Come October 2023, New Zealanders will take to the polls to vote in the General Election to decide who we want to represent us and our communities in Parliament. 

To support the democratic process, Google is bringing more openness to election advertising online, and helping connect people to useful and relevant election-related information. Here is how we will be providing support:

Helping voters find the information they need

In the build-up to elections, people need helpful and authoritative information to help them navigate the electoral process. For the New Zealand election in 2023, we will make electoral information from the Election Commission and other authoritative sources - such as how to vote and where to vote - easily discoverable on Search and YouTube.

Google News Lab will continue to publish the latest Search Trends related to the Election, across politicians, policies and parties, to support newsrooms with their coverage of the election period. In addition to the bespoke microsite, News Lab will be issuing weekly Trends Alerts from the beginning of September to highlight the areas that Kiwis are interested in, which anyone can sign up for here. 

Helping people better understand the election advertising they see

Google’s goal has always been to support election integrity by providing transparency into the political advertising spend on our platforms. For the second time during our local General Election a publicly accessible Transparency Report is live, showing election ads run by verified advertisers. Our goal is to make this information as accessible and useful as possible to citizens, practitioners, and researchers. We're working with political parties to help them understand digital best practices and will be sharing Google's ads policies with parties and candidates.

On YouTube, we have expanded information panels giving topical context in New Zealand and across the region. Now, when Kiwis search videos on certain topics prone to misinformation, they’ll see an information panel at the top of their search results or under a video they’re watching which includes links to additional info and context from authoritative third-party sources.

Helping to build media literacy with the Google News Initiative 

We help voters find reliable, useful election-related information online and we also work hard to prevent election interference by being on the front foot and educating stakeholders on how to spot disinformation through media literacy programmes.

As part of our ongoing commitment to the New Zealand media industry we partnered with CrossCheck at RMIT FactLab to launch RMIT Fact Lab Workshops. These immersive and interactive trainings help newsrooms and community media learn skills to analyse online information during the Election period.

In addition, we have partnered with Squiz Kids, a daily news podcast for school children, designed to teach students how to recognize online fact from fiction through a plug-and-play teaching resource. 

Our mission is to make the world’s information accessible and useful, and during this election period, we want to surface the facts and help audiences get more context on information they find online. We will continue to invest in initiatives that build further on our commitment towards election transparency, and we are grateful for our partners, and the work we do together in this space.