NZ’s political parties are posting weird stuff on socials, I asked them why
I have a lot of questions, like why is Christopher Luxon doing so many TikTok trends??
Christopher Luxon doing the ‘very demure, very mindful’ trend. Labour taking the piss out of Nicola Willis and the Interislander ferries. The Green Party posting its version of the brat meme.
Whether it's the National Party posting TikToks of our Prime Minister doing the latest viral challenge, or the Labour Party remixing those videos to troll him, it's safe to say New Zealand’s political parties have got me asking a lot of questions.
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Questions like “what on Earth is happening?” and “what does any of this have to do with politics?”
New Zealand’s six main political parties are all very active on social media but some post more trendy or absurdist content than others.
I asked all the political parties in Parliament about their social media strategies. Some answered all of my questions, others answered most and National gave me three sentences.
I then sat down with political communications expert Mona Krewel, who leads the New Zealand Social Media Study, a long-term study that analyses the way political parties and leaders communicate on Facebook.
Mona helped me unpack what content works and what could create a “shitstorm”.
New Zealand Social Media Study (NZSMS) led by Dr Mona Krewel and conducted since the 2020 General Election.
New Zealand Social Media Study (NZSMS) led by Dr Mona Krewel and conducted since the 2020 General Election.
National is offsetting Luxon’s ‘out of touch’ image
Mona reckons National has the best social media presence out of all the parties because of the “influencerisation of Luxon”.
At the time of publication, National has amassed more than 112,000 followers on TikTok and more than 79,000 followers on Instagram.
The Prime Minister is front and centre on National’s socials. When he’s not seriously discussing the economy and cracking down on gangs, he’s filming ‘get ready with me’ videos like an influencer.
When I asked National about its social media strategy, a spokesperson told me: “It’s important for elected representatives to engage with Kiwis on the platforms they use so we communicate in a range of ways, including via social media.”
Mona says “the strategy that he follows is actually what political communication scholars would call ‘everyday celebrity politician’... To construct his personality as authentic, relatable and human”.
She says Luxon’s biggest problem is that he can seem out-of-touch because he’s a rich, ex-Air New Zealand CEO who previously wanted to claim a $52,000 allowance to live in one of many properties he owns. To be fair, he’s since changed his mind on that.
To offset that image, Mona thinks National tries extra hard to make Luxon attractive to Gen Z by getting him to do viral trends and look cool online.
She says National and Labour “are also trying harder because they don't have a Chlöe Swarbrick, who can say ‘okay boomer’ so they need to make that extra effort to win those voters”.
The online persona must match the offline one
Mona thinks National should be wary of not making Luxon look too cool or take his online persona so far that it doesn’t match his offline personality.
“You have to be careful that you are still a Prime Minister and a statesman,” she says.
“It's exaggerated these days to say that you can win elections on social media, but you can surely lose them.”
Mona says parties should make sure their content doesn’t become insensitive because eventually one of them will have their first “shitstorm” for trying to make a trend out of everything.
I asked National why it thought getting Luxon to do the ‘very demure, very mindful’ trend while talking about tax relief was appropriate, since the Government’s tax cuts were welcomed by some but also received criticism for being ineffective.
The party says: “For many young Kiwis, this Government is the first in their working lives to offer them tax relief on the money they work incredibly hard to earn, which is very mindful.”
Earlier this year, RNZ reported the National Party spent almost $320,000 on digital creative agency Topham Guerin while campaigning to win the 2023 general election.
I asked National if its social media content was currently made by in-house staff, external agencies or both.
The party says it has “a small team supporting National’s 49 MPs with digital communication across several platforms” but did not tell me if they were still paying Topham Guerin.
Labour has learned to lean into memes
A Re: News analysis during the 2023 election period showed Labour was late to join TikTok and posted long videos that didn’t pop off on social media.
Mona says Labour tried a more “stately” approach but it has adopted memes after learning from its opponents. As of writing this, Labour has 15,800 TikTok followers and 76,000 Instagram followers.
The party says: “Labour looks to balance its social media with a mix of important political messaging, positive stories, information, and humour. Memes and reels are part of our strategy to portray messages and grow engagement. Our recent top performing posts are spinoffs of Christopher Luxon’s own TikToks.”
The party, whose previous leader was focussed on “kindness”, is now remixing the Prime Minister's videos to attack his politics and him as a person.
I asked Labour if it thought it was kind to troll Luxon online, and the party responded: “We want people to see Labour’s pages as somewhere they can go to get information, engage with like-minded people, but who also don’t take themselves too seriously and can have a laugh.”
National didn't say what it thought of Labour trolling Luxon.
Being in opposition means being more negative
Labour's posts have become more negative which Mona says is typical of opposition parties since they are trying to prove why they are more suited to being in power.
Labour says “opposition is a different ball game to being in Government” and uses in-house staff to run its social media but has, at various times, paid for external help.
Mona says opposition parties get less coverage, so they have to create newsworthiness and being negative is the best way to do that.
She’s observed being negative can backfire on the attacker but says Labour is using memes as its form of attack to soften its approach.
“People cannot really be mad with you because you are joking,” she says.
Mona doesn’t think it's wise for Labour to constantly be reacting to National’s posts because it allows National to always set the agenda, which National already has a leg-up on since it's in power.
She says Labour needs to do more “positive self-communication” because New Zealand has a multi-party system and convincing people to dislike National doesn’t necessarily mean they will vote for Labour.
The Greens seem focussed on issues, not memes
The Greens, Te Pāti Māori and New Zealand First told me they all use in-house staff to run their social media, with some politicians managing their own accounts.
Mona says the Green Party has a younger following which helps it to succeed on social media, a trend she’s observed with Green parties around the world.
Currently it has over 85,000 Instagram followers and at least 23,700 TikTok followers.
The Green Party says its main focus is to “ensure our social media messaging is values-driven” and doesn’t lean into memes and trends nearly as much as National or Labour.
“People care about the issues we fight for. Our social media strategy is to build connection with people over these issues and grow our Green movement by showcasing our values and kaupapa,” the party says.
The party says memes are great for boosting engagement from time to time and say the Charli XCX Brat meme they posted on June 14 is a good example of a meme lending itself to communicating Green values in an engaging way.
To Mona, that post “makes perfect sense” for the Greens, who weren’t the only politicians to jump on the trend — the UK Greens and US presidential candidate Kamala Harris used it too.
According to the party, its two most-liked posts since the election have both been of party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.
Mona says that’s unsurprising because Swarbrick is “an icon to many young people, given how early she made it into Parliament and how cool some of her comments and reactions to older politicians were”.
New Zealand First wants to be seen as a governing party
Mona says New Zealand First wants to be seen as “stately” on its social media so it prioritises posting Parliament debates on YouTube rather than replicating TikTok trends.
In that way, NZ First’s online persona very much matches its offline personality.
NZ First says: “By bringing our message to online mediums with our signature style of old school political engagement we’re able to directly connect with the public on a larger scale."
“We’re focussed on connecting with the people of New Zealand in meaningful and impactful ways, occasionally we’ll lean into the fun side of social media, but, we have no interest in trend chasing when the reality is - people are drawn to what we do now.”
Mona reckons NZ First “very much tried to come across as a governing party” and being voted out of Parliament in the 2020 election would have hurt.
She says it then makes sense why one of the party’s most-liked YouTube videos since the election is Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters’ first speech in the House after being elected back into Parliament.
Since the election, almost all of NZ First’s most-liked posts on Facebook, Instagram and X have been about defining ‘women’ as ‘adult human females’.
NZ First says it is big on social media because its YouTube channel has the most subscribers out of any New Zealand party and it has “significant” followings on all other platforms, including Facebook, X and LinkedIn.
NZ First has about 3000 Instagram followers and 1700 TikTok followers on an unverified account that does not say it is authorised by the party, making it the least followed New Zealand party out of the six main political parties on both platforms.
Te Pāti Māori has an organic community
Te Pāti Māori (TPM) has around 28,500 followers on TikTok and 134,000 followers on Instagram, which is the biggest Instagram following out of the six main parties.
The party says its focus is “to be organic, grassroots and our true unique Māori selves” and it doesn’t “have the luxury of hiring external agencies like Topham Guerin, or have eight social media advisors”.
“We also do our best to keep whānau engaged and updated on the actions of this government whilst continuing to propose solutions from our policy manifesto.”
Mona says TPM is unapologetically Māori on social media and many of its posts are written in te reo Māori.
She points out “authenticity is very important” to TPM, which uses an identification strategy, where TPM offers Māori a chance to identify with it so it doesn’t need to do trends to gain followers, which the party describes as “desperate”.
TPM says one of its most-liked posts since the election is a video of MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke’s maiden speech.
Mona says that post got a lot of applause from Māori because it showcases a young Māori woman's achievements, which they identify with.
She speculates Māori prefer to get information from their own community on social media and have lower trust in traditional media, where TPM doesn't get as much coverage.
ACT is transitioning away from memes
Mona says ACT is a party that was heavy on the memes when it was in opposition, notably in 2020, and has scaled back since coming into Government.
ACT has 12,200 Instagram followers and 14,700 followers on TikTok, the latter of which almost exclusively features party leader David Seymour.
“In election campaigns, they have been very erratic, sometimes like very positive self description, sometimes like very much negative campaigning,” Mona says.
The party says: “Memes can be effective in driving attention and engagement, but we must also ensure our social media presence reflects the very real challenges faced by households every day in education, health, crime, and the cost-of-living crisis.”
ACT says it paid an external agency to manage its social media during the 2023 election period, and that its social media approach is always evolving and involves experimentation.
That doesn’t surprise Mona, who agrees ACT’s posts felt “experimental” and looked like whoever was doing them wasn’t from a political background, taking trends from the advertising world into politics.
Mona says Jacinda Ardern held power on social media and when she left Labour, she also left a gap in the political social media scene.
ACT was able to fill that gap in terms of frequency and quality of posts, she says, even drawing parallels between Ardern’s birthday cake posts for her daughter and Seymour’s birthday cake photos over the years.
ACT also says it puts “forward practical solutions, and allow Kiwis to get to know our approachable team in Parliament”.
ACT seems like the only party to consistently make birthday posts for MPs which Mona says “generate communication events” to keep their page active and won’t have a huge effect on voters but does make the party seem human and relatable.
“If you have nothing [to post about], it's probably Todd’s birthday,” she says.
Politics on social media is getting more superficial
Mona’s research found that during the 2020 election, 75% of all the Facebook posts our political parties made actually discussed a policy issue.
In the 2023 election, only around 50% of their Facebook posts discussed policies.
Mona says the more political communication moves away from Facebook and towards Instagram, TikTok and X, the less political it will become because those platforms encourage short posts.
But she predicts social media isn’t going anywhere and “will probably play an even bigger role in the next election”.
Mona acknowledges TikTok was banned on Government devices last year and wonders if there will come a time where it’s not appropriate for parties to be on the platform because of its alleged involvement with the Chinese government.
“I would not write off traditional media… A lot of people still get their political information from TV more than from social media.
“Elections are never won in one place or one specific media,” Mona says.
CREDITS
Words: Janhavi Gosavi
Re: News Editorial Support: Steph Ockhuysen
Re: News Editor: Mandy Te
Design: Vania Chandrawidjaja
Head of Re: News: Anna Harcourt
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