Much like how 2016 was a watershed moment in U.S. politics due to the influence of social media on the presidential election, Taiwan’s political world was shaken in 2018 by the role of social media in the midterm elections and the death of a diplomat. As described in greater detail within this report, the suicide of Su Chii-cherng and the election of Han Kuo-yu as Kaoshiung’s mayor (the first Kuomintang candidate to win the seat since 1998) were strongly suspected to be the result of disinformation campaigns conducted by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). 

After these two shocking incidents, there was a groundswell of action across Taiwan within both the government and civil society. The result was not that disinformation in Taiwan ceased to exist but rather that its influence decreased. To what degree, it is hard to say, but the successful 2020 presidential election suggests that the combined actions by the government and civil society were effective. 

Many reports on how Taiwan counters disinformation focus on identifying who the malign actors are, what false information they deploy, and how that information is disseminated. Rightly so, it is important to understand how harmful information is weaponized and spread. What has been less examined, however, is the approach that Taiwan’s government took to counter disinformation, and how those policies interacted with the responses by civil society. What approach has Taiwan employed, and can it be replicated elsewhere? This report, written by Shih-Shiuan Kao, a legal researcher at Doublethink Lab, and coordinated by the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) while I had the privilege of managing the Taiwan portfolio, seeks to answer those questions.