Disinformation - the new cash cow, especially if we get 're-educated' about its' meaning.

New Zealand’s government has put out a tender to gather disinformation. In their blurb below, this is for “insights to build an empirical picture of the disinformation landscape”. The precise use it will be put to isn’t stated, apart from letting the information be publicly available. The successful tender will get $450K to conduct this observational evidence gathering, presumably from the internet and/or surveys, and present it to the government to “strengthen our national capacity to address and identify disinformation”. So far, so vague.

Admittedly, I’m not privy or knowledgeable about all the law-and-order government agencies which fly under the radar, but I thought we’d have had some of them monitoring disinformation already. But maybe the government’s “whole-of-society” approach is more about us monitoring each other? Strengthening resilience to disinformation | Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC)

There’s no doubt that disinformation is a problem, and with a name like the ‘Disinformation Project’, the Disinformation Project is surely a shoe-in to be successful when tendering for this job. Almost designed for them, you might say. In the email the Free Speech Union NZ sent to its’ members about this matter, former judge, Dr. David Harvey, who delves into the nitty-gritty of the tender more fully here, notes “who better to get a job on disinformation than the people with the issue in their name and who have been calling for this exact sort of group to be established?”     

I’m not entirely sure if the Disinformation Project knows what disinformation is, though. Their last working paper in connection to disinformation, amongst other things spoke about -

·       Hate and harm towards transgender and non-binary people

·       Language that denies transpeople exist

·       Denying a group’s existence and their right to exist are both signs of the language of genocide

·       Neo-nazi and far-right content and narrators

·       Anti-trans narrative and content

·       Rising violent misogyny [I note that the mob violence towards the women at Kellie-Jay Keen’s ‘Let Women Speak rally in Auckland is cited as a measurable mark from which from which “hate and harm” towards transpeople increased, but not mentioned as violence against women]

The Disinformation Project’s working paper seems to apply a fairly broad, or somewhat re-defined, meaning to the word ‘disinformation’. My understanding of the word – i.e information spread in order to deceive people – is more precise than theirs, which seems to overlap into the territory of ‘mean and hateful’ comments. But then the Disinformation Project uses the word ‘genocide’ rather imprecisely, too.

If the Disinformation Project gets awarded this government tender, with what kind of disinformation will they be supplying the government that our law-and-order agencies can’t? Is it possibly a precursor to justifying having another crack at implementing stringent legislation in the controversial and confusing Hate Speech bill? It was pared back after strong resistance to it, but has not been scrapped altogether. Without more clarity provided, one can only speculate.

The current incarnation of the Hate Speech bill arose out the Christchurch Mosque shootings in 2019 and the subsequent Royal Commission of Enquiry into it, where it was also suggested that social cohesion be worked on. Since then, there has been a notable rise in the visibility and funding of LGBTQIA+ groups, for example the Charities Register has InsideOUT’s annual income above $1M, whereas previously the most it had been was $370K. There have also been changes to policies and language, particularly around the word ‘woman’, in the interests of (the buzzword) ‘inclusion’.

Interestingly, though, despite the references to neo-nazis, white supremacists, and the far right in their working paper, I couldn’t find the word ‘Muslim’ on the Disinformation Project’s website anywhere, whether in connection to those words, or not. It seemed a strange omission. However, I did find multiple references to LGBTQIA+ in what appeared to be an intended connection of the dangers to them from neo-nazis, white supremacists, and the far right.

The Free Speech Union NZ is also putting in a tender for the ‘Insights to build an empirical picture of the disinformation landscape’ job. They fully understand the potentially jeopardous lockstep which the government and the Disinformation Project could enter into, and how our free speech rights would undoubtably take a battering from that. I fervently wish the Free Speech Union all the best. I also fervently wish them wings, as, in what has become an insidious norm in recent times for making submissions to the government, the window for submitting this tender is just a little over three weeks.

But if anyone apart from the Disinformation Project gets this tender, I’ll eat my hat.