I submitted that because combating disinformation is very important to protect the climate – and I think Taiwan has a smart strategy which could also used by well-known non-government organizations.
> A lot of, especially the elderly, have a difficulty telling disinformation apart from truly journalistic work, simply because the state-run media at the time was the only media and there was, frankly speaking, lots of propaganda around, so it’s not very easy to tell. For people who are born or educated after the lifting of the marital law, which is after the ’80s, they have a broad swathe of information sources to choose from. Our democracy, with the first presidential election in ’96, coincides with the World Wide Web, so people associate democracy with the democratization of information sources.
>
> **How do you counteract disinformation?**
>
> Disinformation is a threat, especially for open societies.
>
> Especially around Taiwan lots of jurisdictions, not just PRC, use disinformation as an excuse for the state to do censorship. We don’t want to go there, because we still remember the martial law.
> First, before a propaganda campaign or disinformation spreads, we usually observe that there is a point where they are doing some kind of limited testing or A/B testing, and that’s before it became really popular. It’s just testing the meme, the variation, to see whether it would go viral, so to speak.
>
> Each of our ministries now has a team that is charged to say if we detect that there is a disinformation campaign going on, but before it reaches the masses, **they’re in charge to make within 60 minutes an equally or more convincing narrative**. That could be a short film, that could be a media card, that could a social media post. It could be the minister herself or himself doing a livestream. It could be our president going on a standup comedy show. It could be our deputy premier watching a livestream of a video game.
>
> Our observation is that if we do that, then most of the population reach this message like an inoculation before they reach the disinformation, and so that protects like a vaccination.
[ … ]
> The mainstream media, of course, then picks up this counter-narrative and then do a balanced report. What we have witnessed is that if we don’t come up with this counter-narrative and ready videos or films, or at least picture cards, then after six hours, that’s after a news cycle, it’s hopeles
> Tang, a software programmer who emerged from the hacker community, sat with CPJ last week in Taipei to talk about how Taiwan tries to maintain the integrity of its media and democratic system in the face of a much larger adversary – China – that severely controls its own media and has the means potentially to sow havoc in Taiwan’s open system.
Covid 19 deniers and anti-vaxxers, election deniers, January 6th insurrection liars and now climate change deniers. So many bad “actors” have dangerously used “mis” and “dis” information, successfully muddying the waters of truth and causing irrefutable damage to our entire society. They’ve managed to spread their false narratives far and wide around the globe. I’m deeply worried we won’t stop it in time. It’s been difficult to remain optimistic lately.
4 comments
I submitted that because combating disinformation is very important to protect the climate – and I think Taiwan has a smart strategy which could also used by well-known non-government organizations.
> A lot of, especially the elderly, have a difficulty telling disinformation apart from truly journalistic work, simply because the state-run media at the time was the only media and there was, frankly speaking, lots of propaganda around, so it’s not very easy to tell. For people who are born or educated after the lifting of the marital law, which is after the ’80s, they have a broad swathe of information sources to choose from. Our democracy, with the first presidential election in ’96, coincides with the World Wide Web, so people associate democracy with the democratization of information sources.
>
> **How do you counteract disinformation?**
>
> Disinformation is a threat, especially for open societies.
>
> Especially around Taiwan lots of jurisdictions, not just PRC, use disinformation as an excuse for the state to do censorship. We don’t want to go there, because we still remember the martial law.
> First, before a propaganda campaign or disinformation spreads, we usually observe that there is a point where they are doing some kind of limited testing or A/B testing, and that’s before it became really popular. It’s just testing the meme, the variation, to see whether it would go viral, so to speak.
>
> Each of our ministries now has a team that is charged to say if we detect that there is a disinformation campaign going on, but before it reaches the masses, **they’re in charge to make within 60 minutes an equally or more convincing narrative**. That could be a short film, that could be a media card, that could a social media post. It could be the minister herself or himself doing a livestream. It could be our president going on a standup comedy show. It could be our deputy premier watching a livestream of a video game.
>
> Our observation is that if we do that, then most of the population reach this message like an inoculation before they reach the disinformation, and so that protects like a vaccination.
[ … ]
> The mainstream media, of course, then picks up this counter-narrative and then do a balanced report. What we have witnessed is that if we don’t come up with this counter-narrative and ready videos or films, or at least picture cards, then after six hours, that’s after a news cycle, it’s hopeles
> Tang, a software programmer who emerged from the hacker community, sat with CPJ last week in Taipei to talk about how Taiwan tries to maintain the integrity of its media and democratic system in the face of a much larger adversary – China – that severely controls its own media and has the means potentially to sow havoc in Taiwan’s open system.
Covid 19 deniers and anti-vaxxers, election deniers, January 6th insurrection liars and now climate change deniers. So many bad “actors” have dangerously used “mis” and “dis” information, successfully muddying the waters of truth and causing irrefutable damage to our entire society. They’ve managed to spread their false narratives far and wide around the globe. I’m deeply worried we won’t stop it in time. It’s been difficult to remain optimistic lately.