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Home / New Zealand

Claire Trevett: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's social media stealth propaganda

Claire Trevett
By Claire Trevett
Political Editor, NZ Herald·NZ Herald·
11 Sep, 2019 05:00 PM4 mins to read

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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at her post-Cabinet press conference. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at her post-Cabinet press conference. Photo / Mark Mitchell

After Twitter founder Jack Dorsey visited Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at Parliament this week, National Party leader Simon Bridges accused Ardern of spending too much time with the likes of Twitter.

Bridges took to this argument with such vigour that by the time he was done over two days, he had spent more time talking about Ardern and Twitter than Ardern had actually spent with Twitter.

Her meeting with Dorsey was 30 minutes long.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the Beehive. Photo / Twitter
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the Beehive. Photo / Twitter

Bridges was clearly trying to revive his "part-time PM" claim under another guise, claiming the PM's attentions to the Christchurch Call were coming at the expense of issues such as health, education and infrastructure at home.

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It was clear he was desperate to make this point – he had not been asked about the PM's meeting, but raised the subject himself after 10 minutes on questioning on other issues.

Quite why he was bothering was baffling, given the Labour sexual assault allegation controversy was in full swing and all Bridges did was distract attention from that.

The most likely explanation is that he suspected the next 1 News' Colmar Brunton poll was either underway or was soon to launch into action.

If we were to assess Bridges' claim Ardern was spending too much time on Twitter literally, it is untrue.

Ardern has tweeted only three times this year. Bridges has sent out at least 30 in the last month alone.

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The last time Ardern tweeted was in May to acknowledge the death of former Australian PM Bob Hawke.

She did not even tweet about meeting Mr Twitter – although Dorsey did.

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But while Bridges is more prolific, Ardern is far from silent on other forms of social media – both on her own accounts and Labour Party pages.

The Prime Minister uses social media in a more cunning way than any Prime Minister has before, despite Bill English's walk-runs and spaghetti pizzas.

She enjoys a benefit none of her predecessors really had, one that was delivered to her by the Twitter and Facebook: easy livestreaming.

This is not only seen in the casual Facebook Lives Ardern does regularly.

The widespread and regular live-streaming of her press conferences by media outlets is a relatively new development, which only began on a regular basis toward the very end of John Key's reign.

It has changed things. Under former PMs Helen Clark and John Key, the weekly press conference was used to outline what Cabinet had considered that day, what the PM was doing that week, to make an announcement if there was one, and then take questions.

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Ardern retained some of that. But since Bridges' first round of "part-time Prime Minister" attacks and criticism of the Government's pace of delivery, Ardern has used the first five minutes to list the achievements of the Government over the past week.

Ardern knows full well none of it will get reported – it is days-old news.

But she also knows that as she speaks, she is being live-streamed on the homepage of all major media outlets and Labour's own Facebook page.

She is effectively getting an uninterrupted party political broadcast out to viewers of the livestreams – including the Labour Party's livestream - rather than the media in front of her.

It is a clever use of an opportunity and who can blame a politician for using it – but it also amounts to stealth propaganda.

It may also have the advantage of boring many viewers away before the hard questions start.

A piece by Massey University's Claire Robinson last week pointed to the increasingly blurred line between "government" and political party business, driven by social media.

Robinson pointed to major government initiatives being announced on Labour Party platforms rather than the official government Beehive site.

Until the Christchurch mosque attacks in March, Ardern's press conferences were all livestreamed directly by the Labour Party Facebook page, because the Beehive site apparently did not have the set-up for it.

That changed after the attacks, because it raised questions about whether it was appropriate to use a party political platform to get out the Prime Minister's responses at a time she was acting very much as Prime Minister rather than in any party capacity.

Since then, the Beehive website has been used to livestream major announcements instead, including the post-Cabinet press conference, and the Labour Party Facebook page has used the Beehive livestream.

Sometimes a technology fail can get in the way: this week a glitch meant there was no audio on the Beehive livestream, forcing it to be abandoned after 10 minutes.

Ardern was possibly grateful for that, given the main topic of the press conference after her introductory statement was Labour's handling of a sexual assault allegation against a staffer.

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