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While Australian politican Pauline Hanson's claims are false in the article headline above, her sharing of fake news is not simply because she believes the government when they tell us not to be concerned about climate change. Rather, this sharing and retweeting of content online becomes a way to curate our representation of ourselves; “a means of composing oneself and exhibiting one’s self-image in a way that is both personal and public, both for oneself and for others” (Crano 2018, p.20). The act of sharing fake news becomes an expression of self. In Hanson's case, her views on fake news also represent a hangup from our “struggle against the paradigmatic institutions of the pre-digital age (the press, but also the state, the university, the medical establishment, and so on)” (Crano 2018, p.20). This resistance can be seen in Hanson’s approach to politics (such as wearing a burqa to parliament), and is possibily the reason so many have been open to the climate change discourse; our governments aren’t. According to Hussain and Greensdale, “One reporter wrote that we are currently living in a 'post-truth' society where it is extremely challenging to correct falsehoods spread swiftly and indiscriminately through the Internet” (Hussain et al 2018, p.2).

Universities and media executives have longer considered the fake news a threat to democracy (Wood 2018, p.54), viewing it as something that undermines and manipulates viewers, capitalising on our high levels of mistrust (Morgan 2018; Crano 2018). While some consider fake news a threat, politicians have been reluctant to act (Crano 2018). As Crano explains; "fake news is not successful despite but because of what the mainstream press deems its untrustworthiness. The sharer of fake news performs the role of the deviant subject and revels in the part” (Crano 2018, p.20). This discourse is being challenged, with even polticians like Hanson (and more notably, Donald Trump) openly calling out fake news and alternative facts. As Foucault explains;

“Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth; that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true” (Foucault as cited in Rabinow 1990).

Hanson is playing on this regime of truth to delegitimise journalism, a strategy that, according to Egelhofer and Lecheler (2019), can be very effective. These “political attacks can increase perceptions of media bias” while Ladd et al find it also decreases levels of media trust (Ladd as cited in Egelhofer and Lecheler, p.106).

The use of electronic literature can be effective for representing the role of politics in shaping our identities because it places the user in a position of power. Users have the freedom to explore alternative discourses as they can make choices that are often not available to them in real life. One of the most interesting examples is Alan Bigelow’s How to Rob A Bank, which is a retelling of Bonnie and Clyde. Marketing itself as a love story, there are subtle nods to the couple's self-identification as rebelling against the capitalist system, while also trying to fit within it. This dichotomy is inherit in the two main character's actions, such as them looking up the money needed to retire, as well as their use of instagram username ‘bankrobr’.

Another example is Image Fugurator by Julius von Bismarck, which looks at the different identities and meanings we inscribe on places. Von Bismarck disrupts our view of the world and how we inscribe ourselves onto it;

“Whereas in a normal camera the light projected by objects is captured unto film, with Image Fugurator, an image stored on film within the camera is briefly projected onto the external world when the flash goes on. The whole process is triggered when the camera senses other flashes in the vicinity - this is to say, when other people are trying to photograph the same scene. When they look at their pictures, these people see something that they had not noticed on the original scene, as if the camera had captured a ghost” (Ryan 2010, p.1).

The end result is the use of often-disturbing images that are projected onto tourist attractions to make political comments; “for instance by projecting a text protesting the building of a wall to prevent illegal immigration into the US at Checkpoint Charlie” (Ryan 2010, p.3).

Gonzalo Frasca's "games that cannot be won" is perhaps one of the more controversal examples of protest electronic literature. In his game, September 12 , users have to kill terrorists who are throwing bombs at them. However, the more that they kill, the more there are, resulting in a game that cannot be won. According to Ryan:

“it is not uncommon for games to lead to the inevitable defeat of the player: Tetris, PacMan or arcade games typically end when the player is overcome by the system; but these games keep score, and they maintain interest by giving players a chance to beat their previous best performance. Not so in Frasca's game: no points are given for killing terrorists, and players usually quit out of frustration, after realizing the futility of their efforts” (2010, p.5).

The lack of gameplay places the political message at the centre of the work and makes it unavoidable for views (Ryan 2010).

Benjamin Laird’s work of electronic literature Core Values, is a response to Dorothea Mackellar’s poem ‘My Country’ and Australia's use of biopower and media bias. Biopower is, according to Foucault, "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations" (Foucault 1979, p.140). By regulating services essential for life, the “basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political strategy, of a general strategy of power” (Aardse 2015). Instead of representing Australia as an open, accepting landscape, Laird uses geographic coordinates, broken text, and maps to create a closed, clostrophobic landscape that the viewer feels trapped in.