22 DOI: 10.4324/9781003176619-4 3 “Feeding people’s beliefs” Mass media representations of Māori and criminality Angela Moewaka Barnes and Tim McCreanor […] in any contest between Māori and Pākehā over land, resources or cultural space, media coverage functions, unwittingly or otherwise, to maintain Pākehā dominance. (Walker, 1990, p. 45) Ranginui Walker’s apposite summary above points towards the impacts of a long trajectory in colonizing media coverage evident toward the end of the twentieth century, and the ideolog- ical role of mass media in creating and spreading racist discourse about Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand. In this work, we think that the notion of media representations is a crucial one because of its implications for the stories we tell about ourselves and others and thereby its material consequences for power, equity, and social justice. The visionary Moana Jackson (1987) saw contemporary media representations as perpetuating: […] the progressive development of a negative self-image among many young Māori. The extension of this into wider social attitudes is obvious. The constant reiteration of negative images about one group in society helps create the misconceptions from which prejudice springs. (pp. 16–17) In the context of the critique of the criminal justice system in Aotearoa, Antje Deckert (2020) amplifies these understandings: it cannot be underestimated how discriminatory portrayals of criminal actors may sway public consent for crime or penal policies that target specific social groups. (pp. 339–340) In this chapter, we analyse items across a range of media, for example, print and television (news, reality, and drama) and topics such as cannabis law reform, COVID-19 lockdowns, and criminal justice. We include hitherto unpublished Māori and Pākehā audience data with This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003176619-4 “Feeding people’s beliefs” 23 reference to recent publications on reactions to representations of Māori in locally produced television dramas and their effects. We have included our earlier and ongoing explorations of antecedents and historical exemplars of discursive representations of Māori in mass media, along with research literature and findings on news media linkages between Māori and crime. The analyses demonstrate that pervasive negative representations of Māori across a range of media genres and topics perpetuate and reinforce associations of Māori, particularly Māori men, with violence and criminality. Here, the perpetuation of negative stereotyping is a form of normal- ized racism (Elers & Elers, 2017, p. 48). Regimes of representation (Bhabha, 1994; Hall, 2001) based on ethnicity and developed through the colonial state are of critical importance to the entrenchment of the existing crimi- nal justice system. We believe that transforming the ways in which we talk, write, perform, and practice in this domain is a vital component of decolonizing hegemonic media narratives that have implications for social/criminal justice, social cohesion, and well-being. Transformation is grounded not only in the understanding that negative representations have the potential to harm but also in the understanding that positive representations have the potential to promote positive social norms and enhanced societal relationships. Background The following provides examples of the ubiquitous and damaging nature of mass media rep- resentations of Māori that began at first contact, accelerated with colonization in the 1800s and persists today. The colonizing project produced contradictory, binary representations of Māori including Māori as the ‘noble savage’ and uncivilized. In print, for example, John Ward’s (1839) Information relative to New Zealand: A colonist’s handbook, although referring to the ‘noble savage,’ contained some of the first codified representations of Māori as inherently lawless, immoral, and criminal. In her study of racism against Māori among Pākehā in the nineteenth and twentieth cen- turies, Angela Ballara (1986) analyses many texts, images, and other sources. She notes that in the 1850s and 1860s when such discourses were not socially proscribed, the notion of Māori ‘savagery’ supported an entire structure of race relations that continues to thrive even in con- temporary settings. Matthew Nickless (2017) traces the role of the Auckland press, in particular narrating its version of ‘Māori violence’ from the mid-1850s to 1890, finding that “Māori agency was repeatedly condemned by the press whenever it was seen to be in conflict with [settlers’] own goals” (p. 89). He found that the recurrent representations of Māori as inherently dangerous and criminally violent were continuously deployed to foment and perpetrate war, violence, and alienation of Māori land, the ultimate goal of the early colonial enterprise. Decades earlier, Richard Thompson (1955) focused particularly on coverage in newspapers in 1950, again noting the general tenor of anti-Māori coverage and drawing attention to crime news. Thompson’s studies, while not widely acknowledged, provided a foundation to which other researchers have contributed in more recent times (see, e.g., Abel, 1997; McGregor & Comrie, 2002; Spoonley & Hirsh, 1990). In turn, these works added depth, scope, and detail, covering periods prior to the Kupu Taea1 studies from 2007 onwards which used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods within a bicultural research team (Kupu Taea, 2008, 2014). Peer-reviewed outputs confirm, with strong empirical evidence, the enduring legacy of underrepresentation (less than 2 percent of news stories) and negativity inherent in mass media representations of Māori and Māori/Pākehā relations. Elsewhere, we have described these find- ings as “symbolic annihilation” (Nairn et al., 2012, p. 41) and relentless denigration of Māori in the news domain. For the purposes of this chapter, we note that criminality, violence, and Angela Moewaka Barnes and Tim McCreanor 24 law-breaking, in general, are crucial and persistent themes (McCreanor et al., 2014; Moewaka Barnes et al., 2012). We now turn to examine audience responses and recent television representations that pres- ent Māori negatively, for example, as violent, criminal, childlike, and irresponsible. Television and Maōri representations A small body of research examines Māori representation on mass television including television news (Abel, 2008; Blythe, 1994; Glynn & Tyson, 2007; Gregory et al., 2011; Moewaka Barnes et al., 2012; Nairn et al., 2012; Pearson, 2013; Pihama, 1996; Yan et al., 2021). Findings are consistent with other mass media studies described above and include the persistence of racist stereotyping that presents Māori in negative terms, including Māori as criminal and violent. Our earlier Kupu Taea audience research, which focused on mass media news, including television, found that non-Māori participants thought “mass media depictions of Māori were predominantly negative, with Māori routinely associated with social problems” (Gregory et al., 2011). Māori participants in the same study suggested that constructions of Māori as criminal and violent, as examples, contributed to divisions in the community. Society’s negative assump- tions and discourses about Māori were experienced in the form of undue surveillance and confrontations in public spaces such as schools (Moewaka Barnes et al., 2013). Little research has been conducted on audience responses to local television dramas (De Bruin, 2011; Moran, 1996). A recent study by the first author, ‘Affect and Identity in Contemporary Television Drama’, aimed to understand how contemporary Aotearoa television dramas affect our lives, including identity, social cohesion, and cross-cultural relationships. Twenty-five focus groups were conducted with 107 individuals from Te Waipounamu and Te Ika a Māui (South and North Islands) mostly residing in Te Ika a Māui urban centres: Te Tai Tokerau/Northland, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Taranaki/New Plymouth, Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington, and Ōtautahi/Christchurch in Te Waipounamu. Participants were predominantly Māori (49) and Pākehā/New Zealand European (50), with the remaining eight identifying as Samoan, Fijian, Filipino, Indian, or Pasifika. Each focus group viewed a single episode from one of the four selected drama series: Westside, which follows a family and their friends who are involved in criminal activities; Find Me a Māori Bride, a mockumentary about two male cousins, grappling with their identity as Māori, who must find a Māori woman to marry in order to inherit the family farm; The Brokenwood Mysteries, a murder mystery set in a rural town in Aotearoa; and Shortland Street, a long-running soap opera centred on an Auckland medical clinic. The dramas were selected because they were among the few that provided a substantial storyline with at least one Māori character. This choice of dramas provided a diverse corpus of excerpts that allowed for a range of responses and analyses of broader themes across the focus groups. After viewing an excerpt together, each group participated in a facilitated semi-structured discussion in which participants talked about their reactions to the drama, with encouragement to express and elaborate on any emotions or feelings they experienced while watching the excerpt. The purpose was to explore audience meaning-making and affect; the feelings, emo- tions and behaviours engendered as a result of viewing a local drama. The findings that emerged in response to negative dramatized representations of Māori, such as criminal, violent, aggres- sive or irresponsible, are organized into two broad themes, ‘reinforcing negative stereotypes’ and ‘societal relations.’ The main focus is on Māori responses but includes those of Pākehā ethnicity to surface similarities and differences. “Feeding people’s beliefs” 25 Reinforcing negative stereotypes Viewing troubling depictions on local television dramas prompted deeply felt responses from Māori participants. They frequently spoke of the negative and damaging ways Māori are repre- sented; feelings of anger, shame, and exasperation were expressed (Moewaka Barnes & Moewaka Barnes, 2022). Māori participants recognized the cumulative and ongoing nature of representa- tions of Māori, men in particular, as violent, aggressive, irresponsible, and criminal, via markers such as drug dealing and membership of gangs. There were noticeably fewer representations of Māori women, and the few that appeared were mostly peripheral characters. Although Māori participants were predominantly responding to male characters, all Māori were affected by racist stereotypes. This Māori participant responds to a Māori male character in Shortland Street who acts aggressively when confronted with his wife’s manipulative behaviour: Yeah, every time they show a Māori it’s aggression, violence, slamming doors […] All part of being colonized. In this universal response (“every time”), representations of Māori in dramas were experienced and understood within wider discourses and constructions, as problematic products of a colo- nized society. Also implied here is a sense of culpable agency on the part of the colonizers and the distress the participant feels at this material and unfair outcome. “The mark of the plural” (Memmi, 2000, p. 51) where any negative individual actions are routinely taken as representative of the perceived deviance of Māori, was remarked on, with particular emphasis on the notion that all Māori are inherently violent and criminal. This Māori participant’s comment arose from watching an episode of Shortland Street where a Māori male character acts unlawfully: And to restrict someone, just because of their ethnicity or gender is pretty shitty as a human being. Just because you think that someone that is Māori will do one thing and then every other Māori will do it as well, it’s just, it’s just stupid. Affective turns of anger and frustration (“shitty,” “stupid”) are expressed here with implied blame attached to those who engage in such racist moves. The cumulative and ongoing nature of negative constructions of Māori was discussed by both Māori and Pākehā participants who agreed that these types of representations would reinforce dominant racist and colonizing beliefs and discourse about Māori. The following quotes were in response to watching Find Me a Māori Bride, where two Māori male characters behave badly while grappling with their Māori iden- tity. The final quote is taken from a discussion about representations of Māori more broadly, promoted by watching The Brokenwood Mysteries. In the episode, a Māori character – a murder suspect – is obstinate and aggressive when dealing with police. And I found myself wondering would the people I’m thinking about […] would they see them as stereotypes, or would they see them as affirmation of their opinion of Māori? [I] think there’s quite a few people for whom that would be an affirmation. Yeah the stigmatic approach that many non-Māori have about us. You can just see them ‘oh we’ll watch this cos this is what real Māori look like’. It’s like ‘Once Were Warriors’. Angela Moewaka Barnes and Tim McCreanor 26 They would love it and they’d be sitting there saying to each other there, there, that’s them, that’s exactly what they’re like […] it just reinforces it. The Pākehā participants (first and second quotes above) agree that the depictions in the excerpt are highly likely to reinforce negative stereotypes. Interestingly, both employ a distancing effect by placing these affects with other Pākehā. The Māori participant (third quote) takes a similar approach, though from the standpoint of being a target of racism, referencing Once Were Warriors (1994), a film that was vigorously debated on the grounds that it reinforced negative stereotypes of Māori. Other Māori participants also drew on the film and other stereotypical cinematic representations. Acutely aware of the effects, they spoke of feeling judged as individuals, as whānau (wider family), and as Māori collectively, with implications for non-Māori and societal relations. Societal relations A Māori participant, who identified “layers of racism and stereotyping” in dramatic depictions, was concerned that these forms of representation were a “way of stirring up our society.” This idea was not uncommon among Māori participants (Moewaka Barnes & Moewaka Barnes, 2022), and some Pākehā, who were concerned that the reinforcement of negative stereotypes in television dramas would affect day-to-day interactions between Māori and non-Māori. The following quotes from Pākehā participants are in response to the main Māori male characters in Find Me a Māori Bride and Westside who share attributes of behaving badly. I kind of worry about those sorts of presentations to the public. Cos I think it runs the risk of affirming peoples’ stereotypes if they turn it on. And if they’re watching it. I look at it and think what’s that doing to help with Māori Pākehā relationships? That just like feeds into their real-life interactions with Māori people, ‘oh this is what they’re like, this is what I’ve seen on tv so must be true […] you’ve got a violent Māori who steals things’. A Māori participant questioned whether dramatized depictions of Māori as violent and criminal were a form of ‘profiling’ (attributing characteristics and behaviours that signal offending), that resonates with the highly constructed reality of Police Ten 7 (a local police ride-along television genre), discussed below. This quote is in response to a Māori male character in Shortland Street involved in criminal activities, including drug dealing. Yeah, it’s the Māoris stuck in the same storyline! […] About the drugs and all that stealing […] it kind of takes me out of the storyline from what they’re trying to do, the drama and all of that […]. Are they just, like, profiling it kind of thing, yeah. Frustration emerges with profiling in dramas that stigmatizes and criminalizes Māori. Constructing Māori in this way reminded this participant of the racism that operates against him at both individual and systemic levels. A Māori participant discusses the television series, Beyond the Darklands, in which a Pākehā presenter investigates serious offenders and their backgrounds. She raises the lack of contextualizing offending within a colonizing society that ignores systemic issues within the police, justice system, and wider society. The following quote emerged from a discussion about societal racism after watching Westside. “Feeding people’s beliefs” 27 Nigel Latta is Pākehā right, and his whole worldview around mental health issues and the psychology of criminals is from a very white way of making sense of the world. There is no attempt at all in his shows to think about how those people experience the world as Māori and how that might actually impact […] it always has to do with Māori or their whanau or as opposed to other things that impact [such as] societal pressures, stereotypes, systemic police abuse and there’s a whole lot of other things. And I am not saying that that relieves the criminal themselves of fault for their crimes but just in terms of looking at how that person came to being in the world in that form. There was a general feeling amongst Māori participants that television pandered to a Pākehā audience by reproducing familiar constructions of Māori, for example, aggressive, criminal, and irresponsible (Moewaka Barnes & Moewaka Barnes, 2022). One Māori participant described it as “feeding people’s beliefs.” This quote is in response to the representation of Māori more generally after viewing Westside: so you either have to write to the stereotype so the Pākehās can relate or it seems too made up. So it’s like not a win it’s a lose/lose - can’t get a win anywhere. Here she reflects on the closed loop of the discursive power at work where if writers diverge from the hegemonic Pākehā understandings the narrative will seem unrealistic to the Pākehā audience. She clearly articulates her distress at the forced choice between stereotypes and invisibility. The dramas discussed here contained reminders of colonization such as the struggles and injustices connected to identity and negative stereotyping. Māori participants were deeply affected and frequently spoke about feelings of distress, grief, anger, loss, and anxiety. Prior to even watching a drama, they anticipated the worst and feared the inevitable: damaging representations, including Māori as violent and criminal. Negative depictions resulted in feel- ing undervalued, unnecessary, or unuseful as individuals and as Māori collectively (Moewaka Barnes, 2021; Moewaka Barnes & Moewaka Barnes, 2022). Police Ten 7 A study by Yan et al. (2021) of depictions of Māori and Pacific people in the Aotearoa reality television show Police Ten 7, showed clearly that such marginalized groups are overrepresented (69 percent of cases covered in the programme while making up less than 25 percent of the population). Meanwhile, those defending the series argued that the criminals “select them- selves” as subjects for Police Ten 7; that is, that the programme merely but accurately depicts the criminal behaviour of such people (Woodham, 2021, n.p.). This discussion points to a break- down of understanding between such interpretations and the analysis which concluded that the programme presents a highly constructed reality that emphasizes the violence of Māori and Pacific males. We argue that Police Ten 7 shares such constructions of reality with a range of local television dramas and certainly some of the impacts for audiences revealed by the first author’s research. Its popularity could, in part, be due to the reproduction of familiar constructions of Māori that appeal to and appease a Pākehā audience (Moewaka Barnes & Moewaka Barnes, 2022). These forms of entrenched representations reinforce the notion of the criminal violent other that the law-abiding, deserving group must be protected from. Overall, these data and analyses suggest that like news, reality television and many other mass communications genres, television drama have implications beyond providing entertainment. Angela Moewaka Barnes and Tim McCreanor 28 Audience responses demonstrate how participants understood representations within broader societal contexts and thought about the relational and political meanings the drama evoked (Moewaka Barnes, 2021; Moewaka Barnes & Moewaka Barnes, 2022). Exposure to negative stereotyping in dramatic forms was seen by participants, particularly Māori, to have significant effects on behaviours and actions towards Māori in society generally. Indigenous and Maōri representations related to crime Our review of mass media representations of Indigenous peoples, published between 2000 and 2015 (Nairn et al., 2017), carries a significant section focused on the theme of violence that is of relevance to our discussion of crime. Numerous papers note that characterizing Indigenes as violent is commonplace and that this construction is highly salient to the negative representa- tion of such groups and their ‘criminality’ in particular. “Across the identified representations of indigenous peoples, familiar synonyms for violence: brutal, savage, rough, wild, berserk, out of control, and barbarous, are employed in constructing a predatory animality that is to be feared and mistrusted” (Nairn et al., 2017, p. 38). These representations draw on tropes of irrationality, callousness, and intoxication, but also a notion that Indigenous men enjoy and seek violence, so that audience attention is directed toward endogenous rather than systemic causality, to rationalize individual-focused reactions. They align with perceived ‘newsworthiness,’ especially where they are able to be linked to the use of weapons that can be linked to personal safety or threats to the nation’s integrity. Their escalation into labels including extremist, fanatic, and terrorist delegitimizes justifiable Indigenous actions and sanctions heavy-handed, repressive actions by the state as seen in the case of ‘Operation 8’2 raids on peaceable Tūhoe communities (Norris & Tauri, 2021) and the denigration of legitimate peaceful protests such as over the Foreshore and Seabed3 alienation (Hodgetts et al., 2005) and Ihumātao4 (Hancock, 2020). However, specific research and theorizing in the space of coloniality and criminology has been advanced by Indigenous scholars, including Māori scholars, in the last decade or so to present a real and critical challenge to established theory, policy, and practice in this domain. Juan Tauri’s (2014) structural analysis of this “management of dispossession” (p. 27) of Indigenous people, exposes it as intentional and culturally inscribed in multiple intermeshed, racialized, colonial projects (including both criminal justice ideologies and mass media representations), institutions (schools, police, social services), and practices (stop/search, child up-lift, surveillance). Together, these colonial forces promulgate a discourse that constructs Māori criminality as an essential characteristic “so significant that New Zealand’s crime problem would likely dis- appear” (Tauri, 2014, p. 24) if it could be eliminated. Given the complete unacceptability of such elimination strategies, they have been superseded by policies for “sequestering Indigenous peoples within state-controlled, closed institutions” (Tauri, 2014, pp. 24–25), the legitimacy of which require the maintenance of the dominant discourses of criminality particularly by colonial mass media. McCreanor et al. (2014) present analyses of representations of Māori and crime from a large prospective, representative sample of radio and television news coverage gathered in 2007/2008. Coverage was divided into crimes by Māori (64 police notices and 17 court reports) and crimes against Māori (18), which retained the negative association between Māori and crime. The police notices take an almost standard form in which, on scant evidence, often taken from victims or bystanders, police sources request information from the public. Here is a typical example: “Nelson police were yesterday hunting for a man after a vicious baseball bat attack on two teenagers in an inner-city park […]. The attacker, described as a Māori aged 25 to 35 “Feeding people’s beliefs” 29 […]” (The Press, 1 February 2008, as cited in McCreanor et al., 2014). Obviously, such items promulgate associations between Māori and crime without recourse to judicial oversight or any significant examination of evidence. We note that, while this practice has decreased steadily over a decade or so to the point where it is now a rare occurrence, nuanced versions, for example, the use of Māori names, effectively replicate the Māori–crime link. Other recent examples reflect changing societal practices (including in media) but chart ways in which media continue to act as a vector for racist views that link Māori and crime. Derek Cheng (2019) reports in the local NZ Herald on law changes that give police discretion not to charge for possession of drugs but offer therapeutic support as an alternative. However, moni- toring of the outcomes shows that Māori still make up more than one-third of those charged. Challenged on this finding, the police claim that ethnicity is not a factor (Cheng, 2021), rein- forcing media audiences’ associations between Māori and criminal drug possession. Similarly, politicians continue to spread highly partisan and racist views that turn on asso- ciations between Māori and crime. An online story on Māori iwi (tribe) road checkpoints designed to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in isolated communities during the 2021 pan- demic lockdowns (Dexter, 2021) brought the following sophistry from ACT Party leader David Seymour: “People who block roads are thugs. If you listen carefully I haven’t actually called iwi thugs, I’ve called people who block roads and threaten to disrupt other people’s freedoms thugs, and that’s what they are” (n.p.). In a typical populist form, Seymour takes a ‘commonsense’ stance (“that’s what they are”) that – despite evidence showing their positive contribution (AUT News, 2021) – decontextualizes the actions of Māori attempting to protect their communities from infection, apparently justifying the chosen denigrating label. The patronizing “if you listen carefully” is deployed as a cover for the point that, despite his choice of words, many of his audience will make the association between checkpoints and iwi and, therefore, with his compendium of “thugs,” “threaten,” and “disrupt.” Craig Dempster and Adele Norris (2020) studied New Zealand Herald coverage of cannabis law reform before and after the 2020 referendum,5 finding that 75 percent of articles made no mention of Māori; of those that did the focus was on the implications of legalization for Māori health. Only a very small number of items considered the very high levels of Māori support for legalization, a point which is attributed by Māori analysts to reflect the lived experience of the impacts of racialized policing of cannabis prohibition (Norris & Tauri, 2021). In turn, this underpins societal and media assumptions about Māori and crime (McCreanor et al., 2014) that support the status quo of racist reporting that criminalizes Māori behaviours around this issue, ignoring systemic issues. Resistance to negative representations is frequently ignored or downplayed in media praxis, policy, and legislation. For example, a case taken to the Human Rights Tribunal argued a breach of section 61 of the Human Rights Act, contending that cartoons published in May 2013, in both the Marlborough Express and the Christchurch-based The Press, about the govern- ment’s ‘breakfast in schools’ programme brought Māori and Pacific people into contempt. The cartoons depicted Māori and Pacific peoples as dishonest, greedy, and immoral. The Tribunal found Fairfax Media did not breach the Human Rights Act and, while it considered the car- toons insulting, they “fell well short of bringing Māori and Pacifika into contempt” (Human Rights Review Tribunal, 2017, p. 51). In their analysis of the two cartoons, authors Elers and Elers (2017) conclude that they perpetuate negative stereotyping of Māori, a form of normal- ized racism. They argue that findings from both the Human Rights Review Tribunal and the Race Relations Commissioner (who found the cartoons to be offensive but not racist), “merely serve to legitimate racist acts” (p. 48). These forms of depictions promote Māori as criminal in intent, suspect, and in need of surveillance. Angela Moewaka Barnes and Tim McCreanor 30 Discussion In this chapter, we have examined some historical examples of journalistic coverage of Māori and crime. These regimes of representation demonstrate the longevity and entrenchment of Pākehā discourses into the colonial culture of Aotearoa where Māori are the criminal vio- lent Other. We have provided exemplars of the ways in which this cultural form, despite the ideologically mandated ‘objectivity’ of the fourth estate and the active social constructionism of those disciplines, continues within news-making and spills over into the artistic licence of entertainment genres and fictional forms in mutually self-reinforcing ways. Our new empirical work with audience data points out the implications of diverse media formats in reproducing and maintaining racist, colonizing discourse and practice in contempo- rary society. We are clear that such dominant discourses impact Māori and Pākehā but in very different ways, including uncritical acceptance of stereotypes and norms by the latter. Māori, however, do not consider such representations as merely entertainment or neutral but under- stand and experience their power to cause harm and pain. We agree with the observations in our introduction that discursive representations of Māori extend into “wider social attitudes” (Jackson, 1987, pp. 16–17) and practices that “may sway public consent for crime or penal policies” (Deckert, 2020, p. 339) that target Māori. We refer back to Elers and Elers’ (2017) observation that the perpetuation of negative stereotyping of Māori is a form of normalized racism. The ubiquity of these racist conventional Pākehā dis- courses of Māori and crime/violence, support and entrench the racism of the colonial criminal justice system so clearly described in the critical works of Juan Tauri and other Māori and Indigenous criminal justice researchers. The commonplace presence of these patterns in diverse media forms both historical and contemporary, in fiction and non-fiction genres, speaks to their long-entrenched character. We conclude that the narratives that these discursive resources support are exclusively populist, ‘commonsense’ stories that are decontextualized, ahistorical, and bound up with maintaining colonial criminal justice forms. Decolonizing discourses and discursive resources that maintain the hegemony of the standard story on Māori and crime results in mana-enhancing narratives; a commitment of many Māori working in the field. Transformation is grounded not only in the understanding that negative representations have the potential to harm, but also that positive representations have the poten- tial to promote positive social norms, justice and enhanced societal relationships. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the research participants who gave generously of their time and thoughts. Partly supported by Marsden Fund Council from government funding, administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand (contract MAU 1307: Affect and Identity in Contemporary Television Drama). 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