“Troll groups” attempting to shape online discourse about the Jan. 13 presidential and legislative elections appear to be taking cues from Chinese state-affiliated media, a research group said on Wednesday.
Troll groups — clusters of social media accounts acting with a suspicious degree of synchronization — have mirrored the narrative pivots taken by Beijing-controlled news outlets such as the People’s Daily, Haiwainet, Xinhua news agency, the Global Times and China Central Television, a report released by Taiwan AI Labs showed.
Taiwan AI Labs founder Ethan Tu (杜奕瑾) told a news conference in Taipei that between September and last month, China-affiliated media platforms focused on portraying the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as pushing Taiwan toward war.
Photo: Reuters
However, since this month, Chinese reporting has shifted to “the repercussions of terminating the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement,” as well as “Taiwan’s grim economic prospects,” with troll groups following suit, Tu said.
Taiwan AI Lab chief executive officer Hwang Chao-hwei (黃兆徽) said that the organization has been monitoring leading social media platforms along with a total of 31,278 online troll accounts exhibiting similar activation dates, content and comments since 2020.
Despite the correlation between some accounts and the messaging of Chinese state-affiliated media, not all troll activity aligned with Beijing’s narratives, Taiwan AI Lab’s research showed.
For example, the primary narratives pushed by “YouTube #71012” — the most active troll group on YouTube during the second week of this month — were either pro-DPP or critical of opposition parties, it found.
Excluding YouTube, where partisan attacks were roughly equal, negative comments aimed at the DPP outranked those targeting the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on all other social media platforms, including Facebook at 14 percent versus 3.1 percent, TikTok at 22.6 percent versus 19.4 percent and the local online bulletin board system Professional Technology Temple at 15.1 percent versus 6.4 percent, it said.
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
RISING TOURISM: A survey showed that tourist visits increased by 35 percent last year, while newly created attractions contributed almost half of the growth Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said. The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office. Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said. The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs —
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the
RSS