New research into the protests at parliament earlier in the year has explored how social media inflamed tensions and finds a dozen local Facebook accounts spreading disinformation were at the heart of it.
The Disinformation Project studied data from tens of millions of online posts, tweets and comments, alongside hundreds of hours of live-streamed footage from the protest.
The amount of traffic on misinformation pages was at one point higher than that of pages operated by New Zealand mainstream media outlets combined, on one single day 2 March, they received 350,000 interactions compared with 247,000 for all of the mainstream media sites combined.
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The project has been observing disinformation since the beginning of the pandemic, director Kate Hannah told Kathryn Ryan, gathering qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sites.
“For those mainstream social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, it's gathered using CrowdTangle, which is a Facebook built tool for studying Facebook pages and groups.
“And then we also have a rich text approach. So, we analyse the content of some of those open posts, and also the content of things like flyers, billboards, placards, and signs, WhatsApp messages and emails that sometimes members of the public send us as examples of misinformation that they've received or people they love have received.”
They had been starting to see a skew towards disinformation since August 2021, she says.
“The whole country was incredibly interested in what was taking place at Parliament. And so many people were watching live streams, and obviously from mainstream media platforms like Radio New Zealand, and the television stations to understand what was taking place.
“But what is so interesting and quite remarkable and something we need to think about going forward is this, how so many people were getting their information from places that were completely grounded in a different interpretation and a different reality of what was going on.”
For the first extended period of time, online communities manifested as offline communities during the parliament protests, she says.
“The experience of the people who were on the ground at Parliament, and those that they were communicating with who either wanted to be there or maybe had been there but had returned home because there was a lot of movement over that period of 23 days, was markedly different from the experience of those of us who were observing what was going on both online and offline.
“And so we get the splintered reality where people genuinely felt connected, supported. They were being fed, they were being looked after, they were being told that their own sense of loss or personal grievance had a political or social importance that connected into a bigger picture.
“Meanwhile, the rest of us were observing from the outside, seeing violence, death threats, harassment of schoolchildren, people who lived in apartments nearby feeling very unsafe, sort of dirt and destruction, so there were very different experiences offline and online over quite an extended period of time.”
Misinformation has been creeping in to New Zealand for a couple of years, Hannah says.
“We have been seeing increasing amounts of US-style content coming through into the New Zealand information ecosystem since the American elections in 2020.
“There was another key spike around the period of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol and then again throughout 2021.
“Because the US experienced lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccination ahead of New Zealand, there were pre-packaged sets of disinformation about those issues that linked those issues to a conspiracy around the role of the state. And those pre-packaged conspiracies were transferred into the New Zealand environment almost intact.”
By the time New Zealand went into level 4 lockdown in August 2021, that material had become embedded within a small community, she says.
“And then over the period of that lockdown as people were feeling more alone, more disconnected, more unsure about their future, more concerned about the decisions that they needed to make about vaccination or vaccinations for their children, it became more and more confirmed in their mind.”
The people communicating this false information became confirmed as valid and truthful sources for certain people, she says.
A good example was the paediatric vaccine.
“Even prior to the announcement of a Covid-19 vaccine, groups in New Zealand and internationally, were talking about the dangers of a new vaccine.
“So, they were pre-seeding the idea that the vaccine would be dangerous. They were also pre-seeding ideas around dangers to children.
“Now, obviously, in terms of creating a sense of fear, and violence, when people perceive that as a threat to children, that's a really strong emotional response, a violent reaction to someone threatening children is almost appropriate, it becomes self-confirming.”
By the time the vaccine roll out to tamariki was announced, there was a wellspring of disinformation that said that children would be harmed, she says.
The 12 online groups spreading disinformation in New Zealand offered quite tailored content, she says.
“You have people who are very professional and very polished and very organised, some who have Christian messages packaged around what they're doing, some who are more fringy, and more YouTube-like or more like Fox News style. And so that kind of provides a variety so that each person who's going and looking at the stuff will find a location that speaks to them.”
Consequently, a critical mass of misinformation was created, she says.
“For them to cross share across each other's platforms and accounts, so that individuals and groups who are looking at these different groups and accounts, see a cohesive narrative across what looks like a number of different platforms.”
The idea promoted by these groups is of a country divided, she says.
“There's a sense of antagonism that's been encouraged. And it's not just from disinformation producers, people who participate in looking at mainstream media feel upset and let down by family members and other people who have participated in disinformation.
“So, there's this kind of constructed antagonism, which if left unchecked, will continue to play off each other and result in impacts on our election.”
The tone of language is also chilling, she says.
“One of the really critical things that we didn't discuss deeply in the paper is the language of violence and misogyny that has become normalised in the disinformation sphere, and is now creeping back through into normal socio-political discourse.
“And that is likely to have chilling effects on the participation of diverse peoples in electoral moments.”
When we go back to the offline world and mingle with each other, it is beholden on us to find what united Kiwis, she says.
“We need to collectively stand up and start talking about some things that maybe New Zealanders get a bit embarrassed about talking about, what makes us a transparent social democracy?
“What are the things that are shared? What do we celebrate? And I think that sounds quite Pollyannish, but it's actually really important.
“This is not something that a government can do or governments should do. And it's not something that we can rely on platforms or international law to manage. We actually have to take hold of this as Aotearoa New Zealand.”