China will continue to play up conflicts in Taiwan with more diverse tactics of information manipulation, Taipei-based think tank Doublethink Lab said in a report published yesterday.
The think tank analyzed the strategies and impact of the Chinese disinformation campaign on Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections on Saturday last week and pointed out possible manipulation methods in the future.
Before last month, news outlets and social media accounts controlled by or affiliated with Chinese authorities focused on amplifying controversial issues in Taiwan to intensify social conflicts, a strategy they have adopted since 2022, the report said.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
These foreign actors select certain narratives by Taiwanese politicians or pundits to spread US skepticism and defamatory information about the ruling party or its leaders, it said.
Leading up to the elections, Chinese actors began to create fake news, such as accusing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of starting rumors about China pressurizing Taiwanese rock band Mayday to make pro-China comments, it said.
Beijing actively fueled rumors that Lai had illegitimate children and spread the content of a book titled “[President] Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) secret history,” which is filled with false statements about Tsai, it said.
Compared with the local elections in 2022, China used a large number of false accounts and generative artificial intelligence (AI) rather than its state media to disseminate disinformation, it said.
Doing so gave China more opportunities to spread slander and outrageous information, it said, adding that it also made the sources of disinformation more difficult to trace.
After the elections, Beijing is likely to continue playing up domestic conflicts in Taiwan rather than drawing Taiwanese attention to foreign actors, it said.
It might also focus on local issues to “better integrate into discussions in Taiwanese society,” and make it difficult for Taiwanese authorities and researchers to identify the source of information, it said.
Generative AI technology has significantly reduced the time and labor costs of content production, making it difficult to separate fake accounts from real users, and to detect fake accounts that originate from the same source, it said.
A survey conducted by the think tank before the elections showed that 37.6 percent of Taiwanese have never looked up or confirmed information they received online, despite a growing proportion of people receiving political information from online video creators and key opinion leaders, it said.
“Information manipulation in Taiwan has shifted toward conspiracy types of narrative,” which is more challenging to debunk, it said.
About half of the respondents agreed with US-skepticism narratives, such as “the US only wants to exploit Taiwan” and “the US uses Taiwan to provoke China,” it said.
While 40.4 percent of respondents declined to answer their perceived source of false information related to the elections, 26.6 percent of respondents attributed it to the DPP, followed by 15.2 percent who believed it originated from China, it said.
The survey was conducted via landlines and mobile phones from Jan. 1 to Wednesday last week.
It collected 1,504 valid samples and had a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 2.53 percent.
Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has died of pneumonia at the age of 48 while on a trip to Japan, where she contracted influenza during the Lunar New Year holiday, her sister confirmed today through an agent. "Our whole family came to Japan for a trip, and my dearest and most kindhearted sister Barbie Hsu died of influenza-induced pneumonia and unfortunately left us," Hsu's sister and talk show hostess Dee Hsu (徐熙娣) said. "I was grateful to be her sister in this life and that we got to care for and spend time with each other. I will always be grateful to
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
REMINDER: Of the 6.78 million doses of flu vaccine Taiwan purchased for this flu season, about 200,000 are still available, an official said, following Big S’ death As news broke of the death of Taiwanese actress and singer Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛), also known as Big S (大S), from severe flu complications, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and doctors yesterday urged people at high risk to get vaccinated and be alert to signs of severe illness. Hsu’s family yesterday confirmed that the actress died on a family holiday in Japan due to pneumonia during the Lunar New Year holiday. CDC Deputy Director-General Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) told an impromptu news conference that hospital visits for flu-like illnesses from Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 reached 162,352 — the highest
RSS