Abstract
This article looks at how the emergence of the disinformation field in Aotearoa-New Zealand is indicative of the territorial power of American platforms in policy settings. The country has been a key flashpoint in the debates around platform harm. Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was a champion of technocratic and compassionate leadership in navigating the country through the Christchurch mosque terror attack and COVID-19. At the heart of Ardern's political legacy was The Christchurch Call and adopting a 'whole of society' approach to fighting disinformation. In her ongoing work she stands as a post-political, moral leader in fostering stakeholder conversations around platform harm, emerging tech and disinformation. This mode of governance is indicative of platform imperialism during the post-2016 Techlash. It is an administrative paradigm that views civil society partnership and big data epistemologies as the means to protect democracies rather than antitrust measures or domestic platform and media policies. The lead policy entrepreneurs in the field of disinformation research in Aotearoa-New Zealand were The Disinformation Project (TDP). Their role was to furnish local media, government and researchers with a lexicon of " infection" and " subversion" , within which political conflicts are viewed as epiphenomena of disinformation warfare. The field is characterised by a moral, post-political discourse that perpetuates a fantasy of social wholeness and treats platforms as unalterable entities rather than dependent on regulatory carve-outs and arbitrage. The utility of this administrative research is on the wane as the Techlash window of opportunity has closed and with it research centres like TDP.