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WASHINGTON (AP) — As ballots for Taiwan’s closely watched presidential election were counted on Jan. 13, rumors of voter fraud began to swirl. There were unsubstantiated claims that people had fabricated votes or that authorities had miscounted them and skewed the results.
In a widely shared video, a woman recording her vote accidentally enters it in the field for the wrong candidate. The message was clear. Her response was that “elections cannot be trusted.” The results were fabricated.
That may have been Taiwan’s moment on January 6th. But that wasn’t the case.
Concerns that China would use disinformation to undermine the integrity of Taiwan’s vote have dogged the recent election, a key moment in the young democracy’s development and a far greater power. It highlighted tensions with neighboring countries.
In fighting off disinformation within and within China, Taiwan is setting an example for other democracies holding elections this year.
This year, national elections are scheduled in more than 50 countries, home to half of the world’s population. From India to Mexico, Britain to Russia, election results will test the strength of democracies and countries with authoritarian leaders.
Taiwan was quick to respond to disinformation. Fact-finding groups debunked the rumors, and the Central Election Commission held a press conference to push back on claims of electoral discrepancies. Influencers like @FroggyChiu, who has over 600,000 subscribers, also publish commentators on his YouTube explaining how votes are counted.
A video showing election workers miscounting votes was selectively edited, a fact-checker investigation found. MyGoPen, an independent Taiwanese fact-checking chatbot, said voters at the polling station noticed the woman’s mistake and election officials quickly corrected the tally.
It was just one of dozens of videos that fact checkers had to debunk.
“I think there were some people who really believed this. And when the election results came in, they thought something had happened,” said Eve, editor-in-chief of the Fact Check Center, a nonprofit journalism organization in Taiwan. Chiu said.
Supporters of Taiwan People’s Party presidential candidate Ke Wen-ji, many of whom are young, shared the video widely on TikTok, which then shared it on Facebook. Before the election results were released, many believed Ko could pull off an upset in the race, given the amount of attention the candidate had received online. Taiwan’s Fact-Checking Center has debunked several videos of suspected voter fraud, including another video in which a poll worker made human error and was caught on camera. The origin of these videos is unknown.
Notably, Taiwan has resisted calls for stronger laws requiring social media platforms to police their sites. A proposal to enact such rules was withdrawn in 2022 after free speech concerns were raised.
According to research by DoubleThink Lab, China, which claims Taiwan as its own country, targeted Taiwan with disinformation ahead of the general election.
Many were aimed at undermining confidence in the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party, accusing it of being bellicose and potentially starting a war that Taiwan could not win. Other reports targeted the United States’ support for Taiwan, arguing that the United States was an unreliable partner interested only in Taiwan’s semiconductor exports and would not support Taiwan if it went to war with China.
Kenton Thibault, a senior resident researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and an expert on Chinese disinformation, said Taiwan has been able to effectively respond to Chinese disinformation. Instead of a piecemeal approach that focuses solely on media literacy or relies solely on the government to fact-check misinformation, for example, Taiwan relies on what Thibault called a “whole-of-society response” or an independent government. We adopted a multifaceted approach. Fact-checking organizations and even private citizens denounce disinformation and propaganda.
Alexander Talai-Yui, Taipei’s economic and cultural representative to the United States, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the government has learned that to combat false reporting, it needs to identify and debunk false information as soon as possible. He said.Yui is Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to the United States.
“Like a tumor or cancer, let’s detect it early. Let’s cut it off before it spreads,” Yui said of overseas disinformation.
Taiwanese civil society organizations such as MyGoPen and the Taiwan Fact-Checking Center, which received $1 million in funding from Google, focus on raising public awareness through debunking individual rumors reported by the public. I’m leaving it there.
The island has a strong civil society. Many fact-checker groups were founded by dedicated individuals, such as MyGoPen. Charles Yeh, the founder of MyG oPen, started the chatbot service after realizing that online rumors were confusing his relatives. Other institutions, such as the Taiwan Fact-Checking Center, are careful not to accept government funding to maintain their independence, Chiu said.
People in the field say that media literacy regarding fake news and the digital environment is gradually increasing at the forefront.
“In the past, everyone used to throw bottles and cans in the trash, but now separating them is the same as being done throughout social education,” Chiu said. “Everyone has to develop this awareness slowly, and this takes time.”
In the United States, government efforts to denounce disinformation have themselves been politicized and criticized as government censorship and thought control.
The United States, which has a population more than 10 times that of Taiwan and has been highly polarized for years, has deep political and social fault lines within the country, creating the perfect conditions for disinformation to take root. This makes it difficult for governments to resist without facing unfair treatment. He was accused of censoring legitimate political views.
In the United States, for example, many of the narratives promoted by Russia have been eagerly adopted by domestic groups that distrust the government. Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly made similar claims about the United States, such as those made by Russian state media.
“There’s a dynamic in American politics that you don’t need to bring in divisive topics when it comes to Russia, China and Iran, because they’re already here,” said the former defense analyst and current national security expert. said Jim Rudess, who heads the Guarantee Council. Salve Regina University Pell Center for International Relations.
“The call is coming from inside the house,” he said, using a popular horror movie metaphor.
This momentum can also be seen in Taiwan. Presidential candidate Koh has publicly stated that he does not believe there was election fraud, but TPP lawmakers met on Wednesday to share a video of the miscount that had gone viral online. It turned out to be a mistake and called for greater compliance. to voting regulations.
The election passed without major crisis, but the challenges continue to evolve. China’s efforts against disinformation are becoming increasingly localized and sophisticated, according to DoubleThink Lab’s post-election analysis.
As an example, a Chinese-run Facebook page called C GaChuDao created a video describing an alleged affair in which a Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker had an affair with a woman of Chinese origin. Unlike in past years, when Chinese disinformation was easily recognized and the use of simplified Chinese characters and vocabulary was ridiculed, this video featured a man with a Taiwanese accent who spoke completely like a local. .
“When choosing a topic, they will choose something that exists in your society, so it will be relatively more persuasive,” Wu says.
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Wu reported from Bangkok. Associated Press writer Didi Tan contributed to this report.
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