Disinformation Project

Screenshot from the Disinformation Project website

Disinformation Project seeks to discredit unapproved narratives in New Zealand. The Disinformation Project was formed in February 2020 to counter criticism of the government's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

About

Excerpt from the Disinformation Project website:

The Disinformation Project is an independent research group studying misinformation and disinformation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Since February 2020, we have used mixed methods approaches to analyse and review the seed and spread of information disorders – and their impact on the lives of New Zealanders.

We produce publicly available research, sensitive reporting, media commentary, and resourcing for civil society seeking to respond to information disorders, and growing offline consequences, in their communities.

Aotearoa New Zealand is experiencing an infodemic, where the Covid-19 pandemic furthered the spread of misinformation and disinformation, impacting social cohesion and over the longer term, the country’s democratic fabric and electoral integrity. We help social media companies, journalists, academia, policymakers, and civil society to identify, understand, unpack and meaningfully respond to information disorders.

Team

According to the Disinformation Project website, Kate Hannah is Director of the Disinformation Project, Sanjana Hattotuwa is a Research Fellow and Kayli Taylor is a Researcher.

Web of Chaos

Web of Chaos was a partisan New Zealand documentary funded by tax-payers. It was directed by Justin Pemberton and aired in New Zealand on November 1, 2022.

Web of Chaos was described on New Zealand television as: "A deep dive into the world of disinformation, exploring why it's spreading at pace throughout Aotearoa and the world, with specialists warning of striking consequences for social cohesion and democracy."

Disinformation Project's Kate Hannah and Sanjana Hattotuwa were prominently featured in the Web of Chaos.

Disinformation is Racist

The Disinformation Project's first non-peer reviewed paper titled "Evaluating the infodemic: assessing the prevalence and nature of COVID19 unreliable and untrustworthy information in Aotearoa New Zealand’s social media, January-August 2020" was written by Max Soar, Victoria Louise Smith, M.R.X. Dentith, Daniel Barnett, Kate Hannah, Giulio Valentino Dalla Riva and Andrew Sporle.

Excerpt:

"A key feature of the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying infodemic is uncertainty. As a novel viral zoonotic disease which, as of 30 August 2020, has seen nearly 25 million confirmed cases worldwide, and over 800,000 deaths (World Health Organisation, 2020d), the lack of scientific and public health certainty and preparedness has enabled the emergence of significant narratives which emphasise a lack of trust in governments, state actors, and/or inter- and intra-government organizations. With critical variance in state responses, and a number of differing scientific or public health approaches advocated for, this lack of trust in government interventions and planning can be identified in known conspiracy theory discourses, but also sits within the contexts of colonisation, systemic racism, state failures, underfunding and under-resourcing of public health, and differential experiences of state intervention (King et al., 2020; McLeod et al., 2020). This is particularly true in the Aotearoa New Zealand context for Māori, Pasifika, and other groups who experience inequitable access to healthcare (Steyn et al., 2020). Given a lack of trust in the state is present in both situated experiences of the pandemic and within known conspiracy discourses, we note then that convergence of these are to be expected.