At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Taiwanese citizen Nancy Hsieh received a message from her relatives online: To stop the virus from entering your lungs, all you need to do is drink lots of water with salt and vinegar.But she knew immediately this was false information.Right beneath the original message on Line, Taiwan’s most popular messaging app, a chatbot replied that the claim was not supported by science, with a link to an article that fact-checked this erroneous information.
The chatbot, Auntie Meiyu, is one of multiple Taiwanese fact-checking applications that have increasingly gained prominence, as the island democracy of 23.5 million people steps up its readiness to combat the rising flow of false information from circulating within society.Besides unscientific methods of treating Covid, Hsieh recalled “Auntie” debunked other rumors such as a fake speech attributed to an official from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, misrepresentation of polling results, and fraudulent food safety reports.
Experts say fact-checking mechanisms like this are becoming more important, especially as Taiwan is set to choose a new president in a highly consequential election next month.The vote comes at a moment of high tensions as Beijing ramps up military, political and economic pressure on the island that China’s ruling Communist Party claims as its own territory, despite having never controlled it.
Like many places in the world, Taiwan often sees an uptick in disinformation during elections. But it is also uniquely targeted outside of voting season because of the precarious geopolitical space it lives in.According to a report by Stockholm University’s Varieties of Democracy Project, published in March this year, Taiwan for the 10th consecutive year received the greatest amount of disinformation from outside its borders, highlighting the need for effective fact-checking mechanisms on the island.At a recent closed-door security briefing attended by CNN, Taiwan’s intelligence community warned that China has been working to influence Taiwan’s upcoming election through a series of disinformation, military and economic operations, with the goal of boosting the chances of opposition candidates who favor improving ties with Beijing.
According to Taiwanese intelligence, Wang Huning, the fourth-ranking leader in th Chinese Communist Party, recently convened a meeting to coordinate efforts to influence the election, while reducing the likelihood that external parties could find evidence of such interference.“They hope that the party they dislike will lose the election,” a senior Taiwanese security official, referring to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which views Taiwan as a de facto sovereign nation and has prioritized elevating Taipei’s ties with Western powers since taking office in 2016.
The candidate for DPP, Vice President Lai Ching-te, is currently leading in the polls, and is openly loathed by Chinese officials.Lai is ahead of two other candidates – Hou Yu-ih from the Kuomintang party and Ko Wen-je from the Taiwan People’s Party – who are seen as favoring closer relations with Beijing.Among the different strategies deployed by Beijing, Taiwan believes China’s cognitive warfare operations – which included spreading disinformation in Taiwan and magnifying talking points that favor China-friendly candidates – are the most sophisticated, multiple officials said at a closed-door briefing on security affairs attended by CNN.
Besides operating content farms and fake accounts on social media, the officials alleged that China’s information operations are multifaceted.Other tactics used by Beijing included working with private companies to impersonate genuine news websites, handpicking soundbites that fit Beijing’s narratives from Taiwanese television programs and repackaging them into short social media videos, and illicitly funding small news organizations in Taiwan that mostly report on local livelihood issues but also occasionally post content that cast doubts toward candidates unfavorable to Beijing.
At a recent closed-door security briefing attended by CNN, Taiwan’s intelligence community warned that China has been working to influence Taiwan’s upcoming election through a series of disinformation, military and economic operations, with the goal of boosting the chances of opposition candidates who favor improving ties with Beijing.According to Taiwanese intelligence, Wang Huning, the fourth-ranking leader in th Chinese Communist Party, recently convened a meeting to coordinate efforts to influence the election, while reducing the likelihood that external parties could find evidence of such interference.
“They hope that the party they dislike will lose the election,” a senior Taiwanese security official, referring to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which views Taiwan as a de facto sovereign nation and has prioritized elevating Taipei’s ties with Western powers since taking office in 2016.The candidate for DPP, Vice President Lai Ching-te, is currently leading in the polls, and is openly loathed by Chinese officials.
Lai is ahead of two other candidates – Hou Yu-ih from the Kuomintang party and Ko Wen-je from the Taiwan People’s Party – who are seen as favoring closer relations with Beijing.Among the different strategies deployed by Beijing, Taiwan believes China’s cognitive warfare operations – which included spreading disinformation in Taiwan and magnifying talking points that favor China-friendly candidates – are the most sophisticated, multiple officials said at a closed-door briefing on security affairs attended by CNN.
Besides operating content farms and fake accounts on social media, the officials alleged that China’s information operations are multifaceted.Other tactics used by Beijing included working with private companies to impersonate genuine news websites, handpicking soundbites that fit Beijing’s narratives from Taiwanese television programs and repackaging them into short social media videos, and illicitly funding small news organizations in Taiwan that mostly report on local livelihood issues but also occasionally post content that cast doubts toward candidates unfavorable to Beijing.
Source: Here