Abstract
Three Waters was introduced by the New Zealand Government in 2017. In brief, Three Waters is a policy that would shift the control of water (e.g., drinking water) from local councils to larger government entities. Critically, Three Waters recognises the unique rights of Māori and Aotearoa’s obligations under Te Tiriti ō Waitangi. To give effect to this, the larger government entities have a co-governance structure. This co-governance structure attracted a great deal of media attention. The primary aim of the current study was to examine how Three Waters was discussed on Twitter. The current study aimed to answer two main research questions. First, how does race feature in Three Waters discourse on Twitter? Second, within discussions on race, does racist discourse exist in the data? To answer these questions, the current study conducted disource analysis of over 32,000 Three-Waters related Tweets, collected between 2017 and 2022. These analyses revealed that discourse featuring race was prominent on Twitter. Moreover, much of this race-related discourse was racist. The current study found that a significant amount of discourse regarding Three Waters featured race. Secondly, the current study found a significant amount of racist discourse existed within discussions on race. Together, these findings suggest that many in Aotearoa are hostile toward co-governance. We discuss these findings in relation to how they mirror discourse in major media outlets (e.g., New Zealand Herald).