Thank you for your time. My name is Rino Nugroho. I’m from Sebelas Maret University in Indonesia. Today, I have a research with my colleague, Professor Liao, from NSYSU and my colleague as well in UNS and assistant at NSYSU, Galan.

I would like to know more about misinformation and disinformation. You already read of the informed consent. You agree to do this interview, am I right?

Yes, you are right.

This is part of the…

…100 percent correct.

This is part of the…

True.

Thank you.

Just ask the questions.

No disputes.

Take it easy, take it easy. Minister is really nice. Don’t worry, he’s not a typical…

I’m not going to evade any of the questions. I understand I can opt out of questions, but I will answer each and every one. Go ahead.

The first thing that I want to ask is how do you know about misinformation or disinformation and fake news?

We don’t use the term fake news here in the administration. We talk about disinformation, which is intentional untruth that cause public harm. That’s disinformation. If it’s unintentional, then it’s just misinformed.

Why do you not mention fake news?

In Mandarin, news, 新聞, and journalism, 新聞業, share the same word. There’s no way to say fake news without offending journalists in Mandarin. We don’t have two words for news and journalism. It’s the same word. Journalism is literally “news work.”

If we say fake news, 假新聞, then it sounds like we’re accusing journalists of wrongdoing. Because both my parents are journalists, out of filial piety, 孝道, I cannot use the term fake news.

I get the idea of it.

That’s very interesting.

That’s interesting terminology. Usually, there are some literature saying fake news. In my country, they also say fake news is…

That’s right, but in one of the UN reports that I read, they also crossed the term fake news and switched to disinformation. Nowadays, when we talk about the disinformation crisis, we also call it a infodemic. That’s something that’s new this year because of the pandemic.

Sorry again, but it’s part of the process of the interview. What is your position right now that may affect or affected by the disinformation or misinformation?

A lot of the work that we are doing is based on the idea of people, public, private partnership. That is to say the social sector will set the norm. For example, countering coronavirus, we would need the social sector to get a norm of wearing mask and washing hands. If the social norm is not established, top-down actions doesn’t quite work, and we know that around the world.

The same holds for the infodemic, just as it’s for the pandemic. It requires a communally recognized norm. For example, during the elections, it needs to be a norm that all the candidates need to disclose their campaign donation and expenditure for independent journalists to analyze. That’s a norm.

If people do not hold that as a norm, then no amount of top-down action will get the dark patterns, the people who spread disinformation during election campaign to discourage people from voting, to undermine the trust in the democratic process and so on.

All that requires a strong social sector norm to be set around the democratic process. That’s why I always put people first in people, public, private partnership.

Triple P.

Yeah, PPPP, people first, then public sector, then private sector, and then partnership.

Interesting.

This is my position.

PPPP, you follow that.

Yeah. Is it right if I say that, in combating the disinformation, you in Taiwan using social engineering? Like you said before, you creating the norm instead of just top-down?

Yeah, but I wouldn’t call it engineering. Social engineering has a meaning in cybersecurity. That means to essentially counterfeit somebody’s identity, so that’s what you mean by social engineering. Again, to avoid ambiguity, we use a social-sector-first approach.

Social sector first approach?

Yeah. The social sector is variously called voluntary sector, third sector, or civic sector. There’s many term for this idea. We say social sector because it points to the social innovation, which is part of my work. We use the social innovation from the social sector to tackle issues of social media. [laughs] Then it’s the same prefix in all those components.

I would also say that the Taiwan model of social-sector-first approach also means that the legitimacy of social-sector actors is higher than that of public sector and the private sector, for example the Executive Yuan or Facebook. Both have a lower legitimacy compared to social sector organizations. I think that’s correct and that needs to be the case.

That’s interesting. If you say the social sector, who would be in the social sector if you identify them?

For example, there is this idea that professional journalists can serve in a non-partisan way to fact-check existing messages. In Taiwan, for example, that’s the Taiwan Fact-Check Center, which is part of the International Fact-Checking Network, the IFCN.

Because it’s voluntary, it solves a common problem, and anyone can contribute. That fits the definition of social sector. Certain, the TFCC is not a business in the private sector. Neither are they a extension of the administration, so they are not part of the public sector. I would refer to the TFCC, for example, as a social-sector actor.

TFCC is like a crowd concept? People will try to do the fact-check rather than…

They have full-time staff, but the funding is based on small-scale crowd funding. They don’t accept donation from political parties, politicians, or the public sector.

They’re trying to be free from all of those.

That’s right, so they could be neutral when it comes to fact-checking.

That’s interesting. That is the strategy, the social sector first?

Yes.

Do you think it is difficult to handle that? In some countries, doing that kind of approach having difficulties as well. At some point, they become partisan, they become opposition, or they become government supporters.

Cannot be trusted by the public.

How can they be trusted by…

That’s exactly right. More than one fact-checker is essential. For example, MyGoPen, which is another International Fact-Check Network member in Taiwan, they can fact-check some time, but the TFCC may have a different view on the same thing.

The more people join and participate as essentially part-time fact-checkers, the more the fact-checkers themselves will be held to account when it comes to transparency and accountability. Participatory accountability is very important to support the social sector.

That holds true for everyone in Taiwan’s social sector. Their legitimacy, why is it high? That is because everyone can participate and hold them accountable in the process.

That’s interesting.

What made this kind of fact-check…

In Taiwan, members of IFCN is just MyGoPen and TFCC. There are also other non-IFCN-accredited fact-checking groups available. For example, the Cofacts project from g0v is not a IFCN member, but it is trusted by many. Cofacts also partners, for example, with Trend Micro, which is Taiwan’s leading antivirus company. That’s one example.

There’s a company called Whoscall in Taiwan that does fraud detection for caller identification and so on, but they are not a IFCN…

Fact-check.

They’re not a IFCN member, but they do have a chat bot that partners with Cofacts for fact-checking and scam detection purposes. It’s called Meiyu 美玉姨, Aunt Meiyu.

Whoscall and Meiyu are not IFCN members.

According to your opinion, apart from the COVID-19, what is the most threatening of disinformation in Taiwan.

At the moment, of course, we are between a presidential election and the referenda. It’s alternating years, a presidential election, and then the next year, a referendum and the national referendum. The next year will be mayoral election, then referendum, then election, then referendum. It’s on this zigzag, tick-tock…not that TikTok.

…tempo. Every time we are approaching one particular referenda or one particular election, the disinformation concerning those referenda topics will start to grow.

The reason is that people already pay attention to these topics, so the likelihood of people sharing some unconfirmed piece of information increases because people would, of course, want to share something of a timely and pressing topic to their friends and families to inform them better on the election or on the referenda.

The topic that is the most trending depends on, because we’re in the referendum year this year, the ongoing referendum signatures. These trending referendum topics, of course, also become [snaps] a more shareable ground for disinformation.

You said before that you understand that the disinformation, they tend to be high during election or during referendum.

In the months leading up to an election or referenda, all up to the date itself. During the election day, for example, we also had disinformation that tried to discredit the voting process saying there’s invisible ink printed by CIA or something like that.

That’s similar to us.

Of course, we dispelled that. During our counting, YouTubers can look at the counting because we allow recording devices, and we only use paper ballots. During that time, all the different parties’ members can use an app. It may be called 英眼部隊 or 穿雲箭, or some other app to, in real time, tally the counting process and report any unusual circumstances.

The public trust in those counting process is higher than the agents that spread the disinformation about the election process, which is why, by and large, and thanks to a contribution to TFCN and so on, by the election day, the clarification message has already spread to more people than the disinformation that tried to attack the voting process.

On the week afterward, the conspiracy theories and so on just die down. Our presidential election this time is pretty well-guarded by the citizens’ participation in the counting process. Again, that’s a case for participatory accountability.

Interestingly, how do you know that there’s some issues going up and some issues going down? Are you having something that is…

If you look at the dashboard in the LINE company, they show such a trend, and it’s public.

You use the same data?

Yeah. Anyone can long-press a message in LINE into an encrypted messaging platform to report trending disinformation. Like this many people have reported this many likely disinformation. This shows the trendiness of such disinformations at this very moment.

Just to clarify, before disinformation is spread, you predict that, and then you give another…

A clarification.

…a clarification before the disinformation.

It’s already trending on certain groups…

It’s already trending?

…in the LINE platform. Because they are end-to-end encrypted, you can’t find them with a Google search or something. Between the time the that it gets trending on selected LINE groups to the time that it gets trending on public media or on public social media, this is the period that we need to work a clarification message. We’re already aware of it, but it has not yet affected a majority of the population.

Very interesting. One of the way to fight the disinformation is just giving all the story before the fake news be observed. I think that’s the best strategy to use.

Yeah, but, of course, the clarification that we give also need to be trending. It also need to be viral. Our approach is called humor over rumor, making sure that our clarification messages are humorous so people will share it.

Interesting.

Humor over rumor, very interesting term.

Research also tells that usually disinformation spread using humor. You use humor to clarify the…

Exactly, yes.

Can you give a example how humor over rumor…?

For example, this is a very cute…

…Shiba Inu. This is called Zongchai. It’s a Shiba Inu. It’s a dog. The dog lives with the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s participation officer so that any time there’s a rumor about the pandemic, the dog can go out and clarify.

For example, the dog can also remind you to cover your mouth and nose when sneezing, so don’t do this. Then, when we introduce physical distancing rules, there’s many different versions, different messages. People were not sure how to observe the physical distancing. I just said 1.5 meters, but it’s not easy to remember.

The clarification messages says, “If you’re indoor, keep three Shiba Inu away,” and I can mentally picture three dogs between us. [laughs] If you’re outdoor, you have to keep two Shiba Inu away or wear a mask. That’s a funny clarification.

That’s funny.

Can you pass this to us? That’s a kind of a…

Of course.

[laughs]

Thank you.

A great example. [laughs]

Yeah, the Shiba Inu is very cute. It’s called Zongchai.

Zongchai is a Mandarin pronunciation. In Mandarin, we say 總柴, similar to Zongchai. It’s a trusted…

It’s a word play by itself. It sounds similar to 總裁, a Shiba Inu.

This particular Shiba Inu dog, this particular dog has the name Zongchai, and “Zongcai” means CEO.

Trusted CEO.

Right.

It’s like the chief dog.

It’s similar as the…

The chief Shiba Inu. That’s a wordplay. Even the name of the dog is part of the humor.

Interesting.

Who made this kind of a humor…

The participation officer in the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

I heard about them.

The PO literally lives with this dog.

All they need to do is to go back home, which is quite close to the Ministry, and take new pictures. They don’t even need to pay for Shutterstock or some other photo.

Thank you. For the next question, do you think that disinformation have a special purpose here in Taiwan?

Have a what?

Have a purpose.

Each disinformation, because it’s intentional untruth for public harm, has a different intention. The intention varies, so each disinformation have a very different purpose.

Can you name a few you feel is…

Of course. For example, there was a disinformation that says killing a police in Hong Kong earns young people $20 million. That’s intentional. It’s not true. It causes harm. This was trending last November, right before our presidential election, probably because the person or the group who spread this disinformation understood that this will become the deciding issue in our presidential election.

They want to preemptively paint the Hong Kong protesters as riotous so that it will not be a factor in our presidential election. They back it up with photo, like this photo. Actually, this photo was from Reuters, and the Reuters photo said nothing about paying anything or about murdering police. It has a very neutral caption that says there are young people in the protests. That’s all it says.

However, the disinformation switch to a very different caption, but retaining the same photo. This is intentional, and it causes harm. The Taiwan Fact-Check Center traced the first poster of this message. It is the Weibo account of the Zhongyang Zhengfawei, Chang’an Jian, the Communist Party’s political and law unit. It’s not covert. It’s overt. It’s posted publicly on their Weibo.

Interestingly, this makes the round in Taiwanese social media but not in Hong Kong. This is very interesting when it comes to the intention. We would say, of course, the purpose seems likely to try to make Hong Kong a non-issue for the Taiwanese presidential election. That seems to be the intention of this disinformation, but I have not talked to Chang’an Jian, so I cannot confirm that it’s their true intention.

How do we deal with that?

We use a tactic called notice and public notice. Whenever you want to share this mis-captioned photo on, say, Facebook, you can still share it, but it shows a public notice, “According to the TFCC, this information is a disinformation that was first posted by the Chinese Communist Party’s Chang’an Jian Weibo account.”

You’re not forced to take down anything. We’re not taking down anything, but whenever this is making the rounds, everyone sees this public attribution that this is essentially state-sponsored propaganda.

Who did this, TFCC? Who did all of those…

The TFCC provided the fact-check. If you want to see how it is done, you can look at the TFCC website and search for the 204. The 204th fact-check that they did is this particular one, just one example.

In that case, is it right if I say that the disinformation comes from outside the country?

There are also disinformation that comes from inside the country. For example, there was another disinformation at this time this year, on this February, that says, “We’re running out of masks. The only way to get a mask is to share this message and leave your contact information.”

That’s, of course, not true. This, of course, incites a kind of panic in the persons that they share. The TFCC people actually shared this and left their contact info, but they didn’t receive a box of masks as promised.

[laughs]

Obviously, it is disinformation and probably just to scam people, to get people’s contact emails and know that they are more likely suspect to scams. This probably is domestic. This probably is not something that comes from outside of the country.

Which one is more dominant? Is it outside or inside the country?

Can’t say that as a generic response. It all depends on particular agenda. Also depends on how close it is to the presidential election. [laughs]

In terms of presidential election, some countries also have the echo chambers effect where each of the supporters have entrusted their own links and so forth. Is it happens as well here?

Of course. According to independent media who actually interviewed the people who goes to the rally of the presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu, presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen, surprisingly, they have a lot more in common than they thought.

Both camps believe in deepening democratization, and both camps believe in connecting more with international community. It’s just either camp, although knowing this is important, accuse the other camp of not doing this enough, but the values are the same.

How about COVID-19, specifically? Are there any disinformation that is still going until now?

Now, probably not. I already shared the one about the mask shortage thing.

It’s for early 2020.

It was in February. Around the same time, there was a lot of disinformation like, in County X or Town X in Taiwan, there’s a lot of corpses that are being hidden by the local authorities, with some photo from some zombie movies and things like that. They stopped trending long ago.

I would say during the height of the pandemic, there’s some disinformation. Since we are essentially post-COVID since May, the kind of disinformation…It trends on the idea of people actually caring about this. The same message will not make people share it.

If you want share a message that says, “In County X, there’s 10,000 people dying of COVID, and it’s being hidden by the local municipal mayor,” this may make it very sensational back in February or March, but it makes no dent in public awareness here because people understand it’s not very unlikely to be the case.

About that, what do you think is more prevalent in terms of the reason triggering the spread of COVID-19 fake news or other disinformation? Some researchers found that there are three, at least. Interpersonal relationship, I mean by saying here, if I close to you, then I tend to trust you more than the government or more than other sources.

Or the issue relevance. Let’s say COVID-19 in February will be fairly…

Exactly, more relevant than now.

…trustable. Sometimes the disinformation getting spread wider because the personal efficacy. Here, if someone just don’t care about it, “I don’t care about this. I don’t have any issues about that, and I don’t care about it.” Which one is more dominant in here?

I think the main thing is none of the three. The main thing is the emotional tone of the message. All the example I just shared with you evoke a sense of outrage. In Taiwan, we call this outrage directed to a specific person or to specific people as 出征, going on an expedition.

Meaning that people would seek some sort of revenge or discrimination out of a perceived injustice that evokes the sense of outrage. The more that the disinformation travels on this shared sense of vengeful outrage, the more likely that it will spread.

It’s common to use scare tactics in spreading disinformation?

Yeah, but also outrage, meaning that there need to be a clearly identified wrong. For example, paying young people to murder police is wrong, so we need to share the message to support law for police. This is outrage.

In some countries, there are some issues with disinformation and democracy. How do you perceive this in Taiwan?

In Taiwan, we think that, if we counter disinformation, we must not make a U-turn back to the martial law days where the government can censor unwelcome speech from the civil society, from the social sector. Well, in the martial law, there was no social sector. [laughs] There was just some civil society individuals because they were not allowed to form a coalition. [laughs]

We really don’t want to make this U-turn, which is why this social problem need to be solved by the social sector with social innovation. The more that we encourage, like notice and public notice, which makes it more social, rather than take-down, which makes it more anti-social. All the prosocial efforts organized by the social sector is to be preferred because it makes the democratic system more democratic.

On the other hand, the antisocial ways, for example, a forced take-down, will essentially divide the population into the people who believe in such a take-down and the people who do not believe in such a take-down. Every time something authoritarian is done, the society become more polarized and less democratic.

We will often intentionally not do any of those take-downs or any of those top-down approaches, but rather rely on the social sector who may be seen as more indirect. Actually, it’s more empowering.

In some countries, they believe that using that kind of social-sector approach or similar to like that, using that takes time to do that. Does it…

It’s more indirect.

Yes, indirect. That’s why, in some countries, they’re doing the top-down approach.

Of course, but you can compare that to a lockdown. The lockdown is very effective the first time around, but once the lockdown is longer in time or if you repeatedly do lockdown, then it cause a fatigue. People don’t want to comply any more because the more you do it, the more people feel restricted.

The first time around, of course, it’s very effective. I’m not disputing that, but the marginal return will be diminishing over time. On the other hand, if we just rely on people sharing cute dog pictures and reminding each other to wear a mask to protect against your own unwashed hands, this maybe looks slow at first.

Because it’s people’s own idea, it’s social innovation, it doesn’t rely on any lockdown. Eventually, it will empower the civil society so that the social sector will be able then to remind each other to not only wear mask but be very innovative in promoting pink, rainbow, the flag of the country, or many other [laughs] design of medical masks. It becomes a statement of fashion. If you do a top-down lockdown, none of this innovation will be possible.

Interesting. In terms of infodemics, we’ve done some research on some countries using the website, and then we took from…What we call the website?

The…

I forget the name of the website. We look at some countries, and Taiwan one of them. The only three countries that use fact-checkers provided by government regarding the infodemics, and Taiwan is not one of them.

Yeah, because the Taiwan Fact-Check Center or MyGoPen are not government entities.

You use the same strategy in the infodemics?

It’s not run by the government.

Not from the government, so let the TFCC do that.

Exactly.

It’s not part of official sector.

The name of the website is Worldometers.

Worldometers, yeah.

Social sector.

Any other questions from you all?

I do have a question. I really appreciated the social-sector-first approach but, in our society, not to mention other country yet, actually, it’s an imbalance, the power relation between society and the state.

I know.

You know. State is always stronger so far. You are the strongest social leaders in the past, but right now, you are in government. [laughs] This imbalance of relationship between the state and the society, if the government intentionally distribute disinformation, what the social…

Then it makes it very hard for the social sector to clarify it.

What can social sector do? We really encounter this kind of problem. [laughs]

This is a issue faced by pretty much all the countries. Sometimes, the government itself send misinformation. It may not be intentionally false, but it is false. The government is misinformed. Just because it is a government statement, it becomes very difficult for independent fact-checkers to fact-check the government.

On the other hand, if they are state-sponsored, they don’t even have this opportunity in the first place. Just saying very difficult for the TFCC to fact-check the government doesn’t mean that TFCC can’t fact-check the government. It’s just difficult.

We can actually look at the TFCC portfolio about the information. It’s very interesting because the government has also been fact-checked and then changed, clarified, or retracted previous statements that are fact-checked as not true. If you analyze the entire TFCC report, these incidents are in single digits. It’s not known to happen much, but it did happen.

A recent example of it actually happening and the government changing its messages, saying, “We were misinformed. We got it wrong,” was about a beef noodle thing, which, of course, Professor Liao can fill in on the details.

[laughs] Yeah, literally.

Then the premier did apologize by admitting that the initial source of information was not the case. That did happen, but these are in the single digits, meaning that it does not happen often. The professor’s point is well-taken; it takes courage and a lot of resolve for independent fact-checkers to call on the government’s mistakes. That is true.

I have a question. Also learning from the examples from my country, basically, the ministry that is responsible to counter the disinformation during the pandemic times is the Minister of Health and…

Welfare.

…Welfare here in Taiwan? Or, is there any coordination with other special bodies or ministries that also can collaborate together?

Mainly, it’s MOHW.

The Minister of Information is maybe assisting on the progress of the mechanisms or mainly just done by one ministry?

No, because COVID, no matter whether it’s about the counter-COVID strategy or whether it’s about the welfare, like recovering, that’s health and welfare. Both are within the MOHW. It is mostly just because the MOHW encompasses pretty much all counter-COVID processes.

It’s not that only they do counter-disinformation. Other ministries do counter-disinformation as well. It just so happens that COVID is mostly about health and welfare.

Thank you very much, minister. In our case, the responsibility is taken care of by a certain task force that especially established only for counter the COVID and the pandemic.

Every ministry has the right to counter the disinformation?

They have a obligation.

How they do that? They use their official accounts, LINE or Twitter?

Yes, or Facebook, Instagram, or whatever. The clarification messages, they are government-produced. There’s no copyright, so anyone can just copy it. Actually, they’re designed to be copied, like the cute dog picture. Anyone can translate it into your language.

Actually, it has been translated voluntarily too. [laughs] We even design the card to. Instead of overlaying text with photo, which makes it hard to translate…

…we make sure that it’s easily translatable.

Any more questions? You?

Not for the formal interview.

Not for the formal interview?

Not into the recorder.

It comes to the last questions. We have talked much about disinformation in Taiwan. Do you have any other issues regarding the disinformation that not covered in our interview before…

You want to share with the…

…that you want to share with me?

…Indonesia country? We need to write a report. [laughs]

Or your perception on other?

Why not? There is a interesting development this year that combines the cybersecurity attack and the disinformation operation together. In the Taiwan Fact-Check Center, if you search for Team T5 and Taiwan Fact-Check Center, you see the report. This is in Mandarin, but, of course, you can machine translate it.

What this is saying is that the advanced, persistent threats – essentially state-sponsored, black-hat hackers – are now helping the disinformation organizers to create fake accounts that makes all sort of cybersecurity-related disinformation. It’s both to shield the disinformation actors from being identified as, well, professionals.

Also, it is to combine the cybersecurity threat profile. People, if they buy into the disinformation, it makes them more susceptible for phishing attacks, for cybersecurity attacks. These two become intertwined. This is a pretty comprehensive report that was just published last month. I will suggest you to look into it.

Team T5?

Yeah, Team T5, and it’s in the Taiwan Fact-Check Center website.

Any issues about deep fake so far in Taiwan?

In Taiwan, we already have this thing called animated news, or 動新聞, for a very long time. [laughs] People I guess are more resilient…

…against the synthetic video because…

…it’s pioneered in Taiwan.

Thank you, Madame Minister, for you time.

Thank you, sure.

It’s my pleasure. Thank you for this opportunity to have this kind of interview. I have some new issues that can be enlightening in some way. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I turn off my recorder from now.

Yes.