Critics of Australia's election advertising blackout, which offers social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook an advantage in the final days of the campaign, are calling for an overhaul of the rules.
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Described as a "20th century relic", the blackout bans political advertising on television and radio from midnight on the Wednesday before an election until polls close on Saturday night.
Designed to reduce last-minute flooding of the airways and to provide voters with a "cooling-off period", the blackout has been increasingly challenged by social media uptake and record early voting.
South Australian independent senator Nick Xenophon, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young and advertising lobby groups are leading calls for change.
Parliament's review of the 2013 election called on the government to examine the viability of the blackout, while the Liberal Party described it as "increasingly redundant".
Melbourne University media and politics lecturer Andrea Carson said the rules were ineffective in the 21st century.
"Other jurisdictions, such as the UK, have various bans on certain types of political advertising, namely negative advertising, and social media is used to circumvent those bans," she said.
"Notionally the idea is the blackout gives people the space to make up their minds without having influential media trying to sway them one way or another.
"I think it needs to be changed. The blackout doesn't do what it is intended to do ... and I don't think retaining it as it is serves much purpose."
About 1.8 million Australians have voted early so far in 2016, while Dr Carson said radio and television stations would benefit from any change.
"Whether you can try to regulate the social media space, I don't know. It doesn't seem like a workable solution to me," she said.
Twitter's director of media partnerships, Jonathan Harley, said social media had a clear advantage in the final days of the campaign.
"The great thing about Twitter is you can have the conversation any time, anywhere and that will continue up to election day," Mr Harley said.
"Of course, that is one of many advantages of Twitter, but the main thing is we've seen through this election that the platform is a direct connection and that will only come into sharper focus over the next week."
A poll last week found 22 per cent of Twitter users in Australia said they had made a political decision based on something they had seen on social media.
