Embracing co-governance: the policies and politics of online safety education

With the increasing digitalisation of social life, digital risks from misinformation and cyberbullying through to radicalisation and cybercrime have become a critical concern for national authorities, schools, private organisations and communities worldwide. Policy solutions to tackle these problems have proliferated globally, often becoming a space for strategic competition between countries. Some national governments have responded to this digital policy race with co-governance approaches, largely based on voluntary agreements, to avoid both the costs of online safety regulation and confrontations with Big Tech. This has been the case of New Zealand, a country that captured global attention in this area after the Christchurch Mosque attacks in 2019. Using Foucauldian lens and network-ethnographic techniques, this case study examines the co-governance arrangements developed in New Zealand after these attacks and their strong reliance on education policy to govern the conduct of citizens. Our analysis illustrates how political efforts to ‘put New Zealand in the map’ led to the signing of voluntary commitments (i.e. Christchurch Call and The Code), a failed attempt to regulate online content and the use of education policy as a means to encourage self-governance.