“That long lockdown seemed to change people’s circadian rhythms of engagement with information more broadly, but also with misinformation and disinformation; people were consuming more, for longer periods,” Ms. Hannah said. “And it was coming from that space of U.S.-based conspiratorial ideas around masks, around lockdowns, framed within the context of a global conspiracy.”
People who might have been looking to learn more about Covid-19 found themselves pulled toward other kinds of disinformation, she said. “Minimization of Covid-19 has been like a Trojan horse,” Ms. Hannah said. “It has become a really significant recruitment tool and then has created an ability to coalesce around a set of ideas that are anti the state.”
Many of these ideas originate in North America, but they have taken on a new form in New Zealand. Questions of Indigenous rights have filtered into a homegrown iteration of the sovereign citizen movement, in which people believe themselves to be answerable only to their own interpretations of so-called common law, rather than government statutes or proceedings.
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