We investigated the framing of climate change science in New Zealand newspapers using quantitative content analysis of articles published in The New Zealand Herald, The Press and The Dominion Post between June 2009 and June 2010. The study sample of 540 articles was collected through the electronic news database Factiva, using the search terms 'climate change' or 'global warming'. Frames were analysed deductively according to an experimental frame typology. Sources were also coded and basic descriptive data recorded. Content analysis showed the Politics (26%), Social Progress (21%) and Economic Competitiveness (16%) frames were the most prominent in coverage. Political actors (33%) and Academics (20%) appeared most commonly as sources, while Sceptics represented just 3% of total sources identified. The results suggest that New Zealand newspapers have presented climate change in accordance with the scientific consensus position since 2009, focusing on discussion of political, social and economic responses and challenges.

This study offers an analysis of print news media coverage of the 2016 New Zealand Local Body elections, focusing on reportage around issues of diversity. This study builds upon a prior project by the Media Observatory group at Auckland University of Technology of the 2014 New Zealand General election that also examined issues of diversity. The function of news media in democratic societies is crucial. For a nation-state that is as cosmopolitan and diverse as New Zealand, issues of inclusivity and representation are critical considerations for news media. This study employs content analysis and examined news coverage of local body elections and analysed 198 Local Elections newspaper articles from the eight weeks prior to 8 October 2016 in one nationwide newspaper and four Auckland community newspapers. It focuses on The New Zealand Herald, East & Bays Courier, Manukau Courier, North Shore Times, Central Leader and the Western Leader. The analysis of the 2016 Local Election news coverage demonstrates a predominant focus on the mayoral candidates to the detriment of other aspects of local election voting, and a focus on campaign strategy over social issues impacting the electorate. The Local Election coverage placed particularly strong focus on "youth" as a social group in contrast to other classified groups such as Māori, Asians, Pacific Islanders, the elderly, and dependents. The Local Election coverage also represented a diversity of social issues, from housing, transport, to business and economy, environment, and law and order. The coverage provided ample space for words and perspectives from the electoral front-runners, local government representatives, and for public voices but it also paid minimal attention to non-mayoral voting categories, non-front runner candidates, and non-Auckland geographical locations, although this latter point was perhaps unsurprising, given the newspapers sampled in the study.

This paper discusses the anti-terror raids conducted on 15 October 2007 in Aotearoa through an exploration of the online print media coverage of the raids on that same day as well as the policing techniques employed. These two key instruments of state power and legitimacy, I argue, sought to produce a racialised moral panic around terrorism. Drawing on the works of Mbembe, Agamben, and Foucault, I examine the media practice as media necropower at work and the arrests in terms of state of exception and biopower to suggest that the racialisation of terror is a deliberate strategy of consolidating the sovereignty of the nation-state, a sovereignty preconditioned upon racism. The coverage of the event and the policing techniques both animates and perpetuates a racialised sovereignty that is foundational to the legitimacy of the postcolonial nation-state.

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