What is with all the hate? A thematic analysis of New Zealanders’ attitudes to the Human Rights Commission’s ‘Give nothing to racism’ social marketing campaign

This article explores the attitudes of New Zealanders to the social marketing campaign ‘Give nothing to racism’. Thematic analysis was applied to a series of comments posted on the New Zealand Human Rights Commission (HRC)’s Facebook page. The analysis revealed four key themes: ‘It starts at the top’; ‘White people are victims too’; ‘What is racism anyway?’; and ‘We are all equal’. These themes showed that the campaign did not create a single, unified desire among audiences to overcome racism. Posts from the public ranged from commending the HRC for stamping out racism to condemnation for shedding light on an issue that some felt was non-existent in New Zealand society or which unfairly targeted ‘white New Zealanders’. The campaign appeared to produce ethnocentric and prejudiced responses, and the comments were evidence of in-group favouritism and othering of Māori. This article contends that social media platforms are spaces where “bullying, offensive content and hate speech” (Mondal, Silva & Benevenuto, 2017, p.85) can undermine social marketing and attempts to establish social cohesion and unity.