Abstract
Social media figured strongly in many people’s experiences of, and responses to, the Christchurch mosque attack on 15th March 2019. This study aimed to examine the online moral practices of some New Zealand citizens and residents over this time. It explored some of the affordances and limitations of the social media platforms for responding to an event involving nationally unprecedented violence, explicit online material, objectionable and racist speech, and real and anticipated trauma. In framing itself around “anthropology of the good”, the study also emphasised the agencies of online social actors, highlighting the nuanced everyday moral systems they developed (and continually, collectively renegotiated) in response.
The report presents data from a multimethodological, qualitative research project. This centred on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 17 self-selecting participants, while also including an analysis of the highly successful online crowdfunding campaign for the victims, and observations and fieldnotes from an extended period of digital ethnography. Interviews were conducted between one and three months after the attack, and were designed through a phenomenological lens, to capture lived experiences of being on and using social media over this period. Thematic coding was applied to both interviews and crowdfunding donor comments, with emergent findings triangulated between these, and fieldnotes and observations, for additional validity. Shaped by ethnographic, critical, and interpretive lenses, analysis sought to situate findings within the specific socio-political contexts of contemporary Aotearoa.
Research findings are organised into five major themes including: information management as care; moral witnessing through social media; communicating care through (and beyond) words; negotiating conflict in the digital public sphere; and charitable actions (re)shaping social relations. The conclusion provides a discussion of key aspects of these, including phenomenological and critical perspectives on ‘being’ online, being together, and being with others; the social, relational, and political aspects of information sharing; and efforts to discern what the possibilities for real action, real change, or real care through digital spaces could be.