‘Tectonic shift’ in disinformation linked to Parliament protest
AUCKLAND: The bulk of Facebook disinformation that swirled around the climax of summer’s Parliament protest stemmed from just a dozen local social media accounts.
That is according to a major new analysis that has explored how social media activity inflamed tensions that spilled out over three weeks in the capital, causing a ‘‘tectonic shift’’ in New Zealand’s disinformation landscape.
A flood of Covid19related activity had exposed thousands more New Zealanders to what the report’s authors called ‘‘splintered realities’’, while also helping push racist and violent ideologies.
Researchers Kate Hannah, Kayli Taylor and Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa drew on opensource data covering millions of posts and hundreds of hours of videos and live footage.
The websites they focused on ranged from platforms like
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to channels linked to the farRight such as Telegram, Rumble, Odysee, Gab and Gettr.
Each shift in New Zealand’s Covid19 response caused ripples across those sites.
As paediatric vaccinations began, for instance, one post bogusly claiming five children had collapsed at a vaccination centre went viral.
But the unprecedented surge in online traffic the researchers observed around February’s antimandate convoy to Wellington, and the 24day occupation that followed, surprised even them.
Across 140 Telegram channels and chat groups, subscriber numbers jumped from 243,341 at the start of the year to 307,613 by February 11 — a few days after the convoy arrived at Parliament.
By March 4 — two days after a clash between protesters and police that saw nearly 90 people arrested and 40 officers injured — the subscriber count had climbed to 353,377.
On Facebook, February alone brought more followers to mis and disinformation spaces than the entire six months before, and a similar rise was seen on Instagram.
It was the final standoff of March 2 that really stood out.
Posts on a single Facebook page, run by a known ‘‘misinformation superspreader’’, drew some of the highest engagement in the country.
Facebook misinformation pages’ traffic eclipsed that of pages operated by New Zealand’s mainstream media outlets combined.
Even by midFebruary, misinformation pages had begun attracting more video views than media Facebook pages.
‘‘The narrative frames, language and perspectives differed greatly from mis and disinformation pages to mainstream media pages,’’ the researchers wrote.
‘‘Depending on which ecology they trusted as providing a true . . . capture of the Parliament protest, New Zealanders were presented with radically different narratives of the protest, at complete odds with each other.’’
Yet on that final day, 73% of Facebook interactions over mis and disinformation were traced back to just 12 accounts.
The researchers noted that as the protest came to its riotous end, international conspiratorialism blended further into chatter among the groups, with false accusations activists with antifascist group Antifa was behind the violence.
There were also threats against politicians, journalists, academics, experts and others — and particularly women.
In another troubling trend — it was weeks before the invasion of Ukraine began — researchers noted the sharing of Russialinked propaganda.
Some posts even featured the Ukrainian flag as a symbol for paedophiles, carrying similarities to theories of the QAnon conspiracy movement.
The implications of these recent events were myriad‘‘deeply concerning’’ for democracy, Ms Hannah said.
‘‘The parliamentary protest exposed more New Zealanders to disinformation and revealed more splintering of reality, to the extent that the mass shooting in Buffalo, which was inspired by the Christchurch mosque terrorist attacks, is widely now discussed within disinformation social media spaces as ‘another false flag’.’’
Of particular concern to her and her colleagues was the extreme misogyny and racism.
Dr Hattotuwa worried ‘‘new foundations’’ for disinformation had been laid.
‘‘It’s going to be unlike anything that Aotearoa has seen before, in terms of our engagement with elections.’’
Last night, the prime minister’s chief science adviser said the Wellington occupation had made the public more aware of how disinformation was affecting our country. —