If you can't beat social media or ban it, join it?

Mediawatch - TVNZ's Q+A show finally got Christopher Luxon in last weekend for the first time since he became PM.

Host Jack Tame made the most of a long interview, but there was not much time for other stuff in the show.

Tame told viewers to head to YouTube to see the full version of his chat with outgoing Climate Change Commission chair Rod Carr.

The global free-to-use tech platforms do have their uses for local media.

Likewise, the government broadcasting funding agency NZ On Air.

NZ on Air declared itself 'platform agnostic' almost a decade ago, so it now funds programmes that can be seen online, as long as it is available for free.

Last week, it announced it is funding weekly current affairs show Paddy Gower Has Issues to screen on Three next year - but also on the Stuff website, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.

In 2025, current affairs The Hui will be available on stuff.co.nz, rnz.co.nz, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, as well as on TV.

Some of NZ on Air's latest funding for tamariki is for the online platforms only - including new children's music and lullabies on YouTube and Spotify.

But not everyone thinks young people should be on some of those offshore online platforms - including the government across the ditch.

It has just rushed through legislation outlawing accounts for under-16s on some social media platforms.

Media Watch on the ABC said most experts seemed to think the ban would not work, but they had not been seen much in the Australian media - especially those owned by Rupert Murdoch.

News Corp ran an intense 'Let Them Be Kids' campaign for the law change, urging people of all ages to unplug from social media.

Media Watch's Paul Barry pointed out Australian media hostility to online platforms intensified this year after Meta pulled out of the bargaining code which returned big payments from Google and Facebook to news media.

Casting an eye across the Tasman

'TIK TOK HORROR' screamed the front page of the Herald on Sunday two weekends ago.

"Adding to young people's fears and potential dangers through phones and devices is highly irresponsible and unnecessary," a subsequent editorial in The New Zealand Herald said.

"It's high time New Zealand takes the plunge - and seriously considers whether it should follow Australia's lead."

Last weekend, the Herald on Sunday declared: "Kiwis want kids off social media."

Three-quarters of people surveyed by Horizon Research and the University of Auckland backed Australia's age restrictions, the paper said.

But Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden told the Herald on Sunday she was not considering an age limit for social media.

It did not mention she had earlier this year scratched a 'Safer Online Platforms' proposal to extending regulation to social media because it could have been a backdoor to unwelcome hate speech laws.

This week, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research - in partnership with BusinessDesk - put Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation at the top of its annual Summer Reading List for the PM.

"The evidence is becoming overwhelming that social media and telecommunications device addictions are causing society-wide harm, particularly in children and young people," it claimed.

The book carried evidence-based solutions that have been successfully implemented, the institute said.

But New Zealand Initiative chief economist Dr Eric Crampton does not agree.

"Each of us can use Google Family Link to control which apps can be used on our kids' Android phones, and to set time limits on them. The government could encourage public service announcements explaining how to use them," he wrote in the Herald in October.

What have the tech platforms here had to say in the debate in the media?

Next to nothing - either because they were not asked for comment or did not respond to any requests.

Experts are also sceptical.

Confronting big tech

"We shouldn't touch this style of social media ban with a bargepole," tech commentator Peter Griffin wrote for BusinessDesk last week.

"It was bad policy-making and badly written policy," Griffin told Mediawatch.

"In the last week of Parliament in Australia, and on the last day, they pushed this thing through with 24 hours of consultation. They didn't really even consider any of the 15,000 submissions. They had already made up their mind."

"We haven't seen anywhere in the world a reliable, private, secure age verification system ... because it's inherently flawed."

But he said our government should mirror their Australian counterparts' willingness to confront Big Tech.

"The Liberals as well as Labor have [encouraged] the competition watchdog, the ACCC over there. It did a huge investigation into the market power of big tech, and that is now starting to turn into policy.

"Our track record has been woeful. We had an opportunity to partner with Australia on the competition stuff and the digital economy - but we've done nothing.

"There's brinksmanship going on at the moment where Google is saying here in New Zealand it might take news off Google Search and Google News. Well, how about you do that? Let's see what happens," he said.

Is the news media here compromised when covering these issues? It is an area of genuine public interest, but local media are rivals with big tech platforms in the attention economy.

Also, our news media makers are trying to get Google and Facebook to pay them for news - and backing more regulation online as well.

"There's a conflict of interest but ... it is an existential crisis that the media is going through. I think it's reasonable to be saying: 'Look at the balance sheets of these big tech companies. Look at how little tax they pay here. Bottom line - do you want a healthy democracy?'" Griffin said.

"If you believe that a healthy media underpins that, what are you willing to do to preserve it and to be fair?

"If you still want that public interest journalism elements in your media - and not just social media influence - someone's got to pay for it. And it's either going to be taxpayers or it's going to be a more equitable share of the advertising revenue that goes around news.

"If they can't make it work, what are we left with? Facebook groups or Facebook pages mediated by Big Tech with all the algorithmic stuff that they're doing ... and making you pay for it if you do want to get that reach.

"If you're 12 years old, or 22 or 82 - we're all faced with this manipulation. I think they've lost an opportunity to address those real issues that affect everyone who uses social media.

"We've never had a nuanced, balanced discussion about these tech-related issues and the dominance of big tech in our digital economy ... for consumers, for media outlets, for how we nurture our democracy."

TV all-in on TikTok

In countries with heavy social media habits, media companies have already decided to join what they cannot beat.

In the Philippines, broadcaster GMA streams its news bulletin live on TikTok and urges its top journalists and presenters to create content for it.

"Many journalists still don't know how to relate to ... the mostly young content creators with huge followings who do not identify as journalists - but greatly influence public opinion," Howie Severino said.

Severino, a household name as host of GMA network's current affairs show i-Witness, helped found GMA's Integrated News.

He fronted a social media responsibility campaign - Think Before You Click - and partnered with TikTok and the National Commission on Elections to guide people to credible election information on the 2022 Philippines elections.

That collaboration won international recognition and Severino told a recent international media conference journalists needed to understand they did not have a monopoly on the facts anymore - and should not keep online influencers at arm's length.

"Would a carefully curated selection of these 'influencers' benefit from exposure to journalists and conversations on the value of verification? We must hope so, but first they need to be invited.

"Journalists must now serve as models and guides for everyone else on the best practices. With our audiences shrinking and scattering to millions of niches around the internet, we better hope the multitude of new voices grabbing all the attention value the truth and know how to find it."

Embracing social media seems to have paid off for GMA.

This year's Reuters Institute Digital News Report found GMA's online news remains the most used in the Philippines.

Analytics company Tubular rated GMA the highest-ranking media and entertainment company in Southeast Asia, with almost 28 billion video views across Facebook, TikTok and YouTube in the year to August.

And it is not all entertainment and clickbait.

The GMA News channel on YouTube garnered 1.1 billion views - and the GMA Public Affairs channel 1.6 billion in August this year alone.

Embracing TikTok does not appear to have dented its reputation.

GMA Network was rated the most trustworthy news outlet in the Philippines in a national survey earlier this year.

And on-air ratings for its live TV channels are also going up as well.

How did GMA do it?

"What felt like a gamble was using our news personalities to populate the platform and to really try out what works. They were sceptical at first," Theodore Jason Patrick Ortiz, senior social media producer at GMA, told Mediawatch at The Future of Facts, an international media conference in Manila in July.

Mediawatch was part of a New Zealand delegation there with the support of the Asia New Zealand Foundation Te Whītau Tūhono.

"A lot of people in the media would say that we're not supposed to be doing this for the numbers. We should be addressing the problems in the world. But in the world of social media, maybe it's the kind of content that you're creating or the way that you're presenting it that needs fixing," he said.

"During the pandemic, people had this tendency to not watch or consume news content. We knew Tiktok was rising. That's why we needed to look for something like the 24 Oras challenge - our version of the teleprompter challenge.

"It was a duet with the reporters, encouraging people to be a newscaster and reading a report.

"And the numbers spoke for themselves. We saw new people who were rediscovering the programmes, and then there were people who were already fans in the past, who saw it again.

"We reached influencers that were not necessarily engaged with our news content. One is a pageant queen who built her platform on Tiktok teaching English grammar and all that stuff. She tried this challenge that we launched, and her followers dived in. So what you're building here is actually a community."

Many countries have a problem engaging young people with politics.

During the 2022 Election in the Philippines, GMA used online influencers to spread the message.

That sounds like a big risk for a news company.

"You are taking a gamble, but you choose someone who will agree that they will not be promoting a candidate because that will really jeopardise your credibility.

"We just started slowly releasing information or updates, releasing more newscast reports on this platform, in our accounts, and then that's when we started rolling out the journalists.

"We don't just create the content and then be done with it. We have to maintain that kind of effort.

"Basically you're exposing your news personalities to people that need to hear your message."

Should networks here do the same?

"Be on those platforms, sure - but be prepared for the 'rug pull' that will inevitably come when the surplus of value disappears," Griffin warned.

"That will happen with TikTok. And there's concerns about the ownership (in China) of it as well and we could see Tiktok essentially banned in some countries.

"Experts in how to build an audience sustainably say you need to own that audience yourself. You cannot rely on X or Facebook to look after your audience, because those algorithms will change - and their business models will be tweaked to maximize the value they can extract from you.

"Suddenly you're paying thousands of dollars for advertising on Tiktok now - and it'll be millions of dollars you'll be expected to pay in future."

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