet from the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) to a pro-asylum seeker activist that gave the impression that officials had seen posts on her private Facebook page.
On April 4, 2014, the DIBP sent Vanessa Powell a twitter message stating “it’s come to our attention that a Facebook post on your wall contains an offensive remark directed at a staff member”.
“If you do not remove your Facebook post with immediate effect, we will consider our options further,” the DIBP then tweeted.
When Powell asked them what tweet they were referring to, the DIBP replied: "post in question is dated yesterday, with a picture of a bus and contains a comment by George Georgiadis."
This post has since been removed from Powell’s Facebook page.
According to a Sydney Morning Herald article, the DIBP hires private contractors who monitor social media every day to determine Australian perceptions on different policies.
Monitoring feedback
At the start of the year the Abbott government reportedly commissioned $4.3 million worth of research contracts to monitor social media posts to help advise the government on its immigration policies.
The Department of Human Service also has a programme to monitor for feedback about peoples experiences with the department as well as highlighting issues that may need a response that have been posted on social media sites.
Since the DIBP's tweets, Powell's Twitter page has been inundated with messages of support against the Australian government's censorship of social media.
Toni Mackey is a Griffith University student journalist working on a media freedom project with Reporters Sans Frontières.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
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