Event Description:
The Global Taiwan Institute invites you to a public seminar titled “Combating Fake News and Disinformation in Taiwan.” During the controversial pension reforms debate in Taiwan, netizens and users of a popular messaging application on the island began to see a flood of messages and websites that carried false claims about the central government’s plans. Taiwan’s national security apparatuses revealed that a growing volume of disinformation are the products of “content farms” from China. While remaining a closed society, China is exploiting the openness and transparency of Taiwan’s democratic and economic system to interfere in the island’s democratic politics and also elsewhere. How is Taiwan’s civil society responding these challenges? What lessons can other countries draw from Taiwan’s experience? What are the prospects for an international response to this common challenge? This event is the fifth installment of the Civil Society and Democracy Series, which is partially funded by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.
Doors will open at 11:30. A light lunch will be served, and the event will begin at 12:00. Kindly RSVP by October 25. Please, direct questions or concerns to Program Associate Marzia Borsoi-Kelly at mborsoikelly@globaltaiwan.
**Media: Please contact Marzia Borsoi-Kelly at mborsoikelly@globaltaiwan.
Panelists:
Johnson Liang is a web developer and an open-source civic tech supporter. He cofounded Cofacts, an online experimental platform in Taiwan that conducts collaborative fact-checking, in mid-2016. Johnson is involved in several projects to facilitate greater civic participation in Taiwan’s democracy.
Nick Monaco is a lead IFTF Research Affiliate. He is also an affiliate researcher at the Computational Propaganda Project at the University of Oxford, and a former research associate at Google’s think-tank and technology incubator, Jigsaw. He holds an MS in Computational Linguistics from the University of Washington. His research interests include the political use of social media bots, online disinformation, foreign affairs and linguistics. He has published papers on these issues in several academic venues and commentary publication such as Fortune and TechCrunch.
Billion Lee co-founded Cofacts in mid-2016 and contributed around 80 percent of the database’s content. Billion volunteers at a social welfare center and is concerned with social issues, public policy, and believes everyone has the ability to change the world and make it better.
Rachael Burton is the Deputy Director at the Project 2049 Institute where she manages the Institute’s research and program development. She received her BA in International Affairs with a minor in Chinese at the George Washington University, where she studied nontraditional security in East and Southeast Asia. Prior to joining the Institute, Rachael spent two years as a Teach for China fellow, where she taught secondary school English at a remote rural village in China’s Yunnan Province. She has worked briefly at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy and the National Bureau of Asian Research, where she supported events and outreach development, and conducted research on energy security and U.S. engagement with ASEAN. She currently conducts research and analysis on the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign policy, U.S.-Taiwan relations, and U.S. policy towards Burma (Myanmar). Rachael is a U.S. citizen born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand. She reads and speaks Chinese.
The Civil Society and Democracy series will continue throughout the year and focus on various topics relating to Taiwan’s democracy and human rights. The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy is a non-profit, non-partisan organization and is the first national democracy assistance foundation to be established in Asia, and is devoted to strengthening democracy and human rights in Taiwan and abroad.