Worries that China would use disinformation to undermine the integrity of Taiwan’s vote dogged the Jan. 13 elections.
In repelling disinformation, Chinese and domestic, Taiwan offers an example to other democracies holding elections this year.
This year, more than 50 countries that are home to half the planet’s population are due to hold national elections. From India to Mexico, the UK to Russia, the outcomes of the elections would test the strengths of democracies and countries with authoritarian leaders.
Photo: Reuters
In Taiwan, the response to disinformation was swift. Fact-checking groups debunked rumors, while the Central Election Commission held a news conference to push back on claims of electoral discrepancies.
Influencers such as @FroggyChiu with more than 600,000 subscribers also put out explainers on YouTube explaining how votes are tallied.
In a widely shared video, a woman recording votes mistakenly enters one in the column for the wrong candidate. The message was clear: The election could not be trusted. The results were faked.
However, the video had been selectively edited, fact-checkers found.
Voters at the polling station spotted the woman’s error and election workers quickly corrected the count, according to MyGoPen, an independent Taiwanese fact-checking chatbot.
It was just one of dozens of videos that fact-checkers had to debunk.
“I believe some people genuinely believed this, and when the election results came out, they thought something was up,” said Eve Chiu (邱家宜), the editor-in-chief of Taiwan’s FactCheck Center, a nonprofit journalism organization.
Supporters of the Taiwan People’s Party Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), many of whom are young, had shared the videos widely on TikTok, which were then shared on Facebook.
Prior to the election results, many thought there was a chance of a Ko upset in the race given that he had drawn a lot of online attention.
Taiwan’s FactCheck Center debunked multiple videos of alleged voter fraud, including another one in which voting officials make a human error caught on camera. The source of these videos is unclear.
Notably, Taiwanese have resisted calls for tougher laws that would require social media platforms to police sites. A proposal to institute such rules was withdrawn in 2022 after free speech concerns were raised.
China targeted Taiwan with a stream of disinformation ahead of its election, research from DoubleThink Lab showed.
Much of it sought to undermine faith in the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party and cast it as belligerent and likely to start a war that Taiwan cannot win. Other narratives targeted Washington’s support for Taipei, saying that the US was an untrustworthy partner only interested in Taiwan’s semiconductor exports that would not support it if it came to war with China.
Taiwan has been able to effectively respond to Chinese disinformation in part because of how seriously the threat is perceived there, said Kenton Thibaut, a senior resident fellow and expert on Chinese disinformation at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
Instead of a piecemeal approach — focusing solely on media literacy, for instance, or relying only on the government to fact-check false rumors — Taiwan adopted a multifaceted approach, what Thibaut called a “whole of society response” that relied on government, independent fact-check groups and even private citizens to call out disinformation and propaganda.
Representative to the US Alexander Yui said that the government has learned it must identify and debunk false information as quickly as possible to counter false narratives.
“Find it early, like a tumor or cancer. Cut it before it spreads,” Yui said of foreign disinformation.
Civil society groups like MyGoPen and the Taiwan FactCheck Center, which received US$1 million in funding from Google, have focused on raising public awareness through debunking rumors that members of the public report.
Media literacy on fake news and the digital environment is growing, but slowly, those on the front lines say.
“It’s like in the past when everyone dumped bottles and cans in the garbage and now they sort them, that was done through a period of societal education,” Chiu said. “Everyone needs to slowly develop this awareness, and this needs time.”
Although the election passed without a major crisis, the challenge continues to evolve.
Chinese efforts at disinformation have become increasingly localized and sophisticated, DoubleThink Lab’s post-election analysis showed.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard