Problematic Reasoning Under the Guise of Anti-Māori Talk: A Case Study of the Three Waters Tweets
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Drawing from a subset of Twitter/X quotes (or tweets) on the politically controversial Three Waters Reform, this study identified forms of anti-Māori discourse through a deductive analysis. A complementary analysis was conducted to unpack how problematic reasoning fueled racism against Māori. Our results revealed distinct and interconnected themes—“resources,” “culture,” “stirrer,” “privilege,” and “one people”—that portrayed Māori as undeserving, lacking expertise, threatening, and unworthy of equitable treatment, as New Zealand citizens are entitled to enjoy liberal democratic values. Anti-Māori speakers employed problematic reasoning tactics to obstruct the public from understanding the truth or to encourage others to form ill-informed opinions through emotions, supposed authority, and conspiracy. Exemplar tweets were provided to illustrate the myriad instances of false information related to patterns of anti-Māori discourse. Evidence from this study makes the case for addressing racism on social media and creating interventions to expand media literacy amongst the public to discern problematic reasonings.
Source: Howard Journal of Communications
Institutions: University of Waikato, University of Otago
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4410522732