The University of Nottingham's Taiwan Studies Programme presents Democracy Dialogue- confidence, election, and information manipulation in Taiwan.
Monday 20 February 2023
Lunch 12.30 to 1.30pm, talk 1.30 to 3pm, B07 Hemsley Building, University Park, Hybrid event
Democracy has faced various challenges worldwide. Taiwan, as a buoyant democracy in East Asia, faced and will face similar challenges along with many democracies in the world.
The aim of this hybrid seminar is to ask three challenging questions that Taiwan has faced, namely:
- Do people feel confident about democratic governance?
- What’s the status of information manipulation in Taiwan?
- Do people trust government in and after Covid pandemic?
The discussion of this seminar takes Taiwan as a case, mirrors these challenges to other countries, in the hope to find better solutions to those challenges.
Speakers
- Billion Lee, Co-founder of Cofacts
- Tim Niven, Research Lead of Double Think Lab
- Dr Chun-yi Lee and Weixiang Wang, along with Professor Yishin Hsu and Dr Ya-Ting Yang, Taipei Medical University on the project of Public Policy in A Time of Crisis: Comparing British and Taiwanese government responses to Covid-19
Host: Dr Chun-yi Lee, Taiwan Studies Programme, University of Nottingham, Nia-chia Chen and Jane Yeh
Billion co-founded Cofacts in 2016. In this open-source project, Cofacts has been combating disinformation in a grass-rooted way. She has organized an over 2000 contributors' fact checking community and collected over 100k different suspicions disseminated articles. She has been lecturers among different communities and working on global network. Was awarded a fellowship for open data & disinformation professional fellows program to USA supported by State department.
Cofacts is an AI chatbot project that combines collaborative fact-checking and a chatbot in closed messaging app LINE, which has over 90% of market share in Taiwan. It consists of a chatbot, a website, and a crowd-sourced database. LINE users can forward any suspicious message and get an immediate response of fact-checking results right inside the closed messaging app. On the other hand, the Cofacts website displays all the user-reported messages, and enables fact-checkers to “reply” the messages; these replies will become part of the chatbot’s automatic response. The database, comprised of user-reported messages and crowd source contributed “replies”, is opened for anyone to access to maximize interoperability and form a “Cofacts ecosystem”.
Tim Niven, Research Lead of Double Think Lab
Tim is a computational social scientist by training, he has been working with Doublethink Lab for over three years. In his current role as Research Lead, Tim oversees all aspects of our research. He also led projects that apply current technology to the study of PRC information warfare.
Doublethink Lab (Doublethink) is a civil society organization devoted to studying the malign influence of digital authoritarianism. Doublethink’s strengths lie in the ability to combine a diverse set of research approaches in the social, behavioural, and computational sciences to study state-funded propaganda campaigns, psychological warfare, and related information operations. Doublethink seeks to foster global networks connecting academics, democracy movements, digital communities, like-minded CSOs, and experts on the People’s Republic of China, in order to strengthen global democratic resilience.
In 2019, Doublethink Lab and its partners established the China In The World (CITW) network to bring together stakeholders researching the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s global influence and disinformation strategies. CITW aims to support and unite these stakeholders, improve global and regional awareness of related challenges, and strengthen democratic resilience worldwide. CITW oversees publication of the China Index, the first cross-regional initiative to measure and compare the PRC’s influence in various countries.
Dr Chun-yi Lee and Weixiang Wang, along with Professor Yishin Hsu and Dr Ya-Ting Yang, Taipei Medical University on the project of Public Policy in A Time of Crisis: Comparing British and Taiwanese government responses to Covid-19
Weixiang Wang is a PhD candidate at The University of Nottingham, School of Politics and International Relations
Professor Elsa Yishin Hsu is a Professor School of Health Care Administration, Taipei Medical University
Dr Ya-Ting Yang is Adjunct Assistive Professor, General Education Center, Taipei Medical University
About the hosts
Nai-chia Chen, has worked as a research fellow for Taiwan’s leading LGBT+ rights Organisation, Taiwan Equality Campaign, between 2019 to 2021. Nai-chia also worked in the Legislative Yuan as a parliamentary staff and served as Press Officer for one of the political parties in Taiwan from 2016 to 2018. She holds an MSc in International Politics from SOAS, University of London.
Jane Yeh, has an International Economy and Politics background, with a MA degree in International Relations. She has worked as a management associate in an Investment Banking department, participating in Mergers & Acquisitions and Private Equity (PE) projects. Her thesis focussed on China’s Foreign direct investment (FDI) in European Union and its effect on EU-Chia relations.
Dr Chun-yi Lee, Director of Taiwan Studies Program, University of Nottingham