It’s a familiar scene: friends and family are meeting up for brunch. The coffee is hot, the avocado is smashed and at least one brunch-goer is reaching for the Panadol while avoiding questions about where they ended up last night. And when the food arrives? Everyone waits; not eating until the moment has been captured and posted to Instagram.

Founded in 2010, Instagram has 800 million monthly users worldwide. In the past eight years more than 270 million pictures of food have been posted to Instagram. The influence that Instagram has had on the restaurant industry has been immense. We’re now in an age where food and beverages can go viral, not just tweets and videos. Instagram is a visual medium, and this focus on aesthetics has changed the way we eat when we’re dining out. Photogenic foods have spiked in popularity, and the food that we eat has become brighter and more decorative. At breakfast time, muesli is out and smoothie bowls are in, and the toast has to be topped with avocado.

Its commonplace for menus to now include at least one Instagrammable dish but the food itself is just one part of making a #foodstagram pop. The lighting, the crockery and the tabletop also need to be on point. Social media isn’t just changing the way we eat – it’s also influencing interior design trends. Take it from Teddy Robinson, a creative director for London café-bar chain Grind. “Last year we replaced every table in the company with white marble, just because it looks good on Instagram,” he said. This might seem extreme if you think of this phenomenon as just pictures of food, but Instagram is more than that – it’s become the way that people (particularly millennials) choose where they eat. How Instagrammable a restaurant is can flow directly to the restaurant’s bottom line.

Not every successful restaurant or café needs to be doing Instagram well – but the ones that are have something in common. Emily Arden Wells, the Co-Owner of New York architecture firm Move Matter, often works on the fit out of new restaurants in Manhattan noting that Instagrammability is now being considered from a new restaurant’s blueprint stage. Venues that are succeeding on Instagram have moved mobile and social into the very heart of their supply chain – and they’re taking their millennial customers seriously. Their customers and their devices are considered before the tables are bought, before the menus are designed and before we tell the veggie shop how many avocados we need for Saturday morning.  If successful restaurants have social and millennials at the heart of their supply chain, what does that mean for news outlets?

Devices are already changing the way that we access news. Data from the Pew Research Center in 2017 shows that 85% of adults in the United States access news on their mobile device, at least some of the time. Not surprisingly, this is a trend that is growing – this is an increase on 72% from 2016 and 54% in 2013. Social media usage is also changing the way that news is distributed, with sites like Facebook and Twitter acting as the new gateways to news channels. Analysis of online news traffic backs this up, with Australian outlet ABC News Online sharing figures that compare visits to the homepage, and visits to news articles. Traffic to the homepage is on the decline but eyeballs on articles are increasing, as people discover news content on their Facebook timeline.

Some news outlets are already using devices and social to their advantage. When you log on to the Snapchat Discover page you’ll see outlets like the Daily Mail, Cosmopolitan and Buzzfeed talking direct to millennials. (At the time of writing, I almost got distracted by a Buzzfeed quiz titled “Pick a donut and we’ll tell u what your friends love + hate about u”). As you scroll down the Discover page you’ll notice more highbrow content – the power of the Snapchat Discover page is not to be underestimated. The Economist received more traffic in its first month on Snapchat Discover than it received in the preceding 12 months to economist.com.

The future isn’t just mobile – there are other, more modern utilities and methods of news delivery already available. If mobile technology can revolutionise the food industry, there’s immense potential for wearable and hearable technology to disrupt the media landscape. Hearable technology and Conversational UI is already delivering news information via Alexa and Google Home – as our virtual personal assistants get to know us better, does this mean they can deliver us even more relevant, timely information? Spotify and Netflix have already acclimatised us to the micropayment economy and people are increasingly happy to pay small amounts more frequently for quality and convenience. Rather than paywalls and digital subscriptions, would I pay for an alert on a traffic incident that meant I wouldn’t be late to birthday party?

There’s a lot of buzz around ideas like Spotify for News, News-flix and ideas that tie to the end of ownership and to micro-payments. The most buzz has been around a Dutch service called Blendle which claims half a million registered users in Europe and is now looking at the US. Most items on Blendle, which come from lots of different outlets, cost between 10 cents and 90 cents and come with a money-back guarantee: you only pay for stories you actually read – and if you then don’t like them, you can ask for your money back.

I don’t have all the answers but it’s important that we’re thinking about this. How can we prepare for continuous change in the news and content industries? The future is already here, we just need to harness it.

Ally Garrett, CX Director at Isentia

A weekly tracker tracing the stories, figures and policies driving media and social coverage in the 2026 New Zealand General Election across Online News, TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazine, X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Forums. This edition covers conversations and coverage from 15th - 21st October, highlighting what’s shaping the election conversation.

1. Election Conversation

Media = news coverage. Social = all public posts across X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Threads - everyone posting, not just media outlets.

2. Media Issue of the Week

Opportunity Party Puts the Kingmaker Question at the Centre of the Campaign

The Opportunity Party, led by Qiulae Wong, was the most covered new story in the news this week. It polled 8% in the 1News Verian poll on 13 October and 5.4% in the Post/Freshwater poll on 19 October, just above the 5% needed to enter Parliament. With National and Labour close together, outlets described it as a possible kingmaker. Christopher Luxon ruled out working with the party at the Herald leaders' debate, then told West Coast voters he would work with "whoever I have to", and campaign chair Simeon Brown ruled it out again. David Seymour said ACT would consider a four-party arrangement that includes Opportunity. Later in the week the focus turned to the party itself, with former board members describing internal problems and Wong saying the party's rules need another look.

News outlets ran 271 items on the party or the kingmaker question in the headline or summary (9.5% of the 2,842 election items), and it was mentioned somewhere in 724 (25.5%). Coverage was highest on 15 October, after Luxon's West Coast comments, Brown's response and Seymour's remarks, and again on 20 and 21 October, with new poll results, the former board members' claims and Wong's comments on coalition deals.

It matters because it affects who can form a government. The Post projected that Opportunity's seven MPs could give either a Labour-led bloc a narrow 61-seat majority or a National-led bloc 66 seats, so every party has had to say whether it would work with Opportunity. On social media it was a smaller conversation, with 325 posts (4.2%), and those posts were less negative than average (44.4% negative against 53.0% overall). The story is about coalition options rather than a policy position, so it is not linked to a party issue below.

3. What's happening across media and social?

2,842 media items · 7,730 social items · share of each channel's own conversation, so the two bars are directly comparable

"Social" is all public posts across X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Threads - not just media organisations' own accounts.

Most frequent bylines and presenters: The most frequent bylines and presenters this week were Sean Plunket (The Platform), Ryan Bridge (Three), Henry Cooke (Waikato Times) and John MacDonald (Newstalk ZB).

Widest-reach accounts: The accounts with the widest reach among election posts were news outlets: the New Zealand Herald, 1News, Radio Tarana, RNZ and Stuff, along with the New Zealand Labour Party account. Party leaders' own accounts posted often but have smaller followings.

Law and order made up 22.1% of the issues discussed on social media but 9.1% in the news, about 2.4 times as much. Part of the gap is the continuing reaction to the Greens' and Te Pāti Māori's visit to a Mongrel Mob event, last week's Media Issue of the Week: 137 of the 791 law and order posts mention it. Across all social posts the visit came up in 291 (3.8%), 70.5% of them negative, and in 257 news items (9.0%).

The Opportunity Party shows the gap the other way round. It was in the headline or summary of 9.5% of news items but only 4.2% of social posts, about 2.3 times as much attention in the news. Among the parties, NZ First, the Greens and ACT had a bigger share of social mentions than news mentions (NZ First 19.6% against 12.7%, Greens 18.2% against 13.7%, ACT 14.1% against 9.9%), while National and Labour had a bigger share in the news (National 25.8% against 21.0%, Labour 23.5% against 17.8%).

4. Party Share of Conversation

Shown for seven parties, including Te Pāti Māori and the Opportunity Party (TOP), which is this week's Media Issue of the Week. Shares add up to 100% of the seven shown. Share of conversation measures attention, not polling, and is not a sign of electoral success.

5. Top candidates this week

Christopher Luxon (1,614 mentions) and Chris Hipkins (1,611) were level at the top. Both were at the centre of the final leaders' debate on 20 October and the questions about working with Opportunity, and each party announced new policy during the week.

Winston Peters (1,133) was third and was mentioned far more on social media (726) than in the news (407). The most shared posts about him covered his comments on diversity, his message to David Seymour on strategic voting and his public meetings. David Seymour (840) drew attention for saying ACT could work with Opportunity.

Chloe Swarbrick (412) was in the news more than on social media (227 against 185), with coverage of the Greens' plan to reverse public service cuts and the Mongrel Mob visit. Mentions measure how much someone is being talked about, not how they are polling.

6. Election Issues

Top 4 themes this week

What's driving conversation about each party?

Each party's top issues this week in social conversation, ranked by how much they were discussed

Issues are ranked from social posts. Counts are not shown because the numbers for a single party and issue are small.

7. Issues to Watch

• The coalition question around the Opportunity Party is likely to stay in the news until election day. Luxon has given two different answers on working with the party, and polls this month have put it between 4.8% and 8%, so a small shift in support could change which parties can form a government. The party's internal problems are also now in the spotlight.
• Voter enrolment is becoming a political issue ahead of the 25 October deadline. New rules mean people cannot enrol at the polling booth, and 112 news items this week covered enrolment or the electoral roll, many focused on young and first-time voters. The number enrolled when the roll closes will show whether these concerns made a difference.
• Social conversation leaned negative this week: 53.0% of posts with a clear tone were negative, 32.6% neutral and 14.4% positive. Cost of living is a top issue for four parties (National, Labour, Greens and ACT). Health is a top issue for two parties (National and Labour). Issues that matter to several parties are the ones most likely to keep shaping the campaign.

If you want to find out more about how Isentia can help you understand the NZ media landscape, please reach out to us here.