The Papua New Guinea government has admitted to using a technology that it says was “successfully tested” to block social media platforms, particularly Facebook, for much of the day yesterday.

Police Minister Peter Tsiamalili Jr said the “test” was done under the framework of the Anti-Terrorism Act 2024, and sought to address the growing concerns over hate speech, misinformation, and other harmful content online.

Tsiamalili did not specify what kind of tech was used, but said it was carried out in collaboration with the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC), the National Information and Communications Technology Authority (NICTA), and various internet service providers.

• READ MORE: Other Facebook reports

“We are not attempting to suppress free speech or restrict our citizens from expressing their viewpoints,” Tsiamalili said.

“However, the unchecked proliferation of fake news, hate speech, pornography, child exploitation, and incitement to violence on platforms such as Facebook is unacceptable.

“These challenges increasingly threaten the safety, dignity, and well-being of our populace.”

However, government agencies responsible for communications and ICT, including NICTA, said they were not aware.

‘Confidence relies on transparency’
“Public confidence in our digital governance relies on transparency and consistency in how we approach online regulation,” NICTA chief executive Kilakupa Gulo-Vui said.

“It is essential that all key stakeholders, including NICTA, law enforcement, telecommunications providers, and government agencies, collaborate closely to ensure that any actions taken are well-understood and properly executed.”

He said that while maintaining national security was a priority, the balance between safety and digital freedom must be carefully managed.

Gulo-Vui said NICTA would be addressing this matter with the Minister for ICT to ensure NICTA’s role continued to align with the government’s broader policy objectives, while fostering a cohesive and united approach to digital regulation.

The Department of Information Communication and Technology (DICT) Secretary, Steven Matainaho, also stated his department was not aware of the test but added that the police have powers under the new domestic terrorism laws.

Papua New Guinea’s recently introduced anti-terror laws are aimed at curbing both internal and external security threats.

Critics warn of dictatorial control
However, critics of the move say the test borders on dictatorial control.

An observer of Monday’s events, Lucas Kiap, said the goal of combating hate speech and exploitation was commendable, but the approach risks paving way for authoritarian overreach.

“Where is PNG headed? If the government continues down this path, it risks trading democracy for control,” he said.

Many social media users, however, appeared to outdo the government, with many downloading and sharing Virtual Area Network (VPN) apps and continuing to post on Facebook.

“Hello from Poland,” one user said.

East Sepik Governor Allan Bird said today that the country’s anti-terrorism law could target anyone because “the definition of a terrorist is left to the Police Minister to decide”.

‘Designed to take away our freedoms’
“During the debate on the anti-terrorism bill in Parliament, I pointed out that the law was too broad and it could be used against innocent people,” he wrote on Facebook.

He said government MPs laughed at him and used their numbers to pass the bill.

“Yesterday, the Police Minister used the Anti-terrorism Act to shut down Facebook. That was just a test, that was step one,” Governor Bird said.

“There is no limit to the powers the Minister of Police can exercise under this new law. It is draconian law designed to take away our freedoms.

“We are now heading into dangerous territory and everyone is powerless to stop this tyranny,” he added.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A recent webinar hosted by the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) brought together minds from across the region to delve into the intricate issues of the digital economy and data value.

The webinar’s focus was clear — shed light on who was shaping the rules of the digital landscape and how these rules were taking form.

At the forefront of the discussion was the delicate matter of valuing and protecting indigenous knowledge.

• READ MORE: Other indigenous knowledge reports

PANG’s deputy coordinator, Adam Wolfenden, emphasised the need for open conversations spanning various sectors.

“It is a call to understand and safeguard the wisdom embedded in Pacific worldviews and indigenous knowledge systems as we venture into the digital world,” he said.

But amid the promise of the digital age, challenges persisted.

Wolfenden said the Pacific’s scattered islands faced the formidable obstacle of connectivity.

“Communities yearn to tap into online technologies, yet structural barriers stand tall. The connectivity challenges and structural barriers that are faced by the Pacific region are substantial and there is no easy, cheap fix,” he said.

He underscored the necessity of regional partnerships, even beyond the Pacific.

“As they sought to build advanced digital infrastructures, they realised that strength lay in unity. The journey towards progress means joining hands with fellow developing nations.

“It is a testament to the shared dream of progress that transcends geographical boundaries.”

The first step, Wolfenden believed, was awareness.

He said the Pacific region needed to be fully informed about ongoing negotiations, what rules were being carved, and how these might affect the region’s autonomy and data sovereignty.

“Often, these negotiations remain hidden from public view, shrouded in secrecy until agreements were reached. This has to change; transparency is vital,” Wolfenden said.

Beyond this, there was a call for broader discussions during the webinar. The digital economy was not just about buyers and sellers in a virtual marketplace.

It was about preserving culture, empowering communities, and ensuring that indigenous knowledge was never left vulnerable to the whims of the digital age.

Ema Ganivatu and Brittany Nawaqatabu are final year journalism students at The University of the South Pacific. They are also senior editors for Wansolwara, USP Journalism’s student training newspaper and online publications. Republished in a collaborative partnership with Asia Pacific Report.

A Frontline investigative journalism article on the politics behind the decade-long Bougainville war leading up to the overwhelming vote for independence is among articles in the latest Pacific Journalism Review.

The report, by investigative journalist and former academic Professor Wendy Bacon and Nicole Gooch, poses questions about the “silence” in Australia over the controversial Bougainville documentary Ophir that has won several international film awards in other countries.

Published this week, the journal also features a ground-breaking research special report by academics Shailendra Singh and Folker Hanusch on the current state of journalism across the Pacific – the first such region-wide study in almost three decades.

• READ MORE: Pacific Journalism Review – the articles

Griffith University’s journalism coordinator Kasun Ubayasiri has produced a stunning photo essay, “Manus to Meanjin”, critiquing Australian “imperialist” policies and the plight of refugees in the Pacific.

The main theme of the double edition focuses on a series of articles and commentaries about the major “Pacific crises” — covid-19, climate emergency (including New Zealand aid) and West Papua.

Unthemed topics include journalism and democracy, the journalists’ global digital toolbox, cellphones and Pacific communication, a PNG local community mediascape, and hate speech in Indonesia.

This is the first edition of PJR published since it became independent of AUT University last year after previously being published at the University of Papua New Guinea – where it was launched in 1994 – and the University of the South Pacific.

Lockdowns challenge
“Publishing our current double edition in the face of continued covid-driven lockdowns and restrictions around the world has not been easy, but we made it,” says editor Dr Philip Cass.

“From films to photoessays, from digital democracy to dingoes and disease, the multi-disciplinary, multi-national diversity of our coverage remains a strength in an age when too many journals look the same and have the same type of content.”

“We promise this journal will have a strong focus on Asian media, communication and journalism, as well as our normal focus on the Pacific.”

Founding editor Dr David Robie is quoted in the editorial as saying the journal is at a “critical crossroads for the future” and he contrasts PJR with the “oppressively bland” nature of many journalism publications.

“I believe we have a distinctively different sort of journalism and communication research journal – eclectic and refreshing,” he said.

The next edition of PJR will be linked to the “Change, Adaptation and Culture: Media and Communication in Pandemic Times” online conference of the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) being hosted at AUT on November 25-27.

• Pacific Crises: Covid, climate emergency and West Papua, Pacific Journalism Review, edited by Philip Cass and David Robie, September 2021

Terrorism, political extremism, Donald Trump, social media and the phenomenon of “cancel culture” are confronting journalists with a range of agonising free-speech dilemmas to which there are no easy answers.

Do they allow a president of the United States to use their platforms to falsely and provocatively claim the election he has just lost was stolen from him?

How do they cover the activities and rhetoric of political extremists without giving oxygen to race hate and civil insurrection?

• READ MORE:  To stay or cut away? As Trump makes baseless claims, TV networks are faced with a serious dilemma
• No, Twitter is not censoring Donald Trump. Free speech is not guaranteed if it harms others
• Charlie Hebdo: the pen must defy the sword, Islamic or not

How do they integrate news-making social media material into their own content, when it is also hateful or a threat to the civil peace?

Should journalists engage in, or take a stand against, “cancel culture”?

How should editors respond to the “assassin’s veto”, when extremists threaten to kill those who publish content that offends their culture or religion?

The West has experienced concrete examples of all these in recent years. In the US, many of them became pressing during the Trump presidency.

Lying and endangering civil peace
When five of the big US television networks cut away from former President Trump’s White House press conference on November 6 after he claimed the election had been stolen, they did so on the grounds that he was lying and endangering civil peace.

Silencing the president was an extraordinary step, since it is the job of the media to tell people what is going on, hold public officials to account, and uphold the right to free speech. It looked like an abandonment of their role in democratic life.

Against that, television’s acknowledged reach and power imposes a heavy duty not to provide a platform for dangerous speech.

Then on January 6 – two months later to the day – after yet more incitement from Trump, a violent mob laid siege to the Capitol and five people lost their lives. The networks’ decision looked prescient.

They had acted on the principle that a clear and present danger to civil peace, based on credible evidence, should be prioritised over commitments to informing the public, holding public officials to account and freedom of speech.

This case also raised a further dilemma. Even if the danger to peace did not exist, should journalists just go on reporting – or broadcasting – known lies, even when they come from the president of the United States?

Newspaper editors and producers of pre-recorded radio and television content have the time to report lies while simultaneously calling them out as lies. Live radio and television do not. The words are out and the damage is done.

So the medium, the nature and size of the risk, how the informational and accountability functions of journalism are prioritised against the risk, and the free-speech imperative all play into these decisions.

Similar considerations arise in respect of reporting political extremism.

The ABC’s Four Corners programme is about to embark on a story about the alt-right in the US. Having advertised this in a promotional tweet, the ABC received some social media blow-back raising the question of why it would give oxygen to these groups.

The influence of the alt-right on Western politics is a matter of real public interest because of the way it shapes political rhetoric and policy responses, particular on race and immigration.

To not report on this phenomenon because it pursues a morally reprehensible ideology would be to fail the ethical obligation of journalism to tell the community about the important things that are going on in the world.

It is not a question of whether to report, but how.

The Four Corners programme will not be live to air. There will be opportunity for judicious editing. Journalists are under no obligation to report everything they are told. In fact they almost never do.

Motive matters
Whether the decision to omit is censorship comes down to motive: is it censorship to omit hate speech or incitement to violence? No. Because the reporter doesn’t agree with it? Yes.

Integrating social media content into professional mass media news presents all these complexities and one more: what is called the news value of “virality”.

Does the fact something has gone viral on social media make it news? For the more responsible professional mass media, something more will usually be needed.

Does the subject matter affect large numbers of people? Is it inherently significant in some way? Does it involve some person who is in a position of authority or public trust?

Trump’s use of Twitter was an exploitation of these decision-rules, but did not invalidate them.

Social media is also the means by which “cancel culture” works. It enables large numbers of people to join a chorus of condemnation against someone for something they have said or done.

It also puts pressure on institutions such as universities or media outlets to shun them.

How voiceless can exert influence
It has become a means by which the otherwise powerless or voiceless can exert influence over people or organisations that would otherwise be beyond their reach.

There are those who are worried about the effects on free speech. In July 2020, Harper’s magazine published a letter of protest signed by 152 authors, academics, journalists, artists, poets, playwrights and critics.

While applauding the intentions behind “cancel culture” in advancing racial and social justice, they raised their voices against what they saw as a new set of moral attitudes that tended to favour ideological conformity.

In the aftermath of the police killings of black people in 2020 and the law-and-order response of the Trump administration, “cancel culture” began to affect journalism ethics. Some journalists on papers such as The Washington Post and The New York Times began taking public positions against the way their papers were reporting race issues.

It led to a lively debate in the profession about the extent to which moral preferences should shape news decisions. The riposte to those who argued that they should, was: whose moral preferences should prevail?

This was yet another illustration of the complexities surrounding free speech issues arising from the social media phenomenon, the Trump presidency and the combination of the two.

Terrorism added contribution
Terrorism has also added its contribution. Over the decade 2005-2015, what became known as the Danish cartoons confronted journalists and editors with life-and-death decisions.

In 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten (Jutland Post) published cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed. It was a conscious act of defiance against “the assassin’s veto”, violent threats to free speech by Islamist-jihadis.

In 2009, a Danish-born professor of politics wrote a book, The Cartoons that Shook the World. Yale University Press, which published it, refused to re-publish the cartoons after having taken advice from counter-terrorism experts about the risks.

In November 2011, the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo published an issue called Charia Hebdo, satirically featuring the Prophet as editor. The real editor was placed on an Al-Qaeda hit list and in January 2015, two masked gunmen opened fire on the newspaper office, killing 12 people, including the editor.

The world’s media were confronted with the decision whether to re-publish the cartoons again in defiance of “the assassin’s veto”. Some did, but most – including Jyllands Posten – did not.

The necessary limits of free speech
Free speech is an indispensable civil right under assault from all these forces. But none of the philosophers whose names we immediately associate with free speech have claimed it to be absolute.

The social media platforms, having for years proclaimed themselves extreme libertarians, have in recent times begun to recognise this is indefensible, and strengthened their moderating procedures.

Some of Australia’s senior politicians seem baffled by the issue.

When Twitter shut down Trump’s account, acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack did not seem to know where he stood, saying in one breath it was a violation of free speech to shut down Trump while in the next that Twitter should also take down the false image of an Australian soldier slitting the throat of an Afghan child.

And he is a former country newspaper editor.

This was followed by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s remark that he was “uncomfortable” with the Twitter decision. He quoted Voltaire as saying something Voltaire never said: the famous line that while he disagreed with what someone said, he would defend to the death his right to say it. It was a fabrication put into Voltaire’s mouth by a biographer more than 100 years after his death.

Voltaire, Milton, Spinoza, Locke and Mill, to say nothing of the US Supreme Court, have not regarded free speech as an absolute right.

So while the media face some extremely difficult decisions in today’s operating environment, they do not need to burden themselves with the belief that every decision not to publish is the violation of an inviolable right.

By Dr Denis Muller, senior research fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

On 10 December 2020, the Australian Senate established an inquiry into a government bill proposing a “mandatory bargaining code” between news media organisations and digital platforms including Google and Facebook. The Conversation Australia & New Zealand made the following submission. Asia Pacific Report frequently republishes – and its authors contribute – Conversation articles.

About The Conversation
The Conversation is a unique global journalism project that in just 10 years has become the world’s leading publisher of research-based news and analysis. We pair professional editors with academics to publish articles that share new research and explain issues in the news.

All our content is free to republish, with the aim of sharing trusted information with the widest possible audience.

Since it was founded in Melbourne in 2011, The Conversation has expanded to operate across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, US, France, Spain, Africa, Indonesia and Canada.

• READ MORE: Australia’s draft News Media and Digital Media Platforms Bargaining Code bill

It is read by more than 25 million people a month directly and more than 64 million a month via republication. In Australia, our editors have collaborated with more than 17,540 academic authors.

A unique Australian not-for-profit start-up, our global impact is guided by a clear purpose: to provide access to trustworthy explanatory journalism essential for a healthy democracy.

We place a high value on trust. All authors and editors sign up to our Editorial Charter. Contributors must abide by our Community Standards. We only allow academic authors to write on subjects on which they have expertise. Potential conflicts of interest must be disclosed.

Our funding comes from partners from the university and research sector, some philanthropic organisations and more than 19,400 individual donors.

Public interest news in Australia
Quality information is as important to democracy as clean water is to health. Democracy is a decision making process, and without reliable information, voters, bureaucrats, civil society leaders and politicians cannot make informed decisions with surety and integrity.

Public interest journalism is the primary means by which quality information is communicated to the Australian public. It provides essential context to help people make sense of a complex and confusing barrage of information.

It provides essential insights that help us understand our politics, our environment, our culture and our history. It underpins the health and wellbeing of society.

That is why The Conversation was founded – to ensure citizens and decision makers can freely access quality information written by experts in their field.

The consequences of uninformed decision-making can be dire and, indeed, deadly. A BBC investigation into the effects of coronavirus misinformation found that online rumours led to mob attacks in India, mass poisonings in Iran, physical and arson attacks against telecommunications engineers in the UK, and people swallowing fish tank cleaner and other harmful chemicals in the US.

Needless to say, this is not the kind of information environment we want to see in Australia or New Zealand.

The Conversation’s reliance on digital platforms
In Australia, a large proportion of The Conversation’s readership arrives via digital platforms. Google accounts for 53 percent of traffic and Facebook 8 percent.

When Google changes its algorithm, or Facebook changes the way in which it presents news, it can have a big impact on our onsite audience. It should be noted, however, that onsite audience is only one measure of overall reach (albeit a very important one).

Engagement from audiences on platforms like Facebook and Instagram is also very high when measured in terms of likes, shares, follows and comments. As of January 2021, The Conversation Australia has 325,735 Facebook followers and more than 21,000 Instagram followers.

Many people interact with The Conversation news content on these platforms without clicking through to read the full article.

Our editors are increasingly translating news articles into short images and tiles for a younger and more diverse audience on social platforms.

Where we once might have thought of information presented in this way as an advertisement for the journalism and a driver of onsite traffic, we now recognise that for many harder-to-reach audiences it is a form of journalism itself.

This social media journalism is costly to produce but it is also vital, given the problems we have seen with misinformation and disinformation on social platforms.

The growing reliance on social media as a source of news, particularly among younger audiences, makes it even more important that publishers turn their attention to presenting reliable information on the platforms where the audiences are spending their time.

Currently there is a global effort to eradicate misinformation though fact checking. While this is undeniably important work, we believe that debunking misinformation is only a partial solution.

To achieve a healthy media ecosystem, you need to do more than eliminate contaminants – it is important to have a critical mass of quality information in the mix to dilute, counterbalance and drown out false claims.

This is particularly important to maintain an informed citizenry that is necessary for our democracy to remain healthy, but that is not the sole value. Digital platforms such as Google and Facebook would have a significantly diminished product in the absence of the work of journalists and other professional content creators who create reliable and high quality content.

While Google is right to argue that there is a value exchange, and commercial publishers do derive value from the traffic Google directs to them, it is also true to say that digital platforms derive a significant value from journalism, particularly in comparison to other forms of user-generated content.

Without the journalism, and other forms of professionally curated content, Google search results would be wildly unreliable.

Funding from digital platforms
Digital platforms have provided funding via grants to The Conversation over the past two years, which included access to expertise, tools and techniques that are helping us grow and monetise our audience via reader donations.

As a not-for-profit, public interest news provider, The Conversation exists not to create a financial return to shareholders but rather to provide quality and reliable information for the public good.

News products and platforms such as Google News Showcase or Facebook news tab, which can help us extend our reach and impact with audiences, are valuable.

It should be noted that the work of the ACCC and the Digital Platforms Inquiry has played a role in encouraging collaboration and knowledge-sharing between publishers and digital platforms. It is a welcome development.

Recommendations
Overall, we believe the Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) Bill 2020 (the News Media Bargaining Code) can make a positive contribution to the maintenance and development of a healthy media ecosystem in Australia. It does this by creating a more level playing field for negotiations over appropriate compensation between digital platforms and publishers.

We also welcome the inclusion of the ABC and SBS, which will enable the bargaining code to support public broadcasters and their crucial contribution to the Australian media.

We agree with concerns expressed in other submissions that the restriction that news businesses must have annual revenue of over $150,000 might rule out some new and smaller media players and agree the cut-off could be reduced.

We have also previously expressed concerns regarding the three part test that ACMA will use to determine whether a news business can participate in the Mandatory Bargaining Code. However we are encouraged by the Bill defining “core news content” as content that “reports, investigates or explains” issues that are relevant to “engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision making”.

This definition appears to cover the type of explanatory journalism produced by The Conversation and many other independent media outlets that focus on the timely analysis of news that is directed at better informing Australian citizens.

While we welcome the News Media Bargaining Code’s proposed algorithm notification provisions as useful to all publishers, we accept prima facie the arguments made by Google and Facebook that the currently proposed approach may be unworkable and require compromise.

We thank the Senate Economics Legislation Committee for their careful consideration of this important topic, and we welcome the opportunity to address these issues in more detail.

By Misha Ketchell, editor & Executive Director, The Conversation. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

In the wake of Twitter’s decision to shut down President Donald Trump’s accounts for good, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has proposed ways to avoid allowing the tech giants to retain the power to decide whether social media accounts should be closed.

After overlooking the fake news and hate speech that Trump posted throughout his four years as US president, Twitter unilaterally decided on 8 January 2021 to permanently close his  @realDonaldTrump account and then, a few days later, 70,000 other accounts linked to the pro-Trump QAnon movement.

Facebook, Instagram and Twitch also suspended the presidential accounts for an unspecified period, while Amazon then suspended the pro-Trump social media Parler.

• READ MORE: Social media giants have finally confronted Trump’s lies

All of these decisions were taken by private-sector companies without any democratic or judicial control, reports RSF.

“We live in a political dystopia,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “The laws of the public arena used to be established by parliaments and enforced by judges, but private-sector corporations are now in charge.

Their norms are not defined within a democratic framework with checks and balances, they are not transparent and you cannot appeal to any court before they are carried out.

The organisation of the online public arena should not be left to market forces or individual interests. We must impose democratic obligations on the leading digital players.”

Concrete proposals
In Europe, the Digital Services Act unveiled by European Commissioner Thierry Breton in December aims to regulate content posted on platforms and offers notable advances.

Many other legislative initiatives are also under discussion such as the revision of Section 230 in the United States, the Online Harms Bill in the United Kingdom and the Digital Charter in Canada.

But, so far, no legislation addresses all of the challenges posed by the digital public arena.

It was to propose democratic safeguards for the digital arena that RSF launched the information and democracy initiative:

• The Commission on Information and Democracy, consisting of 25 prominent persons of 18 nationalities, drafted a Declaration establishing general principles for the global online information and communication space – algorithmic transparency, pluralism, platform ideological neutralism, prohibition of conflicts of interest and promotion of reliable news and information.
• This declaration inspired the Partnership on Information and Democracy, which was launched during the UN General Assembly in 2019 and which 38 governments have so far joined.
• The Forum on Information and Democracy was created in November 2019 by 11 organisations, research centres and think-tanks based in all continents. In November 2020, it published 250 recommendations on platform transparency, content moderation, the promotion of the reliability of information, and messaging apps when their massive use goes beyond the bounds of private correspondence.
• RSF was also behind the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI), which is producing a set of machine-readable standards so that search engine algorithms can give preference to media that adhere to journalistic methods and ethics. These standards, which can also be used by advertisers, are the result of a self-regulatory initiative in which entities from all over the world collaborated under the aegis of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN).

Systemic change
In a news and information arena from which intermediaries have been eliminated, politicians, celebrities, corporations, religious groups and other players are currently able to address their public directly without being held accountable to any ethical standards, while the media have continued to operate according to all of their traditional obligations.

But now, the suspension of Donald Trump’s social media accounts has spotlighted the crucial issue of the most powerful accounts.

In an op-ed piece published in the French daily Le Figaro on January 12, RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire, who also chairs the Forum on Information and Democracy, says social media accounts exceeding certain (direct or indirect) audience thresholds should be subject to procedures and obligations appropriate to their audience and in accordance with general legal principles.

Private-sector companies should not be allowed to determine the fate of such accounts on their own, acting without control or transparency.

Global technology and business leader Dr Anita Sands has warned against allowing digital technology to take over democracy on the eve of the first anniversary of the Christchurch mosque massacre last year.

Dr Sands, who hails from Ireland but is based in Silicon Valley, California, served or serves on the board of several software and cloud companies.

“Democracy depends on communication and deliberation, free press and countervailing forces to hold the powerful accountable,” she said in her keynote address “Digital Disruption and the New Democracy” this week organised by Project Connect at Auckland University of Technology.

READ MORE: Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism

“In a couple of weeks’ time we will commemorate the first anniversary of the Christchurch tragedy and a day of immeasurable sorrow when the world finally gained an appreciation for the very darkest implications of technology and how it can serve as a breeding ground for extremists and an outlet for their putrid beliefs,’’ she said.

On March 15 last year, a gunman attacked Al Noor Mosque in Riccarton and the Linwood Islamic Centre, killing 51 people. The first attack was streamed live on Facebook and other social media.

Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant faces 51 charges of murder, 40 of attempted murder and one under the Terrorism Suppression Act. The trial is due to begin in June.

“In the case of traditional media, we’ve put guardrails around what is appropriate in certain contexts – ratings on movies, warnings before clips are shown on television, censorship of inappropriate content but no such provision exists on the internet until the tragic events of Christchurch last year,” Dr Sands said.

Christchurch Call tackles terrorism
The “Christchurch Call” was the first attempt, after the mosque attack, to bring together countries and tech companies to end the ability to use social media to organise and promote terrorism and violent extremism.

World leaders from 48 countries and technology companies, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, pledged to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online at the Paris summit.

“In one of the most vocal and effective calls for action by your prime minister, [Jacinda Ardern] challenged the international community and the technology industry to devise a 21 st century response to this atrocious event.

“As a result of the Christchurch Call, a broad coalition of countries and companies have come together and made meaningful progress on curtailing and reacting to extremist content and hate speech.

“They’ve agreed to standards and crisis protocols, they’ve committed to investing in technology to combat this evolving issue, as well as funding research into how terrorist groups actually behave and use technology,” she said.

“Terrorism and extremism are one corner where humanity unquestionably has to draw a line in the sand and fight back, and defending democracy is another,” said Dr Sands, who earned her PhD on atomic and molecular physics from Queens University, Belfast and has a masters degree in public policy and management from Carnegie and Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where she was a Fulbright scholar.

The onus was clearly on every person as an individual to be wary of the sound bites in online platforms, the former all-Ireland speaking champion said.

‘Playing our part’
“As individuals we also have to play our part in committing to critical thought and more vigilant around how and where we get the news,” Dr Sands said.

“Countries like New Zealand are better off than others that are already suffering the effects of an information environment that is so polluted that nobody knows what to believe anymore.

“New Zealand is fortunate that your mainstream media has not yet deteriorated to where in itself it is a polarising bubble. You still have a highly respected free press and public broadcaster which is as much a representation of your commitment to independent thought as a source of your news, and because of them a proper and civilised debate still exists here,” she said.

However, she warned: “Democracy in the digital age isn’t just a whole new playing field, it is a whole new game and we have to catch up quickly on how it is being played.

“Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff has written extensively about this evolving paradigm which she calls surveillance capitalism and to the capitalists their most precious asset is our most precious asset —our attention, the currency of this new capitalism is our behaviour, every facet which is translated into data and then sold.

“We aren’t customers, we are merely the raw materials that are fed to the real customers, the advertisers.

“As individuals we freely share every facet of our lives without realising it, as we deposit more of attention, they withdraw more of our autonomy without realising we are a society in shackles,” she said before drawing on a witty analogy.

Customers as ‘users’
“It has always struck me as interesting that there are only two industries who refer to their customers as ‘users’ – drug dealers and software developers, and both are in the addiction game.

“In this age of surveillance capitalism, online platforms are in a race to capture our attention which means they have to get us addicted to using their technology.

“As the Netflix CEO once very famously said when he was asked ‘who do you compete with?’ he said, ‘we compete with sleep’.”

Be aware of what the public has to deal with in the digital age, Dr Sands said.

“They [tech companies] do that by unleashing these powerful algorithms that can predict with astonishing accuracy what will keep you there,” she said.

“We end up in what we call filter bubbles, seeing a newsfeed that is entirely unique to each one of us, designed to appeal to your most primal and powerful emotions.

“Humanity has created a puppet that now knows how to pull on the strings of its master.”

This timely warning comes as New Zealand heads to the polls on September 19.

• Christchurch Call internet initiative