We have to look really carefully at who holds the power, says Kate Hannah of The Disinformation Project. Photo / Getty Images
Joanna Wane on draining the disinformation swamp, with a fortnight to go before election day.
Whether your political views sit on the left or the right, don’t assume you’re immune to dark forces trying to manipulate how you vote. All of us are at risk of being taken in by false information, warns Kate Hannah, founder and director of The Disinformation Project — founded in February 2020 to “pre-bunk” a tsunami of Covid-19 balderdash that hit our shores before the virus did.
“There’s been some interesting neuropsychology research that suggests the higher you value or rate your own intelligence or rationality, the more susceptible you are,” she says. “Because once you’ve decided to believe something, your self-identity is tied into that being a rational, sensible, intelligent decision. So you can’t question it.”
In the final countdown to the October 14 general election, Hannah talked to Canvas about how to discern fact from fiction by asking the right questions: Who holds the power? Who’s telling the story? Who stands to benefit? Why should you trust them? “And always ask who’s funding it.”
How much has changed since New Zealand last went to the polls?
In the build-up to the 2020 election until the last two to three weeks — the time period we’re now in — disinformation was largely being taken from international content and repackaged for New Zealanders. It was very much focused on Covid-19 minimisation or denial and the vaccine, with a little bit of broader conspiratoriality, anti-state, anti-government stuff.
When the date of the election was changed because of the Auckland outbreak [in August 2020], it became much more closely aligned with the US presidential election and we started seeing full-scale, US-based conspiratorialism flooding into New Zealand social media that was much broader than the Covid vaccination. Even at that stage, there was talk about stolen elections. It didn’t have that much impact. Most people didn’t notice it, but it was there.
This time, there are three key factors. One is the significant increase in the likelihood of political violence, with security issues, party leaders who’ve been disrupted and where particularly candidates who are new, who are younger, who are women, who are LGBQTIA, who are indigenous or people of colour really need to be very careful about how they go about campaigning.
Isn’t a bit of argy-bargy and disruptive political protests a sign of democracy at work?
Yes, absolutely, disruption of candidate meetings is a political good normally, but the increase in the language of political violence and direct threats on social media is very different from 2020. It’s also around de-platforming. This is stopping people from speaking. I think this is probably the last election for a while where we will see the diversity, because why would you put yourself through that?
If you look back with the benefit of hindsight over perhaps the last 10 years, you would say that [Green MP] Golriz Ghahraman has been our canary in the mine. The type and level of threat that Golriz has experienced throughout her political career, and the violent expression towards former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern, has become so normalised in the landscapes that we study that there’s this trickle-down effect, sending a signal that other candidates are likely to be targeted in the same way.
It sounds very Trumpian but another aspect you’re concerned about is the undermining of public confidence in our electoral process.
Earlier this week, the Electoral Commission released a press release that discussed the way in which votes are counted and that counting machines are not used. We have never previously seen the Electoral Commission need to come out with that kind of communication.
The rhetoric around elections and electoral integrity is often really confusing for people to get a grip on. But in the disinformation community — where some members have formed political parties and are seeking votes — disruption is the point. They’re engaging in a system they believe is broken. So when they inevitably don’t get enough votes to be represented in Parliament, they can say, “See, this is evidence that the system is rigged, because we know there are hundreds of thousands of us.”
What’s the third big shift you’ve identified?
The other aspect that’s different from 2020 is the kind of looping that happened with the misogyny directed towards Jacinda Ardern, which went from everyday public misogyny — calling her Cindy and the “pretty little communist” — to become more connected with the fringe. Disinformation about her sexuality, her gender, her past, her present and her future that targeted her as an individual but also as a woman.
Now we’re seeing ideas that have started in or been popularised by disinformation communities looping into mainstream discourse, particularly around trans health care, trans rights and co-governance. It’s not that these issues weren’t already in the mainstream, but the manner in which they are now being discussed has been driven or created from within those disinformation communities. So instead of reasonable, thoughtful, respectful discourse, we’re seeing adversarial, divisive discourse. And again, that is the point. Because when you have an important issue and make it really divisive, it turns people off from engaging in that conversation.
Any other election issues that have become trigger points?
The crisis around the cost of living, which is absolutely real and genuinely affecting people. The disinformation that’s false and misleading says it’s because of legislation designed to reduce our carbon impact or legislation impacting farmers — so we shouldn’t have these policies that seek to mitigate our climate change impact because that’s what’s causing people to be hungry.
Another seeding issue that’s been quite powerful is around law and order. There’s genuine concern and also a bit of moral panic taking place. Actually, crime rates are not significantly increasing. What we are seeing is these high-profile ram raids largely done by young people. They’re very scary. People’s feelings are genuine. But the discourse that’s emerged says Māori and Pacific offenders get off while New Zealand European offenders are imprisoned, which is topsy-turvy land.
Is disinformation being produced organically within New Zealand or largely imported?
The fire hose, which is the Russian propaganda technique, or what [former US President Donald Trump’s short-lived chief strategist] Steve Bannon would call flooding the zone, is the tactic that’s being used. Now, I’m not the NZSIS [New Zealand Security Intelligence Service] or the GCSB [Government Communications Security Bureau], so I don’t know, and neither do I want to know, who is turning on the fire hose or flooding the zone, but we can see the evidence of that taking place.
At the same time, the distinction between state and non-state actors in disinformation spaces is a little spurious. It can have originated from a state actor, but the people disseminating it are groups and individuals who share those ideas.
One of the things that’s happened in this explosion of disinformation around the world is that there’s now a framework for everyone. In the past, you might have heard somebody talking or read something online and just not identified with that person. Now there are yoga mums and sensible-sounding people alongside those who are much more radical. Anyone can be susceptible to a narrative from someone who looks and sounds and feels like us.
How much of it is driven by a specific political ideology around issues such as co-governance?
It’s apolitical. This is not targeting the left or the right, but it could play a part in driving how people vote. The slow movement towards increasing co-governance and Te Tiriti as a central piece in the way New Zealand is governed has been a multipartisan issue for most of my lifetime, since the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal. For us to see language and actions suggesting that’s no longer the case should give people pause.
Who is driving that narrative? Because from [former National Prime Minister] Jim Bolger to [former National Party Attorney-General and Minister of Treaty Negotiations] Chris Finlayson and many others, we’ve had strong bipartisan leadership. The idea that te reo Māori and its use is now a political issue is quite disturbing. Where has that come from? That, too, has been multipartisan for most of my life.
At The Disinformation Project, we try to trace those patterns and ask what’s really going on here. Some of these local issues, like co-governance and the use of te reo Māori, are being linked by disinformation to similar topics and issues internationally — anti-black sentiment in the United States, anti-migrant and anti-refugee sentiment in Europe — through the use of language cues, symbolism, memes and so on.
In Australia, there’s a lot of talk about disinformation being used to disrupt The Voice referendum (on acknowledging First Peoples in the constitution), which is being held the same day as our general election. With polls showing falling support, does that suggest the tactics are working?
I think it has been effective, because of the way the referendum has been able to be connected to other things. For example, in Australian disinformation networks, anti The Voice stuff is strongly connected to anti-co-governance here. And then there’s the broader international linkage of ideas around an indigenous voice to Parliament and co-governance to conceptualisations from South Africa around white genocide — that the sharing of rights will eventually see white people having land taken away from them. The ironies in this space abound.
There’s an international network of far-right organisations that actively connect with each other around these local and global issues. What investigative journalists and researchers have done in Australia is trace some of the funding for the anti campaign and a lot of it has come from conservative American or European organisations.
Is disinformation exclusively used as a weapon of the far right?
A lot of it is from the far right, but not always. Issues on the far left tend to be around Israel/ Palestine or Russia/Ukraine and also climate change, with the promotion of the kind of violent or disruptive approaches we see in some of those protest activities.
Fifteen to 20 years ago, the focus was on state-based disinformation. Obviously, weapons of mass destruction would be a really key example of state-driven disinformation with a specific aim. Now we have this fractured circumstance in the world where other groups that are not the state are disrupting people’s access to their human rights, spreading disinformation and trying to suppress the media, which means that we have to look really carefully at who holds the power.
Some disinformation is presented in a way that looks very convincing. How can people tell what is and isn’t true?
When somebody sends you something or you read something on the internet that either completely confirms your biases or makes you go, “Whoa, I’ve never heard that before,” instead of continuing to read or clicking the links, open another window. Google the name of the organisation, the author and the platform or publication where it’s been published.
If it’s someone who’s written about a range of diverse topics, from climate change to vaccinations and chemtrails, it’s unlikely they’re an expert on all of those things. But if it’s a reputable platform and you can find the author’s website and have a little bit of a geez at what else they’ve done, then you might go back to the original piece. That’s what we call lateral reading. We have to consciously go off-platform and do some work for ourselves.
Any last advice before we head to the polls?
Be aware that the social media landscape has changed, even since the last time you voted in 2020. The level of algorithmic amplification of antagonism and division on places like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X and TikTok is much higher. If social media feels yucky, that’s why. Don’t rely on it as your search engine when looking for political content, because it’s going to amplify things that are divisive and be designed to either make you feel discomforted or cement your existing ideas.
It’s also important for people to be aware that advertising by political parties and lobby groups is really targeted when they’re on social media, to their age, their income level, the things they like and where they live.
If something you’re reading, watching or listening to is getting your heart rate going and winding you up, take a deep breath and step back. If you think it’s important, come back to it when you’re in a calmer state. In Finland, where they teach protection against disinformation in schools, they start with self-regulation in early childhood because this kind of material is designed to make you feel furious, scared, emotional. And then you’re going to make decisions from that space.
Feel free to critique mainstream media but do engage more with it. Watch the debates, listen to commentators and know where they’re coming from, go to party websites and candidate meetings. Policy.nz is a robust, independent tool. Ask questions and be realistic in terms of what the parties are promising, then decide based on your values.
DISORDERED THINKING
The difference between misinformation and disinformation is intent, a line that’s blurred when a deliberate piece of false information is reposted by someone else in good faith. The Disinformation Project works with a broad definition that includes sharing false or misleading information you may not have created but is clearly designed to cause harm, even if you believe it may be true. The umbrella term “information disorders” includes:
Disinformation: False information created with the intention of harm, to a person, a group or an organisation.
Misinformation: False information that wasn’t created with the intent to hurt others.
Malinformation: True information used with ill intent.
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