Chinese-language publisher offers election candidates gushing praise on WeChat. But the flattery comes with a price tag

A mysterious media agency is behind a fee-for-service offering to federal election candidates, including Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, placement of favourable news articles and interviews on the Chinese-language social media platform WeChat. Key points: Australian Financial News is one of the most prolific publishers of election content on WeChat It has clients across the political spectrum, but federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg makes up large proportion of content on the platform His office has denied that it had paid the media agency to publish flattering editorial coverage Australian Financial News has published more than 131 Some of this content is presented as news articles written by independent journalists. Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, Labor leader Anthony Albanese, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher, and North Sydney candidates Catherine Renshaw for Labor and independent candidate Kylea Tink, have all been featured in Mr Frydenberg — who is in a life-or-death struggle in the inner-city Melbourne seat of Kooyong against independent candidate Monique Ryan — has paid for It was Mr Frydenberg's campaign that featured most prominently on the AFN channel, with more than a quarter of all AFN election content — including ads, advertorials and commentary — since January 6 containing at least one reference to the Treasurer. The research team found that AFN was one of the most-prolific publishers on WeChat of federal election-related content, and published more "In the last week, we have seen several cases with two articles a day from AFN with references to Frydenberg," said Monash University's Dr Fordyce. Ms Yang and her colleagues also found that, across all 134 WeChat accounts they monitored for election content, 7.7 per cent included some mention of Mr Frydenberg, whether in an article's text or as an Mr Frydenberg's campaign also appeared to have provided AFN, and another WeChat channel, with original materials that would later appear in effusive articles.