He has the perfect moustache, an exceptional mullet, and he uses terms like ‘face hole’ on national TV. Who or what is Dr Joel Rindelaub? I was drawn in by the moustache, but it was the mullet that really kept me there. Watching TVNZ’s Breakfast yesterday morning I was fixated. Often, if I’m honest, the … Read more
In the wake of the Capitol invasion and riot, a Twitter-based, crowd-sourced effort to uncover the perpetrators’ identities swung into action. Dylan Reeve explains how Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) works, and who it’s helped bring to justice so far. The recent events in Washington DC were significant for many reasons, but one was how well … Read more
Several prominent Twitter users on the fringe of right-wing politics in New Zealand have had their accounts suspended amid a wider clampdown by the social media giant. Twitter has suspended the accounts of several prominent members of the right-wing fringe of New Zealand politics, amid a broader crackdown following last week’s US Capitol riot. The … Read more
There comes a time in every successful politician’s career when their Twitter accounts are ruthlessly trawled through by a combination of political activists, bemused bystanders and, yes, bored journalists. Somehow it’s taken three years for prime minister Jacinda Ardern to experience the same treatment. Over the past few days, Twitter has been alight with decade-old … Read more
The US president is promoting unfounded allegations of voter fraud. Now, New Zealand’s election is being called into question on Twitter. Posts on social media reveal that New Zealand is no more immune to claims of voter fraud than the United States. And while the allegations may not be coming from any of our politicians, … Read more
A new social media platform that keeps censorship to a bare minimum has taken off in the wake of Donald Trump’s election loss. So what is this thing? You’ve quite possibly never heard of Parler, the new app taking the free speech world by storm. But in the United States it’s top of the app … Read more
No Filter, a superb new book chronicling Instagram’s rise, reveals more about the pathology of Mark Zuckerberg than anything else, writes Duncan Greive. As with many of the tech companies that went on to blithely mess with society, at first there was nothing but starry-eyed idealism. Instagram founder Kevin Systrom was an aesthete, moved by … Read more
David Farrar (not Farrier) is a pollster for the National Party. Today, he’s being tweeted by Patricia Arquette. Stewart Sowman-Lund talks to New Zealand’s newest celebrity. Updated with tweets by Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Right-wing blogger, commentator and the head of Curia Market Research, David Farrar, has been flung from the safety of New … Read more
After receiving a damning screen-time report, Alice Webb-Liddall gave up on social media for two weeks and discovered more than just a few more hours in her day. I was home sick from work two weeks ago when I encountered a shameful problem I didn’t realise I had. Swiping right on my home screen, I … Read more
His commitment to kākāpō and takahē recovery is unrivalled, and it’s turned him into a bit of a social media star. Michelle Langstone talks to DOC science advisor Dr Andrew Digby on changing careers, his love for Twitter, and what it really takes to protect one of New Zealand’s most beloved birds. I meet Andrew … Read more
Love her or hate her, US musician Amanda Palmer has no plans to leave New Zealand anytime soon. She opens up to Stewart Sowman-Lund about her new life in Havelock North and the moment she was left alone in a foreign country during a pandemic. Amanda Palmer has been in the country since just before … Read more
Down the rabbit hole and onto Instagram Stories, some of New Zealand’s most popular influencers are now regularly using their platforms to peddle fake news and conspiracy theories that could endanger public health. Jihee Junn finds out what consequences, if any, there are for those actively spreading mistruths. When the government announced Auckland would be … Read more
Between 2009 and 2014, New Zealand’s top-rating breakfast radio host published a serialised ode to life’s simple pleasures on Twitter. We pay tribute to ‘Life is Perfect’, an unheralded literary achievement. On a warm Saturday evening in February 2013, New Zealand broadcaster Mike Hosking lifted the lid of his Weber barbecue. The meat he was … Read more
Last week, an inaccurate tweet about suicide spread so far that both the Ministry of Health and the Mental Health Foundation had to respond. Hayden Donnell looks at what happened, and how the government could prevent a repeat. Warning: this story contains discussion of suicide On Sunday, the Ministry of Health and the Mental Health … Read more
Social media remains fertile ground for con artists as promoted tweets rip off the broadcaster’s image in a bitcoin swindle. It’s not unusual for New Zealand Twitter users to encounter the face of Mike Hosking as they scroll through their streams, but this morning, it hasn’t just been the usual of links to op-eds, uproar … Read more
In our new series The Lockdown Letters, some of New Zealand’s best writers tell us what they’ve been up to in the days of Covid-19 alert level four. Today, political commentator and essayist Morgan Godfery. I’M TWEETING AT 2AM. The responsible part of my brain is sending sleep signals. Inconvenient yawns. The first. The second … Read more
As Australia came to terms with the fact that climate change is fuelling its bushfires, deniers began a rearguard action centred around claims that arson, not climate, is to blame. Media analysts Timothy Graham and Tobias Keller look at how bots and troll accounts tried to shift the conversation. In the first week of 2020, … Read more
What happens when your work is the victim of attempted sabotage by a group of slow-moving middle-aged men? Author and journalist Michelle Duff reveals all. Initially, it was kind of unclear what I was looking at. The disembodied hand loomed from the shaky first-person footage, flipping the cover of the book around. I’d been sent … Read more
The latest idiotic tweet by a politician comes courtesy of the National Party’s Jo Hayes, who launched an unprovoked attack on a Labour supporter, calling him ‘ugly’. You know how it is. It’s just before 11pm on a Friday night. It’s been a long week. All there is left to do is log on to … Read more
Being a big brand, corporate, or government department means restraining yourself on social media, no matter how grievously you feel you’ve been wronged, writes Anna Connell I used to manage social media for a bank. We had good days and bad days. Days when we desperately wanted to say how we really felt or point … Read more
Madeleine Chapman interrogates Andrew Falloon as to how he managed to go so viral on Twitter. You may not recognise his name, or know he exists, but Andrew Falloon – rhymes with balloon – is the most popular New Zealander in the world this week. Falloon was never meant to be popular, and never asked to … Read more
The livestreamed atrocity in Christchurch has put into sharp focus the pernicious potential of online media, and the ways that misinformation can erode democracy. Russell Brown explains Four weeks on, it has expressed the best of us. And the worst of us. On the one hand, social media has provided a valuable platform for public grieving. It … Read more
If the big sites ignore your complaints, come straight to us, say Netsafe. Alex Casey reports Netsafe have seen a spike in complaints lodged about offensive content following the white supremacist terrorist attack in Christchurch on Friday, with the majority of reports being made about content on social media sites. “We’ve received hundreds of reports … Read more
An open letter from the CEOs of Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees to the global CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google To: Mark Zuckerberg, Chairman and CEO, Facebook Jack Dorsey, CEO, Twitter Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google A call from the companies providing internet access for the great majority of New Zealanders, to the companies with the … Read more
A series of haiku by Twitter bard Uther Dean. Haiku Sue tore up her will, Drank the serum. Fuck the kids. She’d live forever. * My latest mantra: ‘None of this is important. You have enough love.’ * My man-size pillow Has a single hand to hold And a … Read more
A new study analysing the number of racist versus supportive comments in two large online forums reveals some sobering facts about Māori experiences online. To illustrate the difference in the Māori and Western/Pākehā worldviews about the power of speech, it’s worth looking at two different whakataukī or proverbs. The first is the old adage that … Read more
The flood of fun memes, hot takes and utterly inane dog speak springing from the social media accounts of public organisations and corporates needs to stop, writes Anna Connell Call me old, call me jaded, call me someone who enjoys the pain of shooting herself in the foot, but I don’t think every company or organisation … Read more
We love to hate the media but it’s social media we should be concerned about, writes Danyl Mclauchlan. This piece was originally published on December 9, 2018 About halfway through Before Sunrise – a 1990s romantic comedy that has the same significance for Gen-Xers as the Vietnam war did to the Boomers and Harry Potter does … Read more
We love to hate the media but it’s social media we should be concerned about, writes Danyl Mclauchlan. About halfway through Before Sunrise – a 1990s romantic comedy that has the same significance for Gen-Xers as the Vietnam war did to the Boomers and Harry Potter does for Millennials – Jessie and Celine, who are adrift … Read more