March 20, 2025
A series of attacks on Australian political parties on emerging Chinese social media platform RedNote (RED), has raised concerns about misinformation, disinformation and the risk of foreign interference ahead of the federal election.
Among the most notable is an AI-generated deepfake video of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, falsely depicting him speaking Mandarin, and a misleadingly edited video suggesting he intends to deport Chinese Australians.
The Albanese government has also been targeted, including with posts showing people being arrested in shopping centres, accompanied by the false claim that Australian police are arresting temporary migrants.
The vertical video platform, also known by its Chinese name Xiaohongshu, which means "little red book", was designed for lifestyle content and e-commerce and has expanded rapidly, now attracting over 700,000 monthly users in Australia.
Analysts say its increasing influence and unique algorithm that makes it easy to share misinformation make it a key platform to watch in the lead-up to the election.
However, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is not monitoring the platform for misleading or deceptive content.
A dossier of attacks on Australian political parties has been compiled by the RECapture project, an initiative of several Victorian universities that analyses how Australia is portrayed across Chinese social media services.
Between November and February, its researchers found misleading content on RED targeting both major parties as well as independent candidates.
Peter Dutton has been one of the main targets of attacks, with misleading claims circulating about his policies on nuclear energy, immigration, housing and health care.
The ABC has also discovered additional posts.
They include one video clip based on an interview Mr Dutton gave explaining his policy to not display Indigenous flags alongside the Australian flag at press conferences.
"We are a country united under one flag. If we are asking people to identify under different flags, no other country does that," Mr Dutton said in the interview.
But the AI-generated clip on RED portrayed Mr Dutton speaking in fluent Mandarin — with his own voice.
It added the false commentary: "Peter Dutton vows to abolish the Aboriginal flag if he's elected."
Another post discovered by the ABC falsely claimed Mr Dutton had compared international students to "modern-day refugees who stow away on boats".
Yet another post falsely alleged that Mr Dutton "told Chinese Australians to leave the country", heavily distorting a speech he gave last year.
The original speech was criticising participants in an anti-Israel protest at the Sydney Opera House in 2023.
"My message to this recalcitrant minority is simple. You will not change us. If you do not subscribe to the Australian way of life, leave this country," the opposition leader said in the speech, delivered in April 2024.
However, the post on RED misleadingly suggested that Mr Dutton was talking about Chinese migrants, who he planned to deport if elected.
The person who posted the video commented on the post, claiming it meant: "If Australian Chinese don't assimilate and become 'bananas', they risk being expelled from Australia soon."
"Banana" is a racial slur aimed at Asian people, implying that they are yellow (Asian) on the outside but white on the inside.
The ABC has identified the poster as a mortgage broker based between China and Sydney.
He did not respond to questions about why he was posting misleading claims about Mr Dutton.
In other examples of misinformation, a scare campaign targeting Mr Dutton's Medicare policies, promoted by Labor and reported by the ABC, has also continued to spread on RED.
Labor has attacked Mr Dutton's Medicare record in official campaign ads authorised by Health Minister Mark Butler and Foreign Minister Penny Wong.
However, unauthorised versions of these political posts have spread on RED without proper disclosure.
The researchers have also found misinformation posts criticising Labor policies, including one that alleged Australia's improved diplomatic ties with India would lead to an influx of Indian migrants, increasing competition with Chinese migrants in the housing market.
The AEC told the ABC it was aware of the rise of political misinformation on RED but was not proactively monitoring the platform.
"If we receive information about unauthorised content on the channel, we will have a look at it and if it requires action, we will take it. This is the standard approach we take across all social media platforms," an AEC spokesperson said.
The University of Melbourne's Yang Fan, a lead researcher with the RECapture project, said political information spread far more easily on RED than on the more established Chinese social media platform, WeChat.
While WeChat remained the most popular platform for Chinese Australian voters to receive information, much of its political content is confined to closed groups or official accounts.
In contrast, RED allowed campaign material developed on other platforms to be easily reshared.
"The accessibility of RED, compared to WeChat, makes it a key platform for political communication," Dr Yang said, adding that its algorithm actively pushed political content to potential voters based on shared demographics, location, browsing history and interests.
Robbie Fordyce of Monash University, another lead researcher on the project, said that RED's algorithm, which prioritised engagement and clickbait-style content, could amplify extreme views.
"One of the issues we see on RED is that it becomes a space where people's anxieties are heard and targeted," Dr Fordyce said.
"And we don't give enough credit to the degree to which people are prepared to recirculate misinformation because they're scared."
Although it is difficult to track the exact reach of a RED post, some misleading posts have been liked and shared hundreds of times.
Tracing the origins of misinformation and disinformation on RED is difficult.
Many accounts spreading misleading claims about Australian politics are based overseas, particularly in China, according to data collected by the Melbourne-based researchers.
Dr Yang said there was little transparency regarding account verification on RED, making it harder to track sources and motivations.
She said it was impossible to even determine whether a given account was operated by a single individual or an organisation.
Concerns are also growing over coordinated disinformation campaigns and the anonymous accounts behind them.
In 2023, a Senate inquiry into foreign interference raised concerns that social media platforms could be used to spread misinformation or disinformation to influence political outcomes in Australia, manipulate community discourse and understanding about an issue or spread chaos and seed distrust in Australia's democratic systems.
Liberal senator James Paterson, who chaired the inquiry, said it was "critical" for Australians to stay on top of the issue.
"We know that authoritarian states are particularly adept at using a range of means, including social media, to try and influence political outcomes," Senator Paterson said.
Australian politicians have been using RED to promote their election campaigns and reach Chinese Australian voters.
Although they make up just 5.5 per cent of the Australian population, a significant proportion of Chinese Australian voters reside in marginal seats.
But the ABC can confirm both Labor, Liberal and independent candidates have been "shadow banned" by the platform, meaning the account remains active but users cannot search for the profile.
Dr Fordyce described this as a part of a general move by social platforms to crack down on political campaigning.
The result is that official accounts of the candidates are harder to access, yet unofficial material, including misinformation or disinformation, remains freely available.
Dr Yang said RED did not attempt to identify misleading political content.
"If someone is discussing Australian policies, RED does not actively verify or patrol the content. It is considered opinion, and people are free to have opinions," Dr Yang said.
Currently, Dr Yang says the onus is on Chinese Australian voters, many of whom lack the media literacy skills needed to critically assess online information.
This meant verifying information could be "extremely emotionally taxing and draining," she said.
A 2022 Lowy Institute report found that a quarter of Chinese Australians encountered "made-up news" during the last federal election, but only half took steps to verify the information.
Dr Fordyce says misinformation in Chinese is hard to debunk because the alternative perspectives, facts or opinions are often in English.
The researchers argue the AEC needs to start policing the platform.
"We have been advocating for more official voices for a long time. Our research shows that misinformation narratives repeat in every electoral cycle and major political event," Dr Yang said.
An AEC spokesperson said: "While the AEC does not have a presence on Xiaohongshu [RED], we are constantly monitoring the social media environment with an eye to ensuring that we are communicating with as many voters as possible within our finite resources."
The spokesperson said resources from its Stop and Consider digital literacy campaign were available in multiple languages on its website.