Is a Bot Army Driving One Nation’s Rise?

One Nation’s extraordinary rise in the polls has inevitably produced theories about what is driving it.

One of the more interesting ones appeared in the comments on my recent article:

“I think a large part of it is a huge bot army pushing them in social media financed by mining billionaires and people with an interest in exploiting a gullible and malleable fool.”

It’s quite a claim.

My first instinct was that the “bot army” part might be one of those political theories that sounds plausible once it gets repeated often enough.

But there was enough there to make me curious.

So rather than dismissing it or accepting it I went looking.

And this turned out to be one of those cases where the evidence is considerably more interesting than the original allegation.

Because yes.

Something unusual really is happening online.

But it doesn’t necessarily mean what people think it means.

In March, ABC News Verify investigated a collection of overseas Facebook accounts publishing fake Australian political news.

Researchers examined 370 images posted during a single week by 14 accounts.

Pauline Hanson appeared in 191 of them just over half.

Anthony Albanese was the next most common political figure, appearing 93 times.

The material wasn’t merely enthusiastic commentary from One Nation supporters.

Some stories were completely fabricated.

There were AI-generated images showing Hanson performing charitable acts that never happened, false claims that she was battling cancer, imaginary political confrontations and manufactured “breaking news” stories.

Hanson was generally portrayed positively often as the winner of some political battle while opponents were frequently portrayed negatively.

And Australians were engaging with it.

ABC found hundreds of thousands of likes, comments and shares, many apparently coming from genuine Australian Facebook users.

So we can establish one thing fairly confidently.

Foreign accounts are producing and amplifying large amounts of pro-Pauline Hanson political material aimed at Australians.

But then Guardian Australia went further.

In June, Guardian Australia examined 14 of the largest public pro-One Nation Facebook groups, each with at least 8,000 members.

Many had only been created during 2026.

Researchers found that much of the material was being supplied by overseas “digital creators”, particularly accounts apparently operating from Indonesia and India.

Some groups had tens of thousands even more than 100,000 members.

And many of the posts looked remarkably like political surveys.

You may have seen them.

Questions along the lines of:

Was Pauline Hanson right?

Should Australia ban Sharia law?

Do you support Pauline Hanson on immigration?

They certainly look like opinion polls.

But according to digital-media researchers, many are better understood as “poll bait”.

They’re not necessarily trying to discover what Australians think.

They’re trying to make Australians click.

Vote.

Comment.

Argue.

Share.

Because engagement has value.

One creator identified by the Guardian had even posted a Meta screen showing an offer of US$20 for two posts reaching 50,000 people.

And this is where the story takes a rather unexpected turn.