Counterspin Media and COVID-19 in Aotearoa New Zealand: Far-Right Extremism and the Undermining of Public Sphere and Public Health Principles

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic was used by far-right extremists organized within an online ecosystem to normalise their ideology, public sphere and public health principles were undermined. This thesis applies critical discourse analysis, keyword analysis and ideology critique to a sample of texts from Counterspin Media, who have been labelled as one of the largest platforms for conspiracy theories and far-right ideology in Aotearoa New Zealand. The aim is to determine the extent to which far-right extremist ideology has pervaded Counterspin’s language, such that public sphere and public health principles in Aotearoa New Zealand were treated during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research finds that Counterspin’s language is pervaded by far-right extremist ideology. However, there was an effort to conceal this and there were several occasions in the analysed samples in which the influence was denied. Thus, Counterspin had the potential to spread far-right extremist discourse and exploit people’s feelings of anxiety about the pandemic, without appearing to do so. Deployment of certain keywords – ‘freedom’, ‘tyranny’, ‘reclaim’, ‘democide’, ‘media’, ‘Jacinda Ardern’ reveals that. One can conclude that Counterspin are indeed a far-right extremist entity who used the COVID-19 pandemic, and the accompanying infodemic, to spread their ideology, in ways which undermined public sphere and public health principles.