Reflection, refraction, and rebuttal: Data signatures of the March 2019 Christchurch massacre on Twitter

Media, Peacebuilding, Technology 3 Minutes

For PhD, studied 819,813 tweets, & around 14 million words in them produced after March 2019’s Christchurch massacre. Immediately evident is how Twitter today is unrecognisable from what the platform was then, & especially around discourse framing an unprecedented act of terrorism in New Zealand. 

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Access it here as a PDF.

I’ve included the cover page of thesis, and abstract, in addition to the complete chapter. For those who fear/detest academic writing – I approached PhD as humanities scholar, & wrote it more as a story capturing key moments, avoiding, to extent possible, jargon.

Ten high-level insights from the chapter follow.

  1. In the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre, tweets within NZ and globally overwhelmingly expressed empathy, solidarity and condemnation of the attacks. There was little evidence of hate or violence promotion.
  2. The prosocial, victim-centric framing of the attacks on Twitter persisted for months after the massacre, both within New Zealand and internationally.
  3. The then PM Jacinda Ardern’s empathetic leadership and messaging after the attacks heavily influenced the largely positive, unifying tone on Twitter within New Zealand and beyond.
  4. The research contrasts starkly with Twitter discourse after the 2019 Easter attacks in Sri Lanka, which was far more divisive, conspiratorial and promoted Islamophobia.
  5. While social media can amplify hate after attacks, political leadership and media culture play a major role in shaping online discourse, as the New Zealand example shows.
  6. Engagement with the Christchurch attacker’s so-called manifesto and ideology gained little traction on Twitter in the aftermath, subsumed by messages of solidarity.
  7. Studying the same social media platform in different countries after terror attacks reveals Twitter is heavily influenced by sociopolitical context, not just technical features.
  8. Influential accounts, e.g. celebrities & politicians, helped promote prosocial messaging on Twitter after Christchurch, contrasting with “hate entrepreneurs” after Sri Lanka’s Easter attacks.
  9. The research challenges universal models of social media’s role in crises, showing platform effects are highly context-dependent.
  10. Strengthening democratic, empathetic responses to extremism can positively influence social media discourse after attacks, as in New Zealand after Christchurch.

3 years after massacre, in March 2021, I shared stage with Paul Ash – the PM’s Special Representative on Cyber & Digital, Christchurch Call & Cyber Coordinator – to present key findings. Paul’s presentation focussed on the Christchurch Call, relatively unknown to New Zealander’s at the time. I talked about the research on the massacre.

In what’s far more resonant, & poignant today than it was then, my research surfaced the virality of images of people had come out onto Gaza’s streets in solidarity with the victims of the massacre in New Zealand. A shared humanity, highlighted by Gazans, remains a valuable lesson today.

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In addition to PhD chapter, pre-dating it, and also based on the research that fed into thesis, I’ve produced a lot of other articles, & presentations on March 2019’s massacre, & role of social media. A 2021 publication by the ICT4Peace Foundation compiled all of it.

Finally, a personal reflection. The love New Zealand garnered on Twitter after massacre was by order of magnitude more than what Sri Lanka attracted after Easter Sunday terrorism a month later that year, killing 5X more. I know, because I studied it for PhD. Unsure New Zealanders appreciate this. Value, & cherish it.

It’s incredibly sad that 5 years hence, the gun reform after the massacre to help with non-recurrence faces a real possibility of roll-back. Why? Why do this? New Zealand offered a socio-political, & socio-technological model to respond to terrorism fundamentally different to others. Why regress?

I hope reading the chapter helps better appreciate how political leadership shapes online discourse, & how a platform’s governance also matters in what are symbiotic relationships. My thoughts remain with those impacted by the March 2019’s massacre. May life be kind, gentle, & generous to you.

Published by Sanjana

An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance. I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002. I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents. Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs. Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts. I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.

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