Young Taiwanese use YouTube more than any other digital platform and generally trust information from popular Internet celebrities, a survey released on Wednesday by the King Car Cultural and Educational Foundation showed.
In the survey, students from the upper grades of elementary school through high school were asked what platforms they regularly used and how they assessed the credibility of the information they encountered.
The survey found that 80.2 percent of respondents regularly consumed content from YouTube, followed by television at 65.7 percent, TikTok at 50.7 percent, Instagram at 48.8 percent and Facebook at 47.9 percent.
Photo: Reuters
Asked what sources of information were reliable, 45.3 percent of respondents said television, 42.7 percent said no sources could be trusted absolutely and 39.8 percent said they trusted information from their family and friends.
The survey also found that students tended to grant more credence to information from popular outlets and individuals.
For instance, 70.2 percent of respondents said media outlets with high viewership or circulation tended to have the best quality, while 68.2 percent said information from famous influencers with large numbers of followers could generally be trusted.
In terms of guaranteeing accuracy, 86.6 percent said media outlets should have legal responsibility for their content, while 70.4 percent said that if someone sent them erroneous information, they would let them know.
However, 38.1 percent of respondents said they used fact-checking platforms.
The survey results showed the popularity of image and video-based content among the younger generation, as well as the importance of building information literacy adapted to those forms, foundation director Joyce Tseng (曾清芸) told a news conference.
The shift toward short-form videos meant that a lot of content only presented viewers with conclusions, said Liu Hui-wen (劉慧雯), a professor at National Chengchi University’s College of Communication.
For students, this can lead to shallow thinking, as well as an inability to describe a topic and explain their views about it, Liu said.
The teaching of media literacy skills could help reverse this trend, Liu added.
The survey, conducted from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, was based on 21,632 valid samples from Taiwanese students. It had a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
US PUBLICATION: The results indicated a change in attitude after a 2023 survey showed 55 percent supported full-scale war to achieve unification, the report said More than half of Chinese were against the use of force to unify with Taiwan under any circumstances, a survey conducted by the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center and Emory University found. The survey results, which were released on Wednesday in a report titled “Sovereignty, Security, & US-China Relations: Chinese Public Opinion,” showed that 55.1 percent of respondents agreed or somewhat agreed that “the Taiwan problem should not be resolved using force under any circumstances,” while 24.5 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” disagreed with the statement. The results indicated a change in attitude after a survey published in “Assessing Public Support for (Non)Peaceful Unification
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
RSS