Political fear and division threaten New Zealand’s democracy, writes Mawera Karetai

In my Beacon article a couple of weeks ago I used a term that generated many messages from people wanting to better understand what I meant. Here is a deeper dive into the term “manufactured outrage”, it’s uses and the risks it poses to our fragile democracy.

As New Zealand moves toward the next general election, a familiar pattern is taking shape. Social media feeds are filling with claims stripped of context, grievances amplified beyond proportion, and content designed not to inform but to inflame. This is manufactured outrage, and it has become one of the most serious challenges facing democratic governance today.

Manufactured outrage is not simply misinformation, though it often relies on it. It is the deliberate engineering of emotional responses, particularly anger and fear, to drive political behaviour. The information used may be technically true, but it is selected and framed in ways designed to provoke rather than inform. A council decision becomes evidence of a sinister agenda. A single incident is extrapolated into a systemic crisis. A response to an imminent cyclone threat is politicised. The emotional charge is manufactured by what information is left out, just as much as by what is included.

We watched it happen in 2023.

The Three Waters reforms were a complex set of infrastructure changes requiring careful public deliberation. What they got instead was a campaign of deliberate misrepresentation. The inclusion of Māori governance provisions, reflecting Treaty obligations that have existed in law for decades, was repeatedly framed as Māori taking ownership of public water. That characterisation was misleading. It was electorally useful, so it circulated anyway.

What has been left behind is more troubling than the policy outcome. The campaign did not just defeat a set of reforms. It licensed a level of hostility toward Māori participation in public life that has now become routine. Any news story involving Māori now attracts predictable contempt on social media. In my own work this has result in threats of violence against my family, sharing of misinformation to vilify me and my work, and a feeling that it is not safe to be Māori in this country.

When parties campaign on the premise that Māori having any role in decision-making is something to fear, they do not merely win votes. They tell people the hostility they feel is reasonable and that expressing it is acceptable. The consequences are visible every day. Elected Māori officials deal with abuse that compromises their ability to do their jobs and deters others from standing. This is not a side effect of vigorous debate. It is the predictable result of using manufactured outrage as an electoral strategy without regard for what it does to the social fabric afterward. Or, when the end goal is to break down the social fabric of our communities.

The most serious version of this problem is not fringe actors or anonymous social media accounts. It is when an incumbent government manufactures outrage as a tool of electoral survival.

Governments have resources that no opposition party or online agitator can match. They control the timing of announcements. They have direct access to media. They can commission or suppress reports, frame budget decisions as acts of generosity or emergency, and use the authority of office to lend credibility to claims that would otherwise be dismissed. When those tools are turned toward generating fear and division rather than informing the public, the democratic damage is substantial.

The warning signs are recognisable. Wedge issues are elevated not because they require urgent legislative attention but because they are reliably polarising. In this environment, the usual tools of accountability become harder to use. Journalists who question the framing are accused of bias. Officials who provide contrary evidence are characterised as politically motivated. The volume of government communication is so high that corrections and context struggle to keep pace. And because the outrage is being generated from a position of authority, it carries a legitimacy that makes it harder for ordinary citizens to recognise and resist.

For voters, the critical question when approaching an election under an incumbent government is this: is this announcement, this controversy, this sudden urgency about an issue that has existed for years, designed to inform me or to move me? Governments seeking re-election have a structural interest in keeping voters afraid and focused on division. That interest does not always align with the public interest. Recognising the gap between the two is one of the most important things a citizen can do in the months before a vote.

As the next election approaches, here are the questions worth asking before sharing or acting on political content.

n Where did this come from, and what does that source want? Is this a primary source or a journalist with editorial accountability, or an anonymous account that appeared recently? And if it comes from a government minister or agency, ask what electoral incentive sits behind the timing.

n What is missing? Outrage content works by omission. A council vote reported without the staff recommendation, the public submissions, or the legal context is an incomplete picture designed to produce a particular reaction.

n Why am I feeling this right now? A surge of anger in response to a piece of content is a signal to slow down, not to share immediately. Manufactured outrage is engineered to override the pause between feeling and action.

n Is a specific claim being used to delegitimise an entire group? The move from one example to “the whole system is corrupt” or “you can never trust them” is a technique, not an argument.

For those in governance roles, the challenge is to maintain the conditions in which democratic deliberation can actually happen. This means transparency about decision-making, consistent direct engagement with communities, and honest public explanation of how institutions work.

It also means acknowledging that not all anger at institutions is manufactured. Communities that have experienced genuine exclusion are not wrong to be sceptical. Manufactured outrage is most effective where trust has already been eroded by real failures. The answer to that is not better messaging. It is better governance.

The 2023 campaign showed us what happens when difficult questions are answered with fear rather than facts. As the next election approaches, the stakes are higher still when the fear is being generated not from the margins but from the centre of power.

Slowing down, asking questions, and demanding context are not signs of disengagement.

They are what democratic citizenship actually requires.