Whenever anyone goes to any polls in the developed world tv news programmes feel obligated to run a package on how social media is affecting the outcome. But how much of a difference does it really make?
Kevin Rudd's first public announcement of the election was via Twitter to his 1.3 million followers and both political parties have embraced Twitter and Facebook. But in the world of Twitter not all followers are real people with genuine accounts - some of them have been bought.
Jeannette Francis takes a look at the booming business of fake followers for real cash.
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You might not know this but I'm inside your television. Now if this was say, any year between 1950 and 2007, that might have made me important but since it's 2013 and half of our 17 viewers are members of my immediate family, it makes me mildly interesting at best and redundant at worst.
The good news is I've managed to retain a sliver of the pedigree that once came with being on the T.V - in the shape of a tiny, blue tick next to my name on Twitter.
That's right; I'm verified. That means, somebody, somewhere thought I was important enough to parody and they thought about it long enough to let me have a blue tick that lets everyone know I'm the REAL Jeannette Francis. (LOLZ.)
The problem is, only a few people are privy to this vital piece of information, namely my Twitter followers – of which there are, oh I don't know, ten, again most of who are members of my immediate family and the rest of who – as it turns out – may not even be real human beings.
Indeed, I've been too emotionally invested in the sweet sound of my email notifications, which alert me each time a new tweep joins my follower flock.
This momentous albeit sporadic occurrence is followed by the inevitable disappointment of realising my latest follower has no display picture, no description, is called Max Stud and probably doesn't actually exist.
Fortunately I rely entirely on a fabricated notion of popularity to validate my sense of self worth so I'm rather pleased that the non-existent Max Stud has boosted my follower numbers.
What you may not know about Max Stud however is that for half a cent, he – or indeed she – could boost your follower flock too.
The reality is there are dozens of online companies that offer to follow, like, retweet, upvote, friend, subscribe and generally click any button on any social network site, all for a tiny fee.
It's fair to say we're all seeking social media superiority. Size matters and the bigger your following the more influential you're perceived to be. Heck that's the only reason we hired Marc Fennell.
It's not surprising then that forking out real money for fake followers is now a multi-million dollar industry.
For as little as 50 cents a month you can get an actual living person to follow you, whereas at the top end of the spectrum, a one off fee of $16,250 will apparently get you a Kardashian. It's unclear which one though. My hunch is Khloe because Kim's Klout catapulted since her kid with Kayne (Those two make it real easy to alliterate.)
This now means we'll have to reassess the popularity of some of our best-loved Tweeps, including that basket-ball dunking, wife-loving, drone-condoning Barack Obama, who's gigantean Twitter following is – apparently - 70 per cent bogus.
But if it makes you feel any better half of the 43 million people, who follow Justin Beiber, presumably of their own free will, are fake, which means when he tweets profound wisdom such as “Lol” and “haha” it only makes it to 21 million odd people – give or take 100,000 retweets.
I'm not going to say purchasing followers has never crossed my mind but like all good journalists I not only abide by a code of ethics but I'm consistently poor so I couldn't buy enough followers even if I wanted to. I'm just going to sit here and hope Max Stud tells his non-existent friends to follow me.
