Abstract:
This activist study aimed to contribute to disrupting online racism against Māori, the indigenous people of Aotearoa/New Zealand, in response to a lack of existing analysis of interventions against everyday online racism. This thesis applied the emerging theory of affective-discursive practice (Wetherell, 2012), which views affect and meaning as simultaneous and entwined, and emotions as routine social practices rather than spontaneous and internal reactions. I conceptualised online affective combat as responding respectfully to anti-Māori affectivediscursive practices with often humorous images that have the potential to evoke a range of decolonising emotions. These included empathy with Māori, anger at injustice, and hope for a te Tiriti-based future. The study used multiple methods and different groups of collaborators and participants. A baseline analysis of comments on news about Māori found that anti-Māori discourses were intensely affective, and dominant on a range of mass media sites. I concluded that any interventions must take into account the discursive and affective dimension of online racism. The analysis also identified news and personal Facebook pages as having the most potential for intervention. The researcher iteratively developed 88 anti-racist graphics in collaboration with 25 experienced educators about te Tiriti o Waitangi, an 1840 contract between Māori and the Crown. Graphic development used several strategies, and graphics were tested with an independent group of 20 students. The final graphic collection was made available to 24 participants to post on personal Facebook pages, and the researcher posted them on mass news pages. Metrics and responses to the graphics were analysed for their impact related to intervention characteristics. The results indicate that anti-racist graphics can stimulate wide discussion and decolonising affective-discursive practices among Māori and non-Māori, particularly on personal Facebook pages. The study also produced a methodological finding, a workshop process using a collective, affective-discursive approach to enable advocacy groups to produce systematic graphic and text interventions about social justice issues in online and offline environments.