Political media literacy

Build a personal election research file: set questions first, use primary sources, separate claims from evidence, and update as new material appears.

Practical techniques for identifying online content designed to influence political views through targeting, emotional framing and concealed provenance.

A fact-check tests a defined claim against available evidence. It cannot settle value judgments, predict every outcome or validate claims beyond stated scope.

Check axes, units, start date and denominator before judging a chart. Replot from underlying values when visual scale makes differences look larger than real.

A poll captures opinion at one moment. An election records votes. Sampling error, campaign events, turnout and seat geography separate the two.

Understand who was polled, how they were contacted, sample size, question wording, field dates and weighting to interpret opinion poll results critically.

Practical techniques to verify whether visual media circulating in Australian political contexts is recent, misattributed, or recycled from an earlier event.

Practical steps to verify a political quote using official records: Hansard, archives, recordings and context to check whether an excerpt changes the meaning.

Primary sources record the underlying act or data; secondary sources interpret it; partisan sources advocate. Each can be useful if its role is labelled.

Find the earliest source, open it, check dates and definitions, compare the claim with the source's actual words, cross-reference and note what is unverified.