Sue Barrett's The Fifth Estate Toolkit
How to Hold Power Accountable
Resources
Introduction to the Fifth Estate Toolkit
(a) LOMA (Local Matters) (Track Them in Real-Time)
(b) Democracy Watch (Score How They Evade, Measure What They Deliver)
(c) Alternatives: Community Independents Project (Replace Them When Necessary)
Who gets to make decisions in society?
- The 3rd estate (judiciary)?
- The 4th estate (media)?
- The 5th estate (social media)? This is now the way most information is getting through to society.
Barrett says the 5th Estate is civic power by networked citizens.
Twitter and Tear Gas book - how people are being mobilised. Important for next election.
Concentration of ownership of media. Big problem.
Barrett is using AI to hold politicians to account.
Uses LLM to interpret what politicians say in terms of Albert Bandura 8 Principles of Moral Engagement
- Moral Justification,
- Advantageous Comparison,
- Diffusion of Blame,
- Displacement of Blame,
- Euphemistic Language,
- Attribution of Blame,
- Dehumanization, and
- Distorting Consequences
Language of politicians - disengagement influence
Robodebt example - she used the model to analyse what Morrison said about Robodebt.
Look for language and techniques - then use model for ranking and scoring
- Representation
- Inclusivity
- Community engagement, etc
Suggested action
Do a similar analysis and approach our reps regarding AUKUS.
Use of AI
Barrett trained her model on Grok
We can make use of Claude and Perplexity AI tools for making summaries or writing drafts.
Great opportunities with AI, but also great dangers. We all need to know how to use what it's giving us.
We can ask AI to give neutral and/or respectful responses - helpful when writing letters.
Use multiple sources before publishing anything.
Ultimate question
Will anything we publish be possible cause for defamation?
Posted by Murray. Last modified: 23 Nov 2025.