Lin Tsing-hong, researcher and data engineer at IORG, Taiwan Information Environment Research Center.

(Photo by reporter Cong Changjin)

[Reporter Wu Shuwei/Taipei Report] China continues to carry out cognitive warfare and information manipulation against Taiwan. The "Taiwan Information Environment Research Center (IORG)", which specializes in disinformation, pointed out today that the two main axes of China's information manipulation of Taiwan this year are " "War" and "epidemic", related manipulations may affect Taiwan's elections, and by shaping the negative image of Taiwan's democratic governance and democratic allies, it will further affect the perception of the people of Taiwan.

The Taiwan Information Environment Research Center held the "IORG 2022 "Democratic Resilience Forum" at National Taiwan University today, inviting relevant scholars and think tank personnel to attend the meeting; IORG data engineer Lin Tinghong pointed out that IORG has collected 8 million Facebook Chinese fan posts this year, 6,000 Taiwanese News, 2,000 China-Taiwan official and official media articles, 800,000 Weibo articles, and 50,000 Douyin videos were analyzed.

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Lin Tinghong mentioned that after collecting so much data, IORG finally found that "war" and "epidemic" are the two main axes of information manipulation this year. Information manipulation of "war" and "epidemic" may affect voters' perception of the candidate's image , and then to affect the voting results, and these two aspects also found traces of China's participation.

In response to the manipulation of "war" information, Lin Tinghong pointed out that it refers to the Ukrainian-Russian war that began in February and the issue of China's military exercises against Taiwan after the U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August. China's propaganda here is "Ukraine Provoke Russia, so war broke out, Taiwan should not provoke China", "The United States is not credible, and will eventually abandon Taiwan", "China's military exercises, the Reagan escaped."

As for the information manipulation of the "epidemic", Lin Tinghong analyzed that China used this to promote that China's "dynamic clearing" is more humane than the West's "lay flat coexistence", and the argument of "don't get vaccinated" that has been promoted since 2021, saying that the government is trying to It is beneficial to vaccine manufacturers, and is not limited to domestic vaccines.

As for how information is manipulated in elections, Lin Tinghong said that through interviews, literature review and data science research methods, information manipulation uses "problematic information" to affect governance performance, political party identification, candidate image, public issues, information environment, etc. factors that affect election results.

Regarding the observation of this year’s Nine-in-One General Election, Lin Tinghong mentioned, “In general, the election situation on social media platforms is relatively cold, and the popularity of news is higher than that of previous elections.” This makes the influence of the news even higher than before, and the popularity of dissemination is concentrated. On Liudu and Gao Hongan.

Through data collection, IORG analyzed the domains of election posts on Facebook. Most of the top 20 are news websites of major domestic media, but the second place is the content farm website "Mixun", and the third place is Youtube.

According to Lin Tinghong’s analysis, the content farm “Mixun” reproduced the communication situation of the 2018 election, and even surpassed the dissemination situation at that time. “Mixun” was the second most frequently shared website for pan-blue fans four years ago, and this year it has become the overall Second place, and "Secret News" was exposed by the media in 2019 for its pro-China background, and more than half of the content in the four months before the election came from "China Times News Network".

Regarding the impact of content farm news, Lin Tinghong pointed out that although these articles may not be read by anyone, they will become an algorithm that affects Facebook and increase the follow-up popularity of specific issues. Let the relevant discussion spread.