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 A proposal to institute such rules was withdrawn in 2022 after free speech concerns were raised.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.
A drunk woman was sexually assaulted inside a crowded concourse of Taipei Railway Station on Thursday last week before a foreign tourist notified police, leading to calls for better education on bystander intervention and review of security infrastructure. The man, surnamed Chiu (邱), was taken into custody on charges of sexual assault, taking advantage of the woman’s condition and public indecency. Police discovered that Chiu was a fugitive with prior convictions for vehicle theft. He has been taken into custody and is to complete his unserved six-month sentence, police said. On Thursday last week, Chiu was seen wearing a white
EVA Airways, one of the leading international carriers in Taiwan, yesterday said that it was investigating reports that a cabin crew manager had ignored the condition of a sick flight attendant, who died on Saturday. The airline made the statement in response to a post circulating on social media that said that the flight attendant on an outbound flight was feeling sick and notified the cabin crew manager. Although the flight attendant grew increasingly ill on the return flight, the manager did not contact Medlink — a system that connects the aircraft to doctors on the ground for treatment advice during medical
The Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union yesterday vowed to protest at the EVA Air Marathon on Sunday next week should EVA Airway Corp’s management continue to ignore the union’s petition to change rules on employees’ leave of absence system, after a flight attendant reportedly died after working on a long-haul flight while ill. The case has generated public discussion over whether taking personal or sick leave should affect a worker’s performance review. Several union members yesterday protested at the Legislative Yuan, holding white flowers and placards, while shouting: “Life is priceless; requesting leave is not a crime.” “The union is scheduled to meet with
‘UNITED FRONT’ RHETORIC: China’s TAO also plans to hold weekly, instead of biweekly, news conferences because it wants to control the cross-strait discourse, an expert said China’s plan to expand its single-entry visa-on-arrival service to Taiwanese would be of limited interest to Taiwanese and is a feeble attempt by Chinese administrators to demonstrate that they are doing something, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesman Chen Binhua (陳斌華) said the program aims to facilitate travel to China for Taiwanese compatriots, regardless of whether they are arriving via direct flights or are entering mainland China through Hong Kong, Macau or other countries, and they would be able to apply for a single-entry visa-on-arrival at all eligible entry points in China. The policy aims
RSS