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What the picker changes
  • Top topics digest — the cards score the selected period against the prior 4 weeks.
  • 12-week heatmap & outlet matrix — show the 12 weeks ending at the selected week (they slide back with the picker, they aren’t a fixed snapshot).
  • Per-topic volume / alias drift — same 12-week trailing window, anchored on the selected period.
  • Coverage gap quadrant — scores the selected period against the 12 weeks before it (not including it).
  • Anomaly cards — only show alerts the detector fired during the selected period. Quiet weeks legitimately show none.
What stays as-is
  • Outlet orientation strip / lean colours — context-only, drawn from the last 12 weeks of activity regardless.
  • Co-occurrence graph — recent-activity anchored, not picker-driven.
  • Source & topic profiles — all-time data for the topic; the picker doesn’t affect them.
Rolling 7 days is a sliding live window for “current vibes”; switch to Weekly to compare specific weeks side-by-side.
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Topic

Structural Deficit

7 items · 4 aliases · peaked week of 10 May 2026 · first seen 30 Apr 2026

Treasury chief Struan Little warns of a large structural deficit in New Zealand, urging future governments to make difficult fiscal decisions.

Volume by source orientation Methodology →

Stacked weekly counts; colour by lean. “n/a” covers government and iwi-Māori sources where lean isn't applicable.

Alias drift

How this topic has been named, week by week. A new alias winning out is usually a framing shift.

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In the press Methodology →

How the news corpus has covered this same topic over the last 12 weeks. 1 article from RNZ, Stuff, NZ Herald, ODT, 1News, Newsroom and The Spinoff. Click through to the press view for the full panel.

12-week press volume 1 article
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Heard on radio

Verbatim segments from politicians speaking on podcasts and radio shows about this topic. Sourced via the voice-reference library — each speaker has been confirmed manually from their voice clip. Click play to stream the original audio from the publisher, pre-seeked to the moment the quote starts.

  • I think we have a structural deficit and a government that came to power promising to improve our fiscal situation. Ultimately they have borrowed more money than they said they would borrow. Ultimately they have pushed out their path to surplus a couple of years. They even change the accounting measure by which they record whether or not they're getting surplus. So I think if you are to compare their position today with the position they promised we would be in when they uh were about to come to power, they are they are pretty distinct. That being said, it would be unreasonable for any of us to suggest that the state of the world doesn't require some pretty serious thinking. I actually think there is a really big opportunity for any political party to go into November's election talking about resilience. You've already seen this across the ditch, but I think resilience could be a central theme for policy platforms for our big parties going to the election. I actually think it'll be really popular. I agree.
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Sample framings

Up to 12 framings spread across orientations. Each framing is a short phrase the topic extractor generated to characterise the piece's stance — not a quote from the source. Click through to read the original.

hdpa-drive Government / N-A

government borrowing exceeds promised levels and accounting shifts

The Huddle: Should we make the All Blacks travel in premium economy if they lose?
13 May
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How the public reacted

Social-media signal on the same topic, drawn from the social lens. Engagement is likes + 2×shares + 3×replies, the same weighting used across the digest cards. View on /social →

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