Speech by Kate Hannah, director, The Disinformation Project, delivered at New Zealand International Science Festival 2022:
[Introduction, in Maori of course]
At the conclusion of the 23-day occupation of Parliament Grounds in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Prime Minister stated:
“One day it will be our job to try and understand how a group of people could succumb to such wild and dangerous mis- and disinformation. And while many of us have seen that disinformation and dismissed it as conspiracy theory, a small portion of our society have not only believed it, they have acted upon it in an extreme and violent way that cannot stand. We have a difficult journey in front of us to address the underlying cause of what we have seen here today.[1]”
You mean like how Covid deaths were exaggerated by using “with” instead of “from”; that the Covid vaccine is not harmless and was not fully tested (true), and that Covid came from a lab (most likely true)?
Here at the Disinformation Project, we have been observing the effects of disinformation and misinformation in Aotearoa since February 2020 and can offer some insight now into how mis- and disinformation operate, how they interact with existing inequities and information voids and the ways in which the compelling nature of some of the most popular disinformation narratives presents critical challenges for Aotearoa New Zealand. Here tonight I am interested mainly in exploring what this means for us as whanau, communities – a country – as we examine our shared information landscape. While sadly that which we might wish to dismiss as conspiracy is having an effect on our social and political spaces, and particularly our shared understanding of the state, democracy and citizenship, there are, as always, things that we can do individually and collectively to mitigate these effects.
Here Kate is attempting to establish herself as an expert on misinformation and disinformation. But as we all know, observing something doesn’t make you an expert on it.
[…] Since the election period in the United States and in New Zealand, and escalating in the context of the January 6 Capitol insurrection, national and transnational discourses focused on secretive state power, consent, hierarchies of knowledge and related conceptualisations of citizenship, statehood and rights have been increasingly linked through narrative, theme, narrators and imagery to Covid-19 disinformation. This played out in in the 23 days of the occupation of Parliament, and has led New Zealanders to ask: What is happening? How are disinformation narratives targeting and radicalising people in Aotearoa and internationally? We know an increased sense of isolation, an increased sense of fear and uncertainty, an increased anxiety for the future and a decreased sense of control contribute to an individual’s propensity to firstly entertain and then believe or advocate for conspiratorial ideas.
Note no mention of the effects of Government policies regarding Covid including the use of lockdowns and forced vaccinations, etc.
How do these relate to narratives and tropes of white supremacy, racism and extreme misogyny? What can communities do to prevent this? For many in Aotearoa these questions have become critical concerns as they witnessed the parliamentary occupation and riot, and as they have engaged with loved ones who have become entwined in disinformation. I describe these as flood effects – the visible ramifications of recent and more historic erosion – of information access, of trust and of connectedness.
Yes, how does protesting the lost of freedom of movement, the loss of the right to refuse medical treatment and the creation of a two tier society relate to white supremacy, racism and extreme misogyny? I’m sure Kate will tell us. Let’s not also forget how many of the parliamentary protesters were Maori and (gasp!) women.
Renowned public health expert, Sir Michael Marmot, writing in reflection on twenty years work on the importance of the social determinants of health, and in in [sic] midst of the pandemic’s impacts in the UK and globally, stated that a socially cohesive society with concern for the common good is likely to be a healthier society.[3]
This would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that this Government, on purpose, created a two-tiered society and demonised those who refused to get vaccinated.
But what is social cohesion? We know relationships are important for physical and psychosocial wellbeing – and in Marmot’s field, social determinants of health, these relationships are conceptualised through terms such as social cohesion, social capital, social networks and social support. Social capital refers to shared community or group resources – and individuals access this through their social networks, which we might describe as the ecosystem or web of social relationships.
What the above psycho-babble basically is saying is, in Kate’s opinion, that if we all just get along there will be world peace and unicorns.
Critically, in this model for understanding the complex relationship-based construction of social cohesion is a concept called collective efficacy which describes a community’s ability to create change and exercise informal social control ie influence behaviour via social norms. Family, whanau, community, faith and other organised or non-organised groupings are places where people access social networks, social capital and social control.
In other words the use of social pressure to get the rest of us to do what the government wants us to do. Note the use of the phrase “social control”. If that doesn’t scare you, nothing will.
Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, we are privileged to draw from Ta Mason Durie’s ground-breaking work describing health and wellbeing within a Kaupapa Maori framework, te whare tapa wha (1984) wherein health and wellbeing is a wharenui with four walls: taha wairua/spiritual wellbeing, taha hinengaro/mental and emotional wellbeing, taha tinana/physical wellbeing, and taha whanau/family and social wellbeing.[4] The wharenui has strong foundations within the whenua on which it sits. These models, conceived to describe the complex interrelationships between individual health outcomes, social issues, community wellbeing and social inclusion, provide enormous insight for the study of information ecologies and information disorders in the twenty-first century. As the research field social determinants of health has provided evidence for over the last 40 years, people who are grounded, situated, enabled to flourish and contribute and connected to others are far less likely to experience negative health outcomes – and, critically for the purposes of our conversation today, far less likely to experience other negative outcomes: disconnection, information disorders, social exclusion and participation in fragmented realities.
I admit, I had difficulty understanding the paragraph above, but here goes. In Kate’s opinion, those who spread what she regards as misinformation and disinformation, are typically loners with mental and emotional issues, and who feel socially excluded. Of course she doesn’t actually say that but that’s the implication.
[…] But how did we get here? The very landscapes upon which our health and wellbeing rely are experiencing both land use and climate change impacts which are unprecedented. As globally agriculture and tourism practises [sic] – our two main exports – are called into question, those who have invested heavily in these industries might feel aggrieved or misunderstood. But as the four “once in a life time” flood events in the last 18 months in Australia or the devastating effects of storms on infrastructure in Matakaoa show, our physical landscapes, our known geographic features, the places where [we] work and live and re-create ourselves – they are marred by erosion. Moana Jackson, much mourned and lost in this year, 2022, described how “colonisation was and is a very simple process of brutal dispossession in which states from Europe assumed the right to take over the lands, lives and power of indigenous peoples who had done them no harm”.[5]
Heh, I was wondering how long before ‘climate change’ would be mentioned. So farmers who are having their livelihoods stolen in the name of ‘climate change’, may, just may, feel a tiny bit aggrieved. Ten points for stating the obvious, Kate!
Here in Aotearoa, the impacts of colonisation are manifest in the physical alienation of land – for the first 20 years post the signing of Te Tiriti, Maori maintained agency over much of their landholdings, and were the economic driver for the developing nation-state, trading as they had prior to Te Tiriti with the Australian colonies. But war which began with the invasion of the Waikato region by the Colonial Government on July 12 1863, an event which Vincent O’Malley argues is the origin of New Zealand – more than any C20th conflict. The land alienation and confiscations which followed saw over the course of less than a century, land possession shift wholly from iwi Maori to settlers and the colonial state. “Racism was, and remains central to colonisation – the rationale for the denial of existing indigenous peoples’ sovereignty was the prevailing thinking that indigenous peoples were materially, culturally, economically and politically inferior.”[6]
Good God. The irony here is according to Kate’s own argument, Maori should be more susceptible and more likely to be radicalised by conspiracy theories and disinformation.
[…] International research focused on participation in conspiratorial thinking and actions describes how an increased sense of isolation, an increased sense of fear and uncertainty, an increased anxiety for the future, and decreased control contribute to an individual’s propensity to firstly entertain and then believe/advocate for conspiratorial ideas. This image provides another kind of map – here we have mapped using social network analysis, the Aotearoa New Zealand information ecosystem on a single day, March 2 2022. This was the day that the 23-day occupation of parliament by anti-mandate/anti vaccine protestors ended. What is revealed here is almost completely bifurcated information sources and expressed sentiments in relation to the police action to close down the protest and the violence and destruction which then ensued. The blue clusters, nodes and links represent those watching livestreams shared on social media by participants in the protest, and the commentators who positively expressed sentiment towards the protesters over the course of that day. The orange and pink nodes clusters and links are those who watched mainstream media coverage and expressed sentiments of horror, dislike or other negative expression towards the protestors and their actions on that day. Over the course of the 23-day occupation we observed in real time the increasing correlation of consumption of alternative media/social media as news sources, and support for the occupation, culminating in this mapped informationscape, which reveals significant splintered realities. This erosion has taken place over time, but the shift over the period of the occupation marks out new features of the landscape, created by that erosion.
I’m not even going to try to decipher the above.
[…] What are the local contexts? Once again, our two years of study of information ecologies means that we can reflect back on further erosion events. The Delta outbreak, and the subsequent lockdown saw a significant change in people’s consumption of information and participation in media including social media. The circadian rhythms of people’s production of content on social media changed – content creators were awake longer, creating and or sharing content into the night, and earlier in the morning. Similarly, audiences were engaging with content for longer periods of time, and later into the night. The connection between information disorders, information landscapes, and physical health and wellbeing – taha tinana – became apparent. Over a period of two weeks in September 2021, the Covid-19 misinformation community migrated almost as one to the social media platform Telegram, which began as an encrypted messaging app, and is now the preeminent platform of choice for our disinformation communities, as well as far-right networks worldwide. Telegram is largely unregulated, and is primed, like what’s app [sic], for organic seamless sharing between what are called channels, enabling content to flood timelines. It is not algorithmically sorted, rather user generated – and again, because of this, much much harder to regulate or moderate. Individuals and groups, vying for audience engagement, began to increase posting, share more international content not specifically related to Covid-19 or public health measures, and to start to connect international ideas to local issues. Once again, the landscape, now eroded, is flooded with content ranging from bizarre to plausible, shared by individuals and groups who have over time, become trusted.
Blame it on social media!
[Even more psychobabble that I won’t bore you with as I’m getting a headache. If you’re feeling particularly masochistic you can read the rest for yourself to get what I mean.]
Once you get over all the psychobabble, what Kate is saying is actually quite simple. Those who feel strongly that they are part of a group are more likely to accept the beliefs of that group (often a group is defined by its beliefs). Conversely, if you start feeling like you no longer belong to that group, start feeling isolated from that group, you are more likely to start accepting beliefs contrary to the beliefs of that group, or, as Jacinda would say, “dangerous ideas”.
As you most likely would have figured out, this speech is not about misinformation or disinformation. It’s essentially saying that those of us who choose to think for ourselves and not blindly follow the Government’s narrative need to be re-educated and given lots of hugs.