Coordinated actors have been working to influence Taiwanese politics by manipulating online conversation since at least May last year, a US-based network analysis firm found in a report published on Wednesday.
Graphika, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze social media landscapes, said it has identified a “sustained and coordinated effort” to mold political conversation online ahead of next month’s elections.
Its study identified more than 800 Facebook profiles, 13 Facebook pages, one TikTok account and one YouTube channel centered around the persona “Agitate Taiwan” (鼓動台灣).
Photo: Screengrab from TikTok
Videos posted daily by Agitate Taiwan on YouTube and TikTok were distributed through likely inauthentic Facebook accounts, it said, adding that the content had mostly been taken down by the platforms.
Graphika said it found signs of coordination, such as different accounts posting the same content within minutes of each other and using the same sets of hashtags.
The content tended to support the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) while disparaging other parties and candidates, including Taiwan People’s Party Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘), Graphika said.
They also tended to quickly leverage domestic news “to portray the KMT’s opponents as incompetent and corrupt,” it said, citing the egg import controversy and alleged drugging of kindergarteners as examples.
The firm was unable to determine whether Agitate Taiwan was part of the operation, or an authentic account leveraged by the actors.
Although it could not link the activity to any specific actor, Graphika did find some erroneous transliterations of Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) slang, “calling into question the operators’ Taiwanese language fluency.”
The firm predicted that influence operations would continue to increase ahead of the election on Jan. 13, adding that it had previously seen actors linked to China “repeatedly target” Taiwanese audiences.
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