Analysis of Facebook posts by the two major parties shows National is posting more negative material in this election campaign than Labour, says Dr Mona Krewel, director of the Internet, Social Media and Politics Research Lab (ISPRL) at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.

The analysis is part of the 2023 New Zealand Social Media Study, which has so far looked at 1,554 Facebook posts by political parties and their leaders in the period from 11 to 24 September.

“Labour is campaigning from an incumbent’s position, and this means mostly staying positive and emphasising its achievements in government. We rated about 63 percent of Labour’s Facebook posts as positive, after subtracting its negative posts.

“In comparison, when we do the same for National, it had a net positivity score of just 5.5 percent. However, criticising a government is part of the job description when you’re running for office. So, what we see from National is largely what we’d expect from a challenger party in an election campaign,” Dr Krewel says.

The top two targets of National’s negative posts were Labour and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.

“For its part, Labour’s negative posts targeted the National Party and leader Christopher Luxon. However, in terms of the quantity of posts, Hipkins and Labour have had to take far more hits from National than the other way around.”

On policy issues, both Labour and National published more negative posts attacking each other on economic management than on any other issue.

“We know the economy is usually ranked as either the most important topic or at least as one of the most important political topics in the eyes of voters and that’s why parties put their focus here,” she says.

Across all parties included in the study, positive content outweighed the negative.

“If we look at the ratio of positive to negative posts across all parties in the past two weeks, positive content outweighed the negative stuff. That said, the overall positive trend was dragged down slightly by the smaller parties, which are usually more negative.”

The New Zealand Social Media Study will continue to monitor Facebook posts until election day on 14 October.

Full results for the period from 11 to 24 September are available here. Results from the first week of monitoring (from 11 to 17 September) are here.

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