Sacrificing veracity for virality: Topham Guerin's influence operations, and democratic implications

A very old friend, Sam de Silva , sent me this week an article I had entirely missed on how Australia's Liberal Party "...has hired controversial digital agency Topham Guerin to produce content for its election campaign, despite concerns about disinformation and deepfakes used by the group."

Topham Guerin (TG) has roots in, and deep links to New Zealand.

As Jason Koutsoukis writes in The Saturday Paper, it was "...founded in 2016 by former New Zealand Nationals operatives Sean Topham and Ben Guerin, the agency quickly established itself as a disruptive force in political communication, blending rapid content production with emotionally charged messaging aimed at unlocking voters’ “arousal emotions”, such as anger, excitement, pride and fear."

The article was complemented by an excellent three-minute video production, which compared electoral integrity, and issues in Australia to the general election in October 2023 held in New Zealand.

The commentator suggests that TG's campaign for the National Party Leader (and now Prime Minister) Christopher Luxon might serve as a preview for their approach with Peter Dutton, noting physical similarities between the two politicians. Their strategy with Luxon focused on humanising him to make him more relatable and likeable to voters, which proved successful.

The video also points out that the Australian Labor Party was outmanoeuvred in digital communications during the 2019 election, and a similar pattern emerged during the Voice referendum campaign in 2023, where the "Yes" side was comprehensively outperformed. This raises concerns among Labour supporters and progressive voters about whether Labor will be adequately prepared to counter the digital campaign capabilities of the Liberal Party and other conservative campaign groups like Advance in the upcoming election.

I studied Topham Guerin's campaigns during the 2023 general election in New Zealand in some detail, in my capacity as Research Director of the now shuttered Disinformation Project.

Some of this detailed research, penned on 18 October 2023, and 4 January 2024, is reproduced below in the hope it helps both Australia, and New Zealand (which will see another general election in 2026) better appreciate the role, reach, and relevance of entities like TG in significantly undermining electoral integrity.

I note that Topham Guerin presents (based on what I studied in 2023, aside from what it will do in Australia this year) a party-blind challenge to New Zealand's liberal democracy as it establishes dangerous precedents that incentivise a "race to the bottom" for attention through increasingly extreme messaging. These are dynamics, trends, patterns, and digital signatures I studied in Sri Lanka prior to, and for my PhD in relation to how social media was instrumentalised to attack institutions, strengthen autocracy, target civil society, and undermine democratic governance. I flag how the consequences extend beyond immediate electoral gains to create lasting civic erosion through entrenched partisanship, voter cynicism, potential privacy violations, and the gradual displacement of evidence-based discourse with emotionally charged content designed for virality rather than veracity. Despite operating within (unfit for purpose, tragi-comically outdated) legal boundaries, these tactics fundamentally compromise democratic norms by severing good faith public debate and balanced voter perspectives—core foundations of a healthy democracy that respects differences—while receiving minimal scrutiny from media, academics or parliamentary oversight.

This aside, Topham Guerin is also associated with right-wing think-tanks in Australia like the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), and the infamous Atlas Network. As NZ journalist Cindy Baxter wrote five-years ago, looking at the targeted attacks against the then New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern (which got progressively worse),

The IPA is a member of an international network of think tanks, the Atlas Network, based in the US and heavily funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, the oil industry, and the new dark money foundations set up to launder – and hide – the fossil fuel industry cash going into these think tanks.

Alongside the IPA, the Atlas Network Australian partners includes a plethora of new, libertarian think tanks, which work alongside each other to run trainings for new groups and staffers new to their ranks.

A recent training for this group of think tanks in Australia in November last year included a presentation by Ben Guerin, of Topham Guerin, a New Zealand-founded company proud of creating the “boomer-meme industrial complex” which helped Scott Morrison win the 2019 Australian Federal election.

Two other points bear mention.

The design, and deployment of Topham Guerin's dark arts in 2025, and beyond will be in a fundamentally different context to previous elections. There's no CrowdTangle anymore for independent researchers, election monitoring agencies, and official election commissions to rely on to determine threats to electoral integrity. The sunset of CrowdTangle by Meta had an unprecedented impact in the ability to study threats to electoral integrity in Sri Lanka's extremely consequential presidential, and general elections late-2024. As I told the European Union in Sri Lanka, and the EU's elections observation mission, "...the threats to electoral integrity, IO, and disinformation studied in Sri Lanka, which is now extremely hard to methodically capture, and study, is a harbinger of what the Global North, including Europe will face, especially in the Trumpian years."

Significantly complicating this was Mark Zuckerberg's unprecedented policy pivot under the Trump presidency, earlier this year. Worth stressing that that Topham Guerin specialises in meme-based emotional manipulation at scale. As I noted in an article critiquing Meta's policy changes,

Doctoral research around the instigation of anti-Muslim hate after Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday terrorism in April 2019 highlighted the widespread use of violative memes to inflame tensions and influence public opinion at scale. Memes require deep socio-political, cultural and linguistic familiarity to decode, with visual presentations that appear humorous often telegraphing significant violence. Despite billions of dollars invested in AI already, there is no technology at Meta that allows it to understand memes and the intent of producers especially leading up to and during times of offline unrest when their production is in the thousands, if not more. Coupled with other local language considerations impacting hundreds of millions in the Global South, the new policy pivot will enable the coordinated seed and spread of harms in ways that escape automated oversight and even manual reporting. Nothing good will result.

These policy changes will have an unprecedented on electoral integrity, especially given how bad things were even when the old policies were in play. The changes are violently in opposition to Meta's own human rights commitments, and in New Zealand, they completely, and irreparably undermine the light-touch 'Code of Conduct' oversight framework around online harms, championed by Netsafe New Zealand .

There's also no hope of any meaningful, progressive change, given that the very institutions tasked with protecting citizens from online harms in New Zealand threatened strong legal action against the country's Human Rights Commission for flagging policies that were unfit for purpose, and didn't stop sustained campaigns instigating harms, hate, haranguing and harassment.

These developments considerably help Topham Guerin to innovate, and deploy campaigns with near total impunity, and at scale with scant oversight, at best. This in turn means that if they are employed again next year by political parties or their proxies in New Zealand, the resulting threats to electoral integrity will be by order of magnitude worse that what was studied in 2023.

This is what Australia faces more immediately, and why I will be following related developments with great interest leading up to year's general election.

18 October 2023: Electoral integrity, and role of Topham Guerin agency

The NZ Herald ran a story titled ‘National’s social media guru Sean Topham speaks after video push eclipses Labour’[1]. Pay-walled, but copy is available on request. The article started by noting,

National racked up hundreds of thousands more video views on social media than Labour as it sought to use sometimes off-the-wall viral trends to energise its election campaign.

Sean Topham, a co-founder of the Topham Guerin agency that conducted campaigns for conservative parties including National, Australia’s Liberals and the UK Conservatives, told the Herald the party’s use of videos on platforms such as Facebook and TikTok was vital to its victory in Saturday’s general election.

The article went on to note,

Topham Guerin has been credited with helping right-wing politicians including Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison win elections in recent years with a style of digital campaigning that relies heavily on deliberately amateur-looking memes and provocative stunts that have sometimes attracted controversy.

They decided early in this campaign that video would be crucial to National’s messaging, Topham said. Over several months, their output has combined US-style attack adverts accusing Labour of being soft on crime and gangs with more intimate and upbeat posts showing Luxon spending time with his family and doing relatable things in the community.

What the article doesn’t note is what we studied – the use of Facebook Pixel, in an unprecedented manner, linked to what’s openly noted here is, in part, Meta-based propaganda.

Topham Guerin, founded in 2016 by Sean Topham and Ben Guerin in Aotearoa New Zealand, is known for its political communications campaigns globally. It created engaging content during the 2019 Australian federal and UK general elections, utilising emotion-driven strategies. In 2020 and 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it secured UK government PR contracts and worked on a campaign promoting COVID-19 vaccination. Despite some successes, controversies surrounded its tactics and campaigns, notably involving disinformation network creation, and sexist and insensitive content.

As noted in the Wikipedia entry,

In 2019, The Guardian reported that Topham Guerin worked for Conservative Party strategist Sir Lynton Crosby's CTF Partners to create a "large-scale professional disinformation network on behalf of paying clients including major polluters, the Saudi Arabian government, anti-cycling groups and various foreign political campaigns" on Facebook[2]. While working as subcontractors for Crosby's CTF Partners, "Topham gained a reputation for misogyny within the company" after celebrating women's departure from the company[3].

As noted in the Guardian article, which we strongly encourage readers to engage with in full,

Documents seen by the Guardian show that Topham and Guerin, while working as contractors for CTF Partners, had oversight of dozens of these pages which sidestepped Facebook’s rules on transparent political campaigning, reaching tens of millions of people on behalf of paying clients while appearing to be grassroots independent news sources. All parties have previously pointed out that they operated entirely within the law.

The new Conservative digital campaigners, both New Zealanders in their 20s, also flew around the world to promote the interests of clients such as Glencore, one of the world’s biggest miners, while concerns – which they strongly denied - were raised about some of their behaviour in the office.

The agency is even more deeply embedded in Aotearoa New Zealand, and with Labour too. In May this year, RNZ ran a story titled ‘The $500k contract for Covid-19 memes that was approved by then-Police Commissioner Mike Bush’[4].

The article highlighted a $500,000 contract granted by former Police Commissioner Mike Bush to Topham Guerin for crafting Covid-19 memes aimed at public awareness during the pandemic's onset in Aotearoa New Zealand. Despite a three-month contract, the collaboration lasted only three weeks due to unsatisfactory and at times inappropriate content, leading to its transfer and subsequent termination by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. The endeavour yielded limited used content, portraying a lack of coordination and misjudgement in employing political campaign strategists for a public health crisis communication role, ultimately reflecting a poorly executed initiative amidst a critical period.

The article noted,

Some people involved at the time felt uneasy about the agency's work, given its association with centre-right political parties. "It was very risky having guys who prided themselves on working on Brexit." Most of the content produced by the agency did not end up being used, a third former communications executive who worked on the response claimed. "The thing that is really galling is they, years later, claimed they were critical in the response when they were at best a tangential aside to the response. "We could not work out why they had been brought in."

Overall, Topham Guerin has been accused of using social media to spread disinformation and influence elections results around the world[5]. Examples include,

• 24-hour meme machine: Topham Guerin runs a "24-hour meme machine" that produces attention-grabbing, emotion-manipulating, and behaviour-nudging messaging designed to corral the faithful and convert fence-sitters[6].
• Dark arts of contemporary information warfare: Topham Guerin's founders, Sean Topham and Ben Guerin, have been accused of using the "dark arts of contemporary information warfare" to influence the voting public. They have given talks about their tradecraft, which include ambushing opponents and using social media effectively.
• Conservative connections: Topham Guerin's founders came up through the ranks of the Young Nationals, the youth wing of New Zealand's conservative National Party, and worked on the fringes of political campaigns both in New Zealand and Britain before launching their own firm in 2016. They have worked for conservative politicians such as Scott Morrison in Australia and Boris Johnson in the UK.
• Overt disinformation: The Conservative Party used "overt disinformation" to win the 2019 UK general election, and Topham Guerin was accused of being involved in spreading this disinformation[7].
• Ousting Trudeau: Topham Guerin has been accused of working to oust Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the 2021 Canadian federal election[8].

The agency is particularly good at producing bad memes[9].

Sean Topham and Ben Guerin, both in their 20s, helped Scott Morrison become Australia’s prime minister in 2018 with a strategy to flood online platforms with hundreds of posts with a consistent message. They specialized in memes with tacky messages that would riff off events like the finale of the cult show “Game of Thrones.’’ People would laugh - and share.

This alone matters, because it is what Russia’s Internet Research Agency, controlled directly by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin[10], did to influence the 2016 US presidential election.

An ?article on Wired - How Russian Trolls Used Meme Warfare to Divide America[11] ?- delves into a report revealing extensive efforts by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian propaganda entity, to influence US political discourse and the 2016 presidential election. Utilising a meme circulated by a fabricated group "Born Liberal", the IRA creatively navigated social media platforms, particularly leveraging Instagram for divisive propaganda. Commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the report, articulated by cybersecurity firm New Knowledge, unveils how IRA's sophisticated tactics were aimed at sowing discord, suppressing votes, and promoting then-candidate Donald Trump. Analysing over 10 million tweets, 116,000 Instagram posts, 1,100 YouTube videos, and 61,500 unique Facebook posts from 2015 to 2017, the report sheds light on IRA’s meticulous targeting of African Americans to foster distrust in democratic institutions, notably undermining support for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. The findings also call into question the veracity of statements made by tech executives to Congress, suggesting a possible downplaying of IRA's voter suppression efforts. Despite significant data analysis, the report stops short of conclusively linking this propaganda to election results, but underscores an evolution of disinformation into a high-stakes information war, challenging democratic principles amidst an unprepared and divided American response to this threat.

A New York Times article published in 2019[12] highlighted what the agency does with memes alone,

They also gained attention for “boomer memes” — low-quality, scrappily produced ads that reiterate simple messages by pasting them onto images from popular shows like “Game of Thrones.” Their approach is to find ways to attract attention to their clients, whether candidates or parties, by pushing emotional buttons that elicit a response online. “We’re talking anger, excitement, pride, fear,” Mr. Guerin said at a conference in June. “Your content should be relating to one of these emotions for anyone to give a damn about it.” He described the strategy as “How do you win the battle of the thumbs?”

Emphasis ours.

The simplest way to present them is as a home-grown Cambridge Analytica, operating in Aotearoa New Zealand with total impunity, in the context of both pandemic-time messaging, and propaganda central to the 2023 general election campaign of the party which won.

Worth keeping in mind that the National Party’s campaign also used generative AI for attack ads[13] in an Aotearoa New Zealand first.

4 January 2024: Topham Guerin, and influence operations in the UK

The UK-based Good Law Project published an article titled ‘How Palantir and Topham Guerin’s plan to discredit us unravelled’, covering a covert marketing campaign involving Disrupt, a marketing agency, Palantir, a data analytics firm, and Topham Guerin, a PR agency, targeting influencers to counteract criticism from Good Law Project. The campaign's aim was to mitigate concerns regarding Palantir's NHS contract. Dr. Julia Patterson, CEO of EveryDoctor, received an email from Disrupt about participating in an NHS campaign, unaware of its connection with Palantir. The detailed project plan later revealed the involvement of Palantir and Topham Guerin, sparking Patterson's suspicion due to EveryDoctor's previous legal action against the government’s VIP lane for PPE suppliers and its opposition to Palantir's NHS role.

The campaign involved reaching out to influencers to post tweets supporting Palantir, without disclosing the company's involvement. The influencers were asked about their fee expectations for creating content to address misinformation about Palantir's NHS contract. A briefing document from Topham Guerin, received only by interested influencers, specifically targeted Good Law Project, describing them as critical of the contract and spreading fear about patient data security.

The article highlights concerns about the secretive nature of the campaign, the ethical implications of influencers promoting specific messaging for payment, and broader issues of public trust in political and media messages. It concludes with a call for support for Good Law Project, emphasising its role in challenging entities like Palantir and the government.

The article noted,

While it is not clear how many influencers were contacted as part of the plan, or what fees were agreed upon, the social media personality suggested that people could charge between ￡750-￡2,000 for this type of content and that there would likely be those willing to accept such an offer.

According to Patterson, this slipshod campaign raises broader concerns.

“At a time when the public have very low trust in politicians, and low trust in the media in general,” she said, “it’s not brilliant to find out that a campaign is being run where people are being paid to promote particular messaging on behalf of a company that has won a significant, enormous, government contract.

“We have deeply held concerns about Palantir, because of some of the comments made by its founder, Peter Thiel, about the NHS. And also because of yet wider implications on what’s going to happen with NHS data. And we’re supportive of any organisation trying to scrutinise those contracts and policies more closely.”

Topham Guerin's tactics in this campaign were multifaceted, leveraging influencer marketing, controlled messaging, financial incentives, and secrecy to influence public opinion. These strategies are indicative of an advanced understanding of social media dynamics and public perception management, albeit used in a manner that raises significant extremely serious ethical questions.

1. Targeted Influencer Engagement: Topham Guerin's strategy involved identifying and engaging social media influencers. By leveraging influencers' existing follower bases and perceived credibility, the campaign aimed to subtly disseminate its messaging. This approach is a common social media tactic, but its use here was clandestine, aiming to mask the origins and motivations behind the influencers' content.
2. Covert Brand Promotion: The influencers were instructed to promote specific messages related to Palantir's NHS contract without disclosing Palantir's involvement. This tactic of non-disclosure is ethically contentious as it misleads the audience about the influencers' motivations and the content's origins, bypassing the transparency typically expected in legitimate influencer marketing.
3. Selective Disclosure of Information: The full extent of the campaign's intentions was revealed only to influencers who expressed initial interest. This selective disclosure was a calculated move to control information flow and minimize the risk of public exposure of the campaign's true nature.
4. Content Control and Guidance: Influencers were provided with specific content guidelines, including what to avoid mentioning and how to frame the narrative. This level of control over the content ensures consistency in messaging and aligns all outputs with the campaign’s objectives.
5. Crisis Communication and Counteracting Negative Publicity: The campaign was designed as a response to negative publicity surrounding Palantir's NHS contract. The strategy involved reframing the narrative to counteract criticism from organizations like the Good Law Project, a tactic often used in crisis communication.
6. Utilisation of Ambiguity and Misinformation: The campaign aimed to "clear up misinformation" about data privacy concerns while simultaneously propagating its own potentially misleading narrative. This tactic capitalises on the ambiguity and complexity of data privacy issues, exploiting public uncertainty for persuasive ends.
7. Financial Incentives for Compliance: The offering of monetary compensation for social media posts is a direct strategy to secure participation. This approach ensures that the influencers are not only willing but also financially motivated to align with the campaign's messaging.
8. Confidentiality Clauses: Influencers were instructed to keep the brand (Palantir) confidential and not to tag or mention it in their content. This tactic is designed to obscure the funding source and true intent behind the campaign, furthering the operation’s covert nature.
9. Utilisation of Current Social and Political Contexts: The campaign was timely, leveraging ongoing public discussions and concerns about NHS data privacy. This relevance to current issues likely increased the effectiveness of the messaging.

Topham Guerin in Aotearoa New Zealand

On 18 October 2023, in a section titled ‘Disinformation: Electoral integrity, and role of Topham Guerin agency’, we studied in detail Topham Guerin’s activities in Aotearoa New Zealand, around the 2023 general election campaign, and their handling of the National Party’s propaganda.

On 26 October 2023, we noted “Cognitive warfare combines elements of cyber, information, and electronic warfare to manipulate people's thinking and behaviour on a mass scale. It goes beyond previous propaganda techniques like Cambridge Analytica, but also builds on what we now know it did. This is vital in assessing what we recently studied around Topham Guerin’s role in Aotearoa New Zealand’s sock-puppet, astroturf, and propaganda campaigns.”

Worryingly, the degree to which the tactics and strategies of Topham Guerin were present in New Zealand's 2023 general election reflects a pattern of engagement that aligns closely with their known modus operandi. They continued their practice of using social media to push emotionally charged, attention-grabbing content, employing advanced targeting techniques and engaging in activities that blur the lines of transparent and ethical campaigning.

This modality of operation underscores the challenges posed to electoral integrity and the importance of vigilance in the digital age of political campaigning from within the country.

We studied two videos posted to Topham Guerin’s Twitter account.

1. ?? check out @SeanTopham speaking to @ccroucher9 from @9NewsAUS about the @NZNationalParty’s election-winning campaign and how ASMR, Sand-Cutting, and a TikTok game helped them beat their opponents on social media.[14]
2. .@bjhguerin of @TophamGuerin talks with me about Tiktok, Memes and National's 2023 Election Win - and leveraging social media so help you share a message online. (Livestream for @nz_business Podcast)[15]

These videos, and the transcripts are available on request.

The transcript of the video in the first tweet provides an overview of the innovative digital campaign strategies employed by New Zealand's incoming Prime Minister, highlighting the use of contemporary online trends to engage with voters. The Prime Minister practiced an online sensory trend called ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) as part of his outreach, reflecting a novel approach to political campaigning. The campaign team also utilized social media extensively, with no effort spared on platforms like TikTok to connect with as many New Zealanders as possible, including the younger demographic.

The strategy was influenced by past successful digital campaigns, such as Barack Obama's "Facebook election" in 2008. This New Zealand campaign was managed by a young team with experience from previous campaigns for political figures like Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson. Tactics included sharing mundane daily activities and leveraging interactive tools, recognising that a significant segment of voters finds it credible to interact with politicians through platforms like TikTok and video games.

Despite New Zealand, along with countries like Australia, the US, and the UK, banning TikTok on government devices, the team emphasised the importance of using such platforms to reach young voters. One innovative method was the creation of a game that promoted tax policy, watched by over 350,000 people. The report concludes by noting the effectiveness of these 'weird, wacky' methods and anticipates their use in upcoming elections in Australian states, the US, and the UK. The report is presented by Charles Cratchit for 9 News.

The transcript of the second video, which is a much longer video[16] featured as key issues, and themes,

1. Digital marketing and advertising strategies, including use of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, targeted political campaigns, use of viral formats like memes, etc. There is a lot of discussion around how to effectively leverage these platforms.
2. Building and growing a digital marketing agency, including hiring the right people, maintaining company culture across offices, pitching to new clients, etc. The challenges of scaling an agency internationally are discussed.
3. The value of taking risks and being creative in advertising in order to stand out. Several anecdotes are provided about creative marketing campaigns.
4. Advertising trends, including the rise of vertical video content designed for mobile devices and the immersive nature of platforms like TikTok.
5. Political advertising and campaigns. Several examples are given of digital campaigns done for political parties/candidates.
6. The New Zealand business environment and the importance of New Zealand companies expanding internationally. The challenges created by COVID-19 for this are mentioned.

Transnational dark patterns

Based on the press release and the transcripts, there appear to be some consistent tactics and strategies used by Topham Guerin.

• Leveraging influencers/social media personalities: The press release indicates Topham Guerin and Palantir attempted to secretly pay influencers to post content criticising the Good Law Project. This is consistent with the transcript's discussion of how Topham Guerin leverages social media platforms and viral content formats to shape narratives.
• Masking client involvement: The instructions to influencers to not mention Palantir and keep the client confidential reflects Topham Guerin's strategic abilities noted in the transcript - crafting multifaceted campaigns with specific objectives.
• Targeting critics: The briefing document's focus on rebutting the Good Law Project's claims and framing them as "misinformation" matches the transcript's description of Topham Guerin's effective use of data/polling for strategic targeting in political campaigns.
• Innovation: The attempted coordinated influencer campaign represents the kind of creative, "rule-breaking" ideas Topham Guerin is known for, like the ASMR videos discussed in the transcript.

The covert coordinated attempt to turn influencers against a critic demonstrates similar strategies of leveraging social media trends, concealing client involvement, and targeting/shaping narratives that are discussed regarding Topham Guerin in the transcripts. It shows their adaptability in applying such skills to different domains.

Domestic imprints

There are clear parallels between the tactics and strategies described in TDP's research on Topham Guerin (TG), especially on 18 October 2023, and what is seen in the transcripts about TG as well as the attempted influence campaign described in the Good Law press release.

• Disinformation networks: We highlight/footnote TG's previous work in creating Facebook pages posing as grassroots news to spread disinformation on behalf of clients. This aligns with the undisclosed influencer campaign aimed at discrediting critics in the press release.
• Emotional manipulation: TDP discusses TG's use of anger/fear-based memes to sway audiences. The transcript similarly describes TG ads focused on eliciting emotional reactions.
• Targeting/suppression: We highlight/footnote Telegram’s imbrication with electoral manipulation efforts. The transcript shows TG's use of advanced targeting and data for strategic political campaigns.
• Risk-taking creativity: We are critical of TG's high skill at "bad memes" approach. The transcript praises TG's bold, rule-breaking ideas to grab attention, like the ASMR videos. These are connected to memes as content strategies.
• Links to conservative parties: TDP traces TG's National Party roots and ongoing work for right-wing parties. The transcripts confirm TG's launch assisting the National Party and subsequent conservative campaign work.

We paint TG as an emotionally manipulative, ethically dubious disinformation machine - an assessment clearly validated by both the attempted anti-critic influence campaign in the press release and TG's own strategic approaches detailed in the transcripts. The consistent themes are lack of transparency, weaponisation of social media virality, and ends-justify-means thinking.

Imbrication with the National Party campaign

The text on Topham Guerin's own website, detailing tactics for the 2023 National Party campaign raise several concerns in terms of potential harms to liberal democracy and social cohesion in New Zealand, in the context of the transcripts studied, and what’s noted in the Good Law press release.

• Spread of misinformation/disinformation: By focusing on "shaping perceptions" rather than factual policy discussion and using emotionally manipulative content, they enable the spread of potential misinformation or disinformation to voters. This undermines informed democratic participation.
• Lack of transparency: Not revealing they were behind the National Party's social media campaign hides who is trying to influence voters and the agendas/incentives behind messaging. This contradicts principles of open democracy.
• Promotion of polarisation: Seeking to just "showcase" their candidate rather than represent alternative views fosters an us vs them dynamic. Their boast of "rewriting the playbook" also signals aggressive norms. This divides public discourse.
• Data privacy issues: Amassing datasets on voters from platforms like Facebook to micro-target content raises ethical issues around consent, transparency, and inequities. There could be longer-term threats to civil liberties.
• Undermining public trust: Tactics like using "TikTok gameplays" or memes for political messaging can spread oversimplified ideas and trivialise civic duties. This seeds cynicism, especially amongst youth who expect sincerity.

In essence, while creative, Topham Guerin's partisan, perception-first and virality-obsessed tactics risk severing good faith public debate, shared understanding, and balanced voter perspectives - all foundations for a healthy democracy that respects differences. Rules may not have been broken, but liberal democratic norms appear compromised.

This is a slippery-slope, aided by – to date – near zero scrutiny around any of these core democratic concerns by mainstream media investigative reports, academics, or even questions in parliament.

Core concerns around path dependencies include[17],

• Race to the bottom for outrage attention: By rewarding emotional manipulation and trivialisation with social media virality, it incentivises politicians to pursue ever more extreme, simplistic and flashy messaging without substance. This crowds out factual, nuanced policy debates.
• Entrenchment of partisanship: Microtargeting content to supporters and attacking opponents cements partisan identity politics. This erodes political good faith and the ability to find common ground or compromise across divides, paralysing governance.
• Voter cynicism and apathy: Citizens, especially youth, lose trust and interest in civic processes if they feel unfairly manipulated or that sincerity is lacking. This causes disengagement and threatens the accountability mechanism democracies depend on.
• Surveillance overreach: The data collection machinery required for such precision voter targeting risks mission creep into privacy violations and social engineering if left unchecked. This endangers civil liberties long-term.
• Truth decay: As misinformation spreads faster than fact checks when weaponized for virality, repeated exposure - even to debunked claims - can gradually displace evidence and reason in public consciousness over time.

While hyper-partisan, and election campaign related tactics, and strategies may deliver short-term electoral gains, and shape intended outcomes, the lasting civic erosion, and distrust they risk mean that even as the rules stay the same, the spirit of liberal democracy becomes increasingly hollowed out in the process through unintended incentives.

We see this as a party blind, core liberal democratic concern, and challenge for Aotearoa New Zealand.

Banner image courtesy Good Law Project: PR firm that works for the Tories and Palantir offers to pay for attacks on us.

References

[1] National’s social media guru Sean Topham speaks after video push eclipses Labour https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/it-was-a-fun-campaign-nationals-social-media-guru-sean-topham-speaks-after-video-push-eclipses-labour/7B725U5HMJGDZHLWVEJ2RLVQPQ/

[2] Tories hire Facebook propaganda pair to run online election campaign, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/23/tories-hire-facebook-propaganda-pair-to-run-online-election-campaign

[3] Claims of misogynistic culture at offices of Lynton Crosby firm, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/01/claims-of-misogynistic-culture-at-offices-of-lynton-crosby-firm

[4] The $500k contract for Covid-19 memes that was approved by then-Police Commissioner Mike Bush https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/490071/the-500k-contract-for-covid-19-memes-that-was-approved-by-then-police-commissioner-mike-bush

[5] It is not just foreign interference that is at stake here; the UK has to get its own house in order. There are questions about data-driven profiling and Facebook advertising by political actors in the UK. In the 2019 general election, 90% of the Conservative party’s Facebook advertisements in early December were labelled as misleading by Full Fact. The real danger of this kind of misleading content is that cyber-troop tactics can then be used to amplify it to the extent that, by the time it is rebutted, it has already reached thousands of feeds. The Conservatives even tried to rebrand their Twitter output Toggle showing location ofColumn 108WHduring a debate as coming from “factcheckUK”, changed its logo to hide its political origins and pushed pro-Conservative material in a way that deliberately confused it with independent fact-checking sites.

Another question is why Topham Guerin, one of the communications companies behind the 2019 campaign, was awarded a ￡3 million covid-19 contract by the Government. It is yet more evidence of the need for my Ministerial Interests (Emergency Powers) Bill, which aims to hold the Government to account, to be supported in all quarters of the House—but that matter is for another day.

Although it is not always clear who is behind these actions, there is always clear evidence of bots being used to swell numbers artificially and drive political positions. A study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue identified that almost all of the 10 most active accounts on Twitter discussing the Brexit party appeared to be automated bots, while prior to the 2019 general election a report found that a third of the Prime Minister’s own Twitter followers were bots.

Cyber-troop Activity: UK Volume 690: debated on Tuesday 9 March 2021, Hansard of the British Parliament, https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2021-03-09/debates/919B915F-6F75-4B28-BCE4-CB921BD09397/Cyber-TroopActivityUK

[6] Topham Guerin: The team that helped Scott Morrison win is now working for Boris Johnson and Brexit, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-08/topham-guerins-boomer-meme-industrial-complex/11682116

[7] The Conservative-Crosby Insider Running Coronavirus Meme Firm Topham Guerin, https://bylinetimes.com/2020/08/24/the-conservative-crosby-insider-running-coronavirus-meme-firm-topham-guerin/

[8] Controversial Tory-linked PR firm working to oust Trudeau in Canada’s election, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/controversial-tory-linked-pr-firm-working-to-oust-trudeau-in-canadas-election/

[9] UK election is full of dirty tricks and political clicks, https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-elections-international-news-social-media-technology-a0cd68b37bbf45de8df9a3175ee369e1

[10] Wagner chief admits to founding Russian troll farm sanctioned for meddling in US elections, https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/14/europe/russia-yevgeny-prigozhin-internet-research-agency-intl/index.html

[11] https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ira-propaganda-senate-report/

[12] Who’s Spreading Disinformation in U.K. Election? You Might Be Surprised, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/world/europe/elections-disinformation-social-media.html

[13] Revealed: National's rejected AI attack ads, https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/05/25/revealed-nationals-rejected-ai-attack-ads/ and New Zealand’s National party admits using AI-generated people in attack ads, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/24/new-zealand-national-party-admits-using-ai-generated-people-in-ads

[14] https://twitter.com/TophamGuerin/status/1716634688184611156

[15] https://twitter.com/PaulSpain/status/1716571973793587473

[16] At nearly 54 minutes

[17] Informed by lived experience, pre-doctoral research, including pioneering work in South Asia, and doctoral research by Hattotuwa around the evolution of these tactics, and strategies on social media, perfected in Sri Lanka, and the Global South more generally.