Senator for Victoria and Shadow Minister for Cyber Security James Paterson was named the new chair of the revived Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media.
“I am pleased to have been elected as the Chair of the new Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media,” Paterson wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Paterson was first elected in March 2016 at age 28, and is the youngest person elected to represent the Liberal Party in the Senate. He previously chaired the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security.
The committee was set up in 2021, and its job is to hold social media platforms and other government agencies accountable for keeping foreign interference from happening through cyberspace.
Senators have recently decided to reconvene the committee to look into how foreign governments like China and Russia are using social media platforms such as TikTok and WeChat as a weapon to suppress dissent and erode democracy.
Read here: Weaponisation of social media to be examined by Senate (commsroom.co)
Paterson, who is also the Shadow Minister for Countering Foreign Interference, says that the ongoing use of social media as a weapon, such as the harassment and intimidation of activists in countries like Iran, needs to be dealt with.
“There is much work to do to stop Western social media companies from being weaponised by authoritarian states and tackling the unique problems posed by social media companies headquartered in authoritarian countries, like China,” Paterson said in the post.
The committee will also investigate how China and Russia use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to spread disinformation.
It aims to provide the government with policy suggestions based on its findings from the investigation when it reports by August 1, 2023.
Jaw de Guzman is the content producer for Comms Room, a knowledge platform and website aimed at assisting the communications industry and its professionals.
