Political parody Twitter account users beware – your real identity is easier to find than you think.
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In the past week, three dormant Labor Party parody accounts @LabourStaffer, @Team_Anna_Bligh and @OldDogRusty, have been reactivated, in the strongest sign yet the political class is gearing up for the next election.
Government parody accounts have been ongoing since the 2012 election campaign, with @FakeJeffSeeney, @Can_Do_Campbell and @CantLisa among the most prominent.
But Griffith University professor of journalism and social media, Mark Pearson, said parody accounts walk a fine legal line.
"At their worse, when you would indeed call them trolls, they are a nuisance and in some cases they are even legally actionable,” he said.
“Unfortunately satire and parody, particularly in the area of defamation, is very difficult to defend.
“We’re seeing this at the moment with the case of political commentator Chris Kenny and the ABC, and we have an injunction still standing in Queensland over a satirical song about the former politician Pauline Hanson.
“With the fun accounts, no one ever tries to find out – part of the fun is the anonymity. But if someone does something seriously wrong and people want to engage lawyers, or the police, then it is much easier to be found via IP addresses, than the so-called trolls may think.”
The re-animated Labor parody accounts were last used in the previous state election, with the exception of Old Dog Rusty, which came back to poke fun at his former “master”, Peter Beattie, during his run for the federal seat of Forde last year.
Professor Pearson expects social media to play a much larger role in the 2015 state election, with Facebook still the dominant platform, as Twitter largely remains the playground of those within the media, political, marketing and public relations sectors.
“It is a no brainer that social media will be used much more in the next election because there is so much more awareness of and use of social media than there was in the last election.
“You would be very silly as a politician or a political party not to make full use of all media.
“But, if you are going to have a parody account, my advice is to keep it just silly and fun rather than nasty and demeaning, because you are much more identifiable than you think you might be.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the @CantLisa Twitter account had been shut down.
