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Our purpose is to explore media landscapes and provide insights on how they influence

The Media does not just describe reality, it becomes the reality it describes – (Desmund Tutu)

How is New Zealand’s political ‘reality’ being described?

Influence

So much is written about misinformation and disinformation in the social media space, but here’s the question – does this occur within our more traditional media e.g. radio, television print etc?

Roy Morgan’s Poll (2022) estimated that the combined coverage of Stuff, NZME and ODT is 4 million people.

Potentially a lot of influence and its influence that Socialherds seeks to explore. – but first, let’s look at how we can gain insights through data visualisation. Using data from which is part of Victoria University’s Democracy Project. We have developed a number of visualisations.

Visualisations

Visualisations, like these wordclouds can show, at a glance, the most prominent Journalists, Media Organisations and Topics. Visualisation assist in:

  • exploring trending topics
  • explore how the coverage of issues evolves over time
  • discover if different media groups focus on similar topics
  • evaluate whether headlines reflect differing perspectives on a topic

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