Skip to main content

Long-Term Insights Briefing 2025: summary

Culture in the Digital Age: How will technology change the way New Zealanders create, share and protect their stories in 2040 and beyond?

Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage is a steward of Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural system, supporting the arts, heritage, media, and sport and recreation sectors.

Under current legislation, we produce a Long-term Insights Briefing (LTIB) every three years. LTIBs provide impartial analysis and information about medium and long-term trends, risks, and opportunities that may affect New Zealand.

This draft LTIB draws on evidence collected through research and engagement with subject matter experts and sector stakeholders to consider the impacts of digital technology on New Zealanders’ future stories. 

We want to hear your views. Your feedback could help inform public policy into the future.

Key themes

Our draft LTIB delves into how AI and other digital technologies will reshape creative expression, content distribution and cultural preservation. It grapples with the challenges of misinformation, algorithmic bias, data sovereignty and the digital divide. The LTIB places these worldwide trends in our distinctly Aotearoa New Zealand context and explores potential policy approaches to support our cultural sectors to thrive in a fast-evolving digital world.

The briefing is structured around three key aspects:

  • Create: Examines how new digital tools will expand opportunities for creative expression, reshape the creative workforce, and redefine what creativity means in 2040.
  • Share: Analyses the changing dynamics of content distribution, algorithmic curation, and digital inclusion, while highlighting risks related to misinformation and loss of trust.
  • Protect: Considers how we can preserve and safeguard New Zealand’s stories, taonga, and cultural heritage, including questions of digital storage, data sovereignty, and authenticity. 

Te Ao Māori and technology

The LTIB recognises the importance of mātauranga Māori to our unique identity as New Zealanders. Mātauranga including te reo Māori, and indigenous governance, is vital in shaping how cultural stories are created, managed, and protected using emerging technologies. Māori-led innovation, kaitiakitanga, and indigenous data sovereignty are critical principles throughout the analysis.

Emerging trends and drivers of change

The briefing identifies a set of transformative technologies and external drivers likely to reshape New Zealand’s cultural system by 2040, including demographic shifts, declining institutional trust, widening digital divides, and accelerating cyber and data risks. 

Future scenarios

Four exploratory scenarios imagine how culture in Aotearoa New Zealand could evolve under different technological, social, and geopolitical conditions:

  • Aotearoa Unfiltered – rapid innovation, little regulation.
  • Hyperlocal Renaissance – decentralised communities and platforms.
  • Digital Guardianship – strong oversight and governance, less creative freedom.
  • A New Digital World – radical technological advancements erase boundaries.

Policy options and evaluation

Our draft LTIB identifies and evaluates a range of policy levers across the ‘create’,’share’, and ‘protect’ domains.  Each option is assessed for its effectiveness, equity, feasibility, cost-benefit, and risk profile.

Have your say

The draft LTIB is available on our website.

Long-term Insights Briefing

The draft LTIB is NOT available in alternate formats. If you have accessibility requirements, or would like to talk to the LTIB team to pass on your feedback, please contact us: [email protected]

When providing feedback, here are some questions to consider

  • How do you think digital technology will affect how your stories are created, shared and protected in 2040 and beyond? Are these changes broadly reflected in the LTIB?
  • Are there any important trends, risks and opportunities, or other key issues specific to your community, that are missing from the LTIB?
  • Do you think the potential policy options presented in the LTIB reflects the range of levers available to future policymakers to address the issues? What other options could be considered?
  • Is there any additional compelling data or evidence relating to this topic that would be useful for us to review?

Please contact us at [email protected] to provide your written feedback or, if you’d rather provide verbal feedback, to set up a time to speak with a LTIB team member.

You can also post your feedback to the LTIB team, Manatū Taonga, PO Box 5364, Wellington 6140.

Consultation closed on Sunday 6 July 2025.

The draft LTIB will be refined based on public feedback and finalised by the Chief Executive and Secretary for Culture and Heritage, before being presented to the House of Representatives later this year.

Art competition: Digital storytelling in 2040 and beyond

We also ran an art competition to design the cover of our LTIB based on the topic. Entries closed the same time as the consultation, on 6 July 2025. 

Accessible formats

This summary is available to download as an Easy Read document and as an e-Braille (BRF) formatted file. If you need assistance accessing this document please email [email protected]