Pacific Journalism Review (Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology)
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FRONTLINE 3: The NZ media and the occupation of Parliament
No full textCommentary: There is little reason to doubt that groups like Advance New Zealand, Voices for Freedom and Counterspin Media have been funded in part by donations from ‘the people’ or ‘everyday Kiwis’; New Zealanders are no less likely to disseminate misinformation—and fund that dissemination—than any other group. Nonetheless, questions remain about the role of foreign linked entities like Himalaya New Zealand on the fringe of New Zealand politics. Parliament grounds have been cleared and the grass will regrow, but the disinformation networks behind the protests remain. The role for media in the coming months, and likely years, will be to not ignore these disinformation networks (and not unwittingly provide content for them) but to investigate them and analyse the role they are playing in the contemporary ‘post-truth’ world
REVIEW: Noted: Faux footnotes and a false frontispiece: Review of Dakawaku, by Anurag Subramani
No full textDakawaku, by Anurag Subramani. Honolulu: Lo’ihi Press, 2021. 327 pages.
THIS book tries very hard to be very clever, with a thousand literary, Pacific and other allusions dripping from every page and a writing style that is (I think) intended (perhaps) to mirror the comic prose of Swift and Boswell. There are copious faux footnotes, a false frontispiece, addenda, exhortations to the reader and other literary devices that have not been seen since the steam press was invented. It is, in short (possibly) an attempt at what we used to call a picaresque novel in first year lit
FRONTLINE 1: New Zealand’s 23-day Parliament siege: QAnon and how social media disinformation manufactured an ‘alternate reality’
Full text linkFires burned across Aotearoa New Zealand’s Parliament grounds, and violent clashes broke out between protesters and police on the day the law enforcement officers moved to quell a 23-day anti-vaccination mandate siege of the House in February-March 2022 in scenes rarely witnessed in this country. The riot climaxed a mounting campaign of disinformation and hate speech on social media fuelled by conspiracy theorist New Zealand activist media such as Counterspin, which emulated their counterparts in the United States. Vitriolic death threats against political leaders and attacks on journalists and the media on an unprecedented scale were a feature of the protests. Anti-government messages were imported alongside white supremacist ideologies. Researchers have described the events as a ‘tectonic shift’ that will have a significant and lasting impact on Aotearoa New Zealand’s democratic institutions This article introduces three perspectives about the protests and disinformation ecology framed in the journal’s reflexive series Frontline
Holding the line: Rappler, Facebook, Duterte and the battle for truth and public trust: ACMC2021
Full text linkCommentary: Rappler is the only journalist-owned and journalist-led media company in the Philippines. In the aftermath of chief executive Maria Ressa’s 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, this keynote address at the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) outlines how the independent media group has harnessed social media and pressured Facebook and the tech giants that control the global information highway to do better and to give facts premium over profits. The address argues that the only way media can regain public trust in journalism is to regain their rightful space in the public sphere. This will not be able to be achieved in an environment where algorithms make value judgments for the public and where readers are served only information that they want or enjoy. Without journalists who will tell it like it is no matter the consequences, the future will continue to be one of alternate facts and manipulated opinions. 
REVIEW: Bookshelf: Account of 1953 royal tour has much to teach about how we saw the world: Review of Royal Tour Picture Album, by Elizabeth Morton
No full textRoyal Tour Picture Album, by Elizabeth Morton. London, UK: Sunday Graphic/Pitkin Pictorials Ltd, 1953. 104 pages.
ONE of the joys of travelling the world and collecting books is the historical oddities that turn up in the most unexpected places. I have a splendid copy of the complete works of Shakespeare dating to the Second World War, completely re-set, so the frontispiece notes, due to the original plates having been ‘destroyed by enemy action’. One wonders at the perfidy of the Luftwaffe in trying to blow up the Bard
OBITUARY: Vale Peter Lomas – a checkered journalism legacy
No full textTributes flowed for the death of New Zealand-born Fiji Sun publisher and chief executive Peter Lomas. He spent much of his life in Fiji and the Pacific and, according to his newspaper, 'He was an industry pioneer and one of the last surviving old school "newspaper men" of the Pacific, someone who lived and breathed the news business and practically lived his life in the newsroom'. He was a former editor of Islands Business, the Fiji Daily Post, and worked as a training consultant on the Samoa Observer, Solomon Star, and Elijah Communications in the Cook Islands. In 2001 became the fulltime media development training coordinator for the Suva-based Pacific Islands News Association (PINA). This obituary by a Fiji-born media consultant offers a more nuanced profile of his Fiji Sun tenure
FRONTLINE 4: The murmuration of information disorders: Aotearoa New Zealand‚ mis- and disinformation ecologies and the Parliament Protest : The Disinformation Project
No full textThe Parliament Protest from February 2022 to March 2022 was a significant online and offline event in Aotearoa New Zealand. Offline, its physical presence captured the attention of the nation and fuelled debates about ideas of legitimate protest in Aotearoa New Zealand. Online, its data signatures showed never-seen-before popularity with misinformation, disinformation, and extremist thought. In this article The Disinformation Project (https://thedisinfoproject.org/) incorporates quantitative and qualitative data analysis to explore the role misinformation and disinformation played in the nurture and nature of the protest on Parliament grounds. The article also explores how the protest was projected on social media, disinformation and misinformation ecologies associated with it, and lasting impacts on social cohesion, identity, news media and democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand.
This article has been published with permission from The Disinformation Project (https://thedisinfoproject.org/), Te Pūnaha Matatini, and Centre for Science in Society, Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington as a collaboration with Pacific Journalism Review: Te Koakoa under the umbrella of PJR’s Frontline critical reflexive journalism programme
OBITUARY: Vale Robbie Robertson, a 'son of Fiji and the Pacific'
No full textWhile most University of the South Pacific academics were united in their opposition to the 1987 and 2000 coups in Fiji – and many of them suffered in various ways from the 1987 coup, the 2006 coup was divisive in that quite a few senior USP academics and former academics (mostly Indo-Fijian) gave tacit and active support to it, believing in coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama’s rhetoric of anti-corruption and racial equality for all in Fiji as his justification. The death of historian and prolific author and writer professor Robert Robertson has highlighted through his books, scholarship and academic activism the injustices inflicted by the coups and globalisation on academics, journalists and marginalised beginning with Fiji: Shattered Coups (1988), co-authored with his journalist partner Akosita Tamanisau. This essay profiles an academic who ‘planted deep roots, metaphorically and literally, in the DNA of Fiji and the Pacific
PHOTOESSAY: Visual peregrinations in the realm of kava
Full text linkPhotoessay: The author has been documenting the use of kava in different parts of the Pacific for several years, particularly in Tonga and in Auckland where its use is popular among members of communities that consume kava as part of their cultural tradition, and more recently a growing non-traditional user group. In this article, he reflects on his project to document the use of kava through photographs, the evolution of its use in traditional and non-traditional settings and discusses the most recent scientific studies of the drink
REVIEW: Noted: ‘All we want is a fairer share’: Review of Our Ocean’s Promise: From aspiration to inspiration: The Marshall Islands Fishing story, by Giff Johnson
No full textOur Ocean’s Promise: From aspiration to inspiration: The Marshall Islands Fishing story, by Giff Johnson. Majuro: Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority, 2021, 200 pages.
THIS lavishly illustrated history of the development of commercial fishing in the Marshall Islands will be of interest to anybody concerned with economic development and sensible management of fishing stocks in the Pacific. For many islands their offshore economic zones and fishing fields have been a source, even potentially, of wealth. However, overfishing and the loss of fishing stock through legal agreements, leasing arrangements and outright piracy have been a problem for many island states in recent years