Appendix 2: Media analysis – summary of key themes In-depth thematic analysis identified seven main themes relating to behaviours undertaken by commenters: • Agreement that racism exists in New Zealand (373 comments – 35%) • Disagreement that racism exists in New Zealand (157 comments – 15%) • Engaging in explicit racism (32 comments – 3%) • Defending White privilege and the White racial hierarchy (102 comments – 10%) • Exploring the drivers of racism (34 comments – 3%) • Challenging racist narratives (106 comments – 10%) • Calling for solutions and the need for change (75 comments – 7%). Additionally, 382 comments (36%) were coded as “not applicable”, as they mainly involved tagging other individuals in the comment threads and did not provide any useful or relevant information for analysis. Percentages do not add up to 100% as comments were often coded as more than one theme. Each of these high-level themes (and corresponding sub-themes) are explored in more detail below. Any observed differences in themes across the three articles are noted where pertinent. Theme 1: Agreement that racism exists in New Zealand One-third of comments (35%) related to the high-level theme that racism does exist in New Zealand. There were two sub-themes relating to this: Discussions about the nature of racism in New Zealand – commenters engaged in discourse around: Sub-theme examples Examples of comments Acknowledging racism exists in New Zealand and is a real problem [Taika is] right. If you'd seen the comments on the live feed of the announcement of the Greens’ new female co-leader, all doubt would be gone. A dozen racist Nat supporters spammed the comments for the entire broadcast. They called Marama a dog and many more names that don't bear repeating. I never knew it was such a racist country until reading it all in the comments section on these sort of pages. The amount of hatred White New Zealanders have towards Māori is disgusting. To think that we work beside these people, live amongst them, pass them on the streets and have them in our schools amongst our children. Their children go to school with our children, what a www.malatest-intl.com Drivers of racism – March 2021 100