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Image: Matthew McAuley
Image: Matthew McAuley

MediaJuly 14, 2022

How social media abandoned news – and newsletters became existentially important to The Spinoff

Image: Matthew McAuley
Image: Matthew McAuley

As Facebook pivots to video, newsletters have become the antidote, an oasis of calm and curation. This is why The Spinoff has appointed its first newsletter editor. Founder and publisher Duncan Greive explains.

Think back, if you possibly can, to the internet as it existed a decade or so ago. It was the golden age of blogs, with Tumblr the apex of user-generated content. Social media was largely text and link-based, dominated by a benign Facebook where the worst that could happen was an unexpected poke from an acquaintance. Flickr was more famous than Instagram. Video was in good old-fashioned landscape format and located mainly on YouTube. If you watched at all, you certainly didn’t on your phone – what kind of data-rich millionaire could afford to?

In that era, legacy media still dominated our imagination, and the moment felt most solidly marked by the front page of the newspaper. Almost all our dailies operated in the broadsheet format, with multiple stories running or trailed on the front.

The weekday NZ Herald moved its weekdays to the compact format just shy of 10 years ago, in September 2012. Fairfax (now Stuff) would change its papers six years later, in 2018. Now, while newspapers remain brilliant objects for delivering packaged and timely information, with the demise of the broadsheet format the function and historic power of the front page changed too. (Lately Harvey Norman’s generous support of the newspaper industry has also helped render front pages far less impactful.)

A street vendor with the New Zealand Herald’s first ‘compact’ edition in 2012 (Photo: Simon Watts/Getty Images)

One underrated aspect of the difference between physical and digital products is the extent to which changes in digital products can slip by with us barely aware they’re changing. The move from broadsheet to compact was the subject of long-running debate, but more impactful changes to the appearance or functionality of our favourite apps might only dimly register and seldom merit reporting.

This goes even more so for changes to the underlying algorithms. What this means is that while social media has evolved very radically over the past 10 years, most mainstream discussion has been confined to the arrival of new platforms, like Instagram and TikTok, or angst over what they are doing to our children. What the products serve you, and the precise nature of that mix, remains a somewhat esoteric discussion.

Yet its changes have been infinitely more profound than any format change to a newspaper could hope to be. And because we never discuss them, what we experience as users can change slowly but inexorably until, without quite realising, it’s entirely different from what we first signed up to.

Video is eating the internet

So it has proved with social media, which in recent years has determinedly moved away from news. Not all at once (it learned the hard way in Australia that does not land well), but a little at a time, with those who rely on the platform to get links to relevant news stories on the platform the proverbial boiling frog.

Facebook in its early stages was an excellent place to get your news – links to news sites sat high in the feed, and users largely liked, commented on and shared news in a fairly basic and non-controversial way. 

Yet over the past few years the way people use social media has changed so much that it would seem entirely alien to our innocent selves 10 years ago. Had we known what was coming, we might have got together and debated whether it was what we wanted for us as a society, but the slippery and constant motion of technology products meant there were only very rarely flashpoints that felt like they might be grabbed hold of. And besides, a sense of inevitability had settled over the whole enterprise – these things were everywhere and nowhere and thus entirely ungovernable.

‘Media is under threat. Help save The Spinoff with an ongoing commitment to support our work.’
Duncan Greive
— Founder

Which brings us to the bizarro world that is the present day. Facebook, which once had seemingly the entire internet population on it and felt entirely indomitable, now feels like a musty relic. A place built on text, when first images and then vertical video have come to dominate social attention. Perhaps most tellingly, Facebook was originally a place that naturally hosts links that people actually clicked on (unlike Twitter, a negligible traffic driver). All the next waves of social apps (Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, BeReal) were defined by being walled gardens that had no room for links and never wanted you to leave. 

For a decade Facebook busied itself trying to fix its product by making it more complex, adding more features. Some successful, like Marketplace and Messenger, some much less so, like Instant Articles and Deals. 

Now perhaps the biggest change in its history is coming. The Verge obtained a leaked memo which promised a huge overhaul of its algorithm to make it more like TikTok. It will re-merge Messenger and the main app, and emphasise the surfacing of content from anywhere over “the social graph” – friends and family. Most importantly, it will further escalate the prominence of Reels, its shortform video TikTok clone.

This will have profound implications for millions of people who rely on Facebook to do all kinds of things. But for us, and for you, the most important thing to understand is that it will have a huge impact on the news media.

What that means for the news, for The Spinoff and you

This might be the beginning of the end for naturally surfaced, locally created news on Facebook. The company has been gradually turning down the volume of news in its feed for some time now, and this will accelerate that process. Less than five years ago, 5% of the content of its feed was news. Now, that has declined to the point where it represents one in every 250 pieces of content, or less than half a percent. As a result, social interactions with news content in the US have declined 50% so far this year alone. As it moves to become more like TikTok and emphasise Reels, that proportion will drop further still. (Incidentally, I’m not mad at Facebook about this – it feels like the world is passing it by, and has to move with the times, which is its right).

As a publisher though, these changes could impact The Spinoff enormously. As of today, 40% of our traffic comes via social media. The vast majority, north of 90%, comes through Facebook. I cannot state this more clearly – if you are one of the 130,000 people who follow us on Facebook and rely on that method to read our stories: stop. You need another plan – and we have one for you, so read on. 

This has the potential to be an extinction-level event for news sites. 

We don’t want to go that way.

The vital importance of email and newsletters

This is where newsletters come in. For five years we have published The Bulletin, a 7am email that wraps news from around New Zealand into an easily digested five-minute read to start your day. It’s become beloved and extremely popular, with 35,000 New Zealanders reading it each day. 

We have complemented it with a range of other newsletters, a number launched in the past few months, and all with a vital and refreshing voice from a single author with a fascinating perspective on their subject area. Each has an insightful piece of writing at the top, and curated links to the writing from around New Zealand at the foot.

  • The Boil Up is Charlotte Muru-Lanning writing about food and the culture around it.

  • Stocktake is Chris Schulz writing about NZ business, especially startups and the people behind them.

  • Future Proof is Ellen Rykers writing an honest yet optimistic take on the environment.

  • The Weekend is Shanti Mathias wrapping the biggest stories of the week that was on The Spinoff, for those who might have missed them.

  • The Daily is an early evening round-up of all The Spinoff’s stories from that day in one short, simple and easy-to-read newsletter.

  • Rec Room is Catherine McGregor picking the best from TV, music, podcasts and pop culture (relaunching soon).

Sign up to any and all of our newsletters here

This week we announced that Anna Rawhiti-Connell, the brilliant mind behind The Bulletin, would be expanding her role to become our first-ever newsletter editor. She’s a writer I’ve loved for a long time, and who has followed in the footsteps of Alex Braae and Justin Giovanetti, but truly made The Bulletin her own. She’s also hugely passionate about newsletters as a form, as you can tell from the brilliant, considered perspective she brought to my podcast The Fold this week.


Follow The Fold on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.


What we love about newsletters is that email is a protocol and not a platform. That means it arrives as part of a chronological feed that won’t change when someone tweaks an algorithm or decides the business model has moved on. After a decade of constant change in social media, that’s a dream.

They also have a wonderful sense of calm and human curation. We first started to lean into newsletters years ago, and appointed Anna just before news broke that Facebook was making these massive changes. What felt like an exciting new opportunity to serve our members and audiences suddenly became freighted with a far greater urgency.

So it deserves repeating: if you’re reading this and you mostly get The Spinoff on Facebook (or know someone who does), be aware that this will change. Perhaps you’ll remember to come and check us – but there are tens of thousands of brilliant technologists trying to get you to stay on social apps and never leave. So odds are you won’t.

Your best bet to stay in touch with what we do, and across the news and current affairs of this country, is to sign up for one or more of our newsletters. They’re some of the best writing we do, and come at a languid pace – most weekly, a couple daily. None take longer than five minutes to read, all will leave you smarter and better-informed.

I urge you to try one or more (and please let your friends and whānau know about these changes and our newsletters too – word of mouth remains our best friend). They’re rapidly joining podcasts in becoming the heart of what we do, and something about which we’re all very passionate. Subscribing also helps your local independent media company survive these huge changes, coming soon to a platform near you.

Ngā manaakitanga,

Duncan Greive

Publisher, The Spinoff

Keep going!
Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

MediaJuly 12, 2022

How the Pacific Islands became a hotbed of online misinformation

Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

A shortage of resources and investment from major digital platforms has left the Pacific region battling misinformation and under-moderation.

Word spreads fast through the “coconut wireless”, the informal gossip network across Pacific Islanders’ social media. But when such rapid proliferation is spreading false or misleading news, it becomes a problem that requires resourcing and commitment to solve. The Pacific is currently a global hotspot for misinformation.

The ability of Pacific island countries and territories to respond to “infodemic” risks online has been exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Misinformation about the pandemic has persisted online, despite efforts by Pacific governments, civil societies, citizens, media organisations, and institutions to counter it.

The Pacific presently has the smallest percentage of their population using the internet and social media compared with the rest of the world. Internet provision is made more difficult and costly in the Pacific due to the region’s unique geographical features. The lack of high-capacity cables and other technical infrastructure has also held back Pacific connectivity.

International undersea internet cables connecting Pacific Island nations. (Image: Dr Amanda H A Watson and CartoGIS ANU)

New undersea cables are arriving in the region, such as the Australian-financed Coral Sea Cable connecting Sydney to Port Moresby and Honiara, ending decades of reliance on slow and expensive satellite connections. These cables, along with other planned reforms and upgrades, are expected to increase the number of mobile internet users in the Pacific by about 11% annually between 2018 and 2025, according to estimates by industry groups.

More access has rapidly changed how government officials communicate with the public and shifted perceptions of politics. Both Kiribati and Vanuatu broadcast their national election results live on Facebook. In Kiribati, the 9,400-member Kiribati election 2020 group posted photos of handwritten vote totals. In Vanuatu, the national broadcaster streamed the entire ballot-counting process on Facebook Live. Sparked by the rollout of mobile broadband across Papua New Guinea, hundreds of thousands of citizens now read the latest news and monitor happenings in Port Moresby through blogs and Facebook groups filled with lengthy discussions and heated calls to action.

The flipside to such access is that false online rumours and scams directly targeting Pacific people have spread rapidly through Facebook groups and closed messaging applications. Rising internet access may be exacerbating the problem of child sexual exploitation online. In some regions of Papua New Guinea, hate speech, harassment, and harmful rumours can sometimes lead to actual acts of violence.

Local politicians in the Pacific are starting to recognise the potential of social media, but unethical online influence techniques can go undetected if proper transparency measures and safeguards are not implemented. Facebook, for one, has implemented its transparency systems to curb hidden manipulation of its advertising features for partisan ends. Journalists and investigators in dozens of larger markets use these tools to reveal voter manipulation, but most Pacific island nations are yet to adopt them.

The transparency tools rolled out by Facebook in recent years have had little pick-up in the Pacific (Photo: Getty Images)

The lack of transparency makes it very difficult for observers to track what political actors are saying online, especially as Facebook’s advertising system allows different messages to be targeted to different parts of the population. Social media companies make little effort to reach out to Pacific leaders, which may explain why so few public figures in the region use the “verified” badges that are useful in helping distinguish official accounts from personal ones. Papua New Guinea prime minister James Marape found that out the hard way: fake Facebook and Twitter accounts were created in his name, and his lack of verification made the real profile harder for users to distinguish.

Some governments have threatened to completely block social media to curb the spread of content they deem immoral, harmful, or destructive to established norms and values. Nauru’s government blocked Facebook from 2015 to 2018, and Papua New Guinea and Samoa hinted at blocking the platform multiple times over the past few years. In 2019, Tonga considered a ban on Facebook to prevent slander against the monarchy.

Social media bans are rarely implemented, and face fierce opposition from free speech advocates and users. The frequency with which such measures are proposed in the Pacific reflects a sobering reality: communities in the region often lack the protections that communities elsewhere in the world rely on to address harmful content and abuse on social media.

Current systems for moderating content on social media are not effective in the Pacific. These systems rely on algorithms that flag rule-breaking content in multiple languages, human reviewers who make determinations on flagged material, users who voluntarily report content violating the rules, and legal requests from law enforcement officials. Social media platforms do not prioritise hiring from the Pacific region, where there are comparatively fewer people. They do not invest in developing language-specific algorithms for languages like Tongan, Bislama, or Chuukese, which have a smaller user base.

Despite the growing importance of third-party fact-checking partnerships, no Pacific island country is home to a dedicated fact-checking team. All claims in Australia and the Pacific islands are referred to the Australian Associated Press’s fact-checking unit. Pacific social media users are missing out on one of the few tools that global social media companies use to strengthen information ecosystems due to the lack of a robust local fact-checking organisation.

All signs point to an increase in the dangers posed by false and misleading information in the months and years ahead, as both state and non-state actors attempt to steer online discourse in service of their strategic goals. Politically-motivated domestic and foreign actors (or proxies) regularly attempt to manipulate online platforms and social media worldwide. These efforts are highly diverse, always in flux, and frequently related to more extensive political or national interests.

Health checks in Fiji, part of the effort to combat Covid-19, May 11, 2021 (Photo: Facebook / Fiji government)

At least one organised effort to spread false information online about the West Papuan conflict has already occurred in the Pacific. External pressures and crises will amplify the dangers posed by these campaigns, as they did during the Covid-19 pandemic when an excess of data and a lack of apparent credibility and fact checking allowed rumours to spread unchecked. Rising tensions between the developed world and China add to the already complex political situation, and the narrative tug-of-war for influence among significant powers on Covid-19 is likely to continue. There is a risk that online misinformation from foreign media will increase due to this competition for narrative dominance, leaving countries in the region vulnerable to influence operations that target online discourse, media, and communities.

More robust local capacity (outside of government) to identify problematic content and bad actors online is necessary for the region to recover from Covid-19 and respond to future crises. This includes better coordination among regional institutions and governments, increased engagement between social media companies and Pacific leaders, and more thorough reporting of online problems. Foreseeing and preparing for future potential threats to health and safety is something that leaders can do now.

Romitesh Kant (ORCID) is a PhD Scholar at the Australian National University, and a research consultant with more than ten years experience in the fields of governance, civic education and human rights.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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