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<title>How Taiwan Fact Checking Groups Response To The Epidemic - Doublethink Lab</title>
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<h2>How Taiwan Fact Checking Groups Response To The Epidemic</h2>
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<b>Summer Chen</b><br>Chief Investigative Editor, Taiwan FactCheck Center, TFC</p>
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<h3>Interview</h3>
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<p class="txt"><b>Could you give us a brief introduction on the work TFC is doing?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">In November of 2018 TFC received certification from the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), and throughout 2019 we began cooperating with Google, Facebook, LINE and Yahoo. Prior to March 2020, TFC was the only IFCN member organization capable of monitoring false information in the Chinese-speaking world (in March MyGoPen also obtained IFCN certification). Following this year’s national elections here in Taiwan, we were still dealing with related false information as well as accepting interviews from international media on election campaign-related topics. On January 21, however, the president of IFCN sent a letter inquiring about the situation regarding eight rumors of coronavirus-related arrests (including Dr. Li Wenliang) in China. Together with IFCN we wrote a <a href="https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2020/the-2019-coronavirus-virus-lands-in-the-u-s-after-killing-17-and-taking-eight-to-prison/" target="_blank">report on the matter</a>. Right after we had handled this news, China’s Wuhan announced a lockdown of the city. Having experienced SARS and understanding China’s epidemic control methods--and with Wuhan a central transportation hub for all of China--we indicated to IFCN Associate Director, International Fact-Checking Network Cristina Tardáguila that this was no trivial matter. The next day, IFCN immediately sent a letter asking all members whether they would like to participate in a collaborative plan (<a href="https://www.poynter.org/coronavirusfactsalliance/" target="_blank">CoronaVirus Fact Alliance</a>). Within two days over 30 countries expressed willingness to participate, of which TFC was the first. In addition to IFCN members, participants also included uncertified but trustworthy partners, such as <a href="https://medium.com/annie-lab/annie-lab-jmsc-1e5dbb49cc1f">Annie Lab</a> led by Associate Professor Masato Kajimoto of the University of Hong Kong.</p>
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<p class="txt"><b>What was the working structure of this collaborative plan?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">We quickly set up a Slack work platform and shared Excel file, with fact-check reports filled in manually into designated fields. This form is also the framework for other collaborative projects that are done daily. The early rumors all came from China and were mainly in Chinese. For example, if there were pictures of bat on the menu at the Wuhan seafood market, TFC or Annie Lab would respond; or if there were videos translated into various languages, we worked together to record the details, and if the assessment in Taiwan and Hong Kong was different, we’d note both judgements to assist other investigating organizations in cracking the case in their respective languages. At that time, TFC had only been established for more than a year, and our members were not yet proficient in using digital forensic tools. TFC cooperated with experts from various countries who did not understand Chinese but were proficient in digital forensic technology to assist them in interpreting the Chinese, the social context, and determining whether the source of the information was reliable. In the process of this collaborative verification, TFC gradually became proficient in using various digital forensic tools. By the end, the teams from various countries formed common methodologies and concepts to further develop our international collaboration. This is very important for journalists, especially small-scale news organizations and investigative organizations.</p>
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<p class="txt"><b>Have you found that similar false information is transmitted across different languages?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">Yes. We regularly monitor rumors circulated in the form of simplified Chinese used in China, but if it isn’t transmitted to Taiwan in traditional Chinese, we won’t take the initiative to write a report. However, if it is transmitted to other countries, teams from those countries would come and ask us about it. In the beginning, other countries heard that many terrible things were happening in China, such as people randomly collapsing to the ground and not getting up, or having fits of convulsions. At that time, not many people knew what SARS-CoV-2 was, so there were a lot of videos about how to protect yourself, prevention remedies, or about how frightening the symptoms of the disease were. The database was jointly updated by all the organizations as the source for quick searches, and to avoid duplication of work. IFCN started doing weekly reviews at that time, and would summarize the trends spreading in that time period; for example, this week we’re mainly seeing the spread of folk remedies, or noting in which countries we’re seeing a spike in malicious rumors feeding ethnic discrimination, to help everyone understand the situation globally. At the same time, the database brought together all the rumors in a unified format, providing a platform for follow-up cross-border or global academic research.</p>
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<p class="txt"><b>Are there any types of false information that are popular both in Taiwan and internationally, or that are not popular in Taiwan but are popular internationally?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">I highly recommend referring to the CoronaVirusFacts Alliance <a href="https://www.poynter.org/coronavirusfactsalliance/" target="_blank">database</a>, or <a href="https://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/data-deficits/" target="_blank">Tracking the Infodemic</a> at First Draft. Generally speaking topics include home or folk remedies, the characteristics of the virus and how it is transmitted. Other types of rumors are related to methods of preventing the transmission of the coronavirus, both in terms of how individuals can protect themselves and measures that can be taken on a societal level (including isolation policies). Abroad, a comparatively large number of rumors are related to what politicians do and say. </p>
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<p class="txt"><b>Based on your fact-checking experience, what is the approximate scale of malicious and misinformed information?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">Who started the rumors isn’t really our main focus. Unless we follow up and track down the original source account, it is difficult to directly judge whether the intent was malicious or not from the content. Our work only focuses on the content of the message itself and conducting a fact-check. Although we only focus on the content of the message, we have recognized some similar operating patterns. For example, from a review of information on past elections, we’ve observed that some online accounts usually post health-related information, but switch to posting political messages at key moments during the election campaign. In contrast to the false information related to the pandemic, we once fact-checked health-related false information but unexpectedly discovered that it had been transmitted via the Hong Kong police association and fan pages dedicated to Taiwan’s pro-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) pan-blue camp, which is the same path used for politically false information. </p>
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<p class="txt"><b>Are there any other difficulties you’ve encountered while doing fact checking?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">We deal with false health information most often, followed by politics, government policies and political trust issues. The corresponding challenge is to determine if the information needs to be fact-checked in the first place, as well as if it involves the government. If a person under suspicion denies a rumor, people won’t believe the denial, so we have to seek out other sources of evidence to confirm or deny it. </p>
<p class="txt">According to our <a href="https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/about/principle" target="_blank">verification criteria</a> (link in Chinese, but much of it is covered in English on the bottom half of <a href="https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/about/purpose" target="_blank">this page</a>), in principle, opinions or conjectures cannot be verified by fact verification. We have several guiding determinators--first we determine whether the information needs to be checked; whether it is related to facts, rather than opinions, predictions or personal subjective thoughts. Secondly, we determine whether it is in the public interest. Third, we evaluate whether the information is malicious, and whether it has begun to spread. Using Taiwan’s experience, a difficult example that is hard to control is messages like “confirmed coronavirus carriers have been in this area, so don’t go there.” The relevant information is in the hands of the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC). If the details are not released, they will say that the government has found contacts via contact tracing and there is no community spread, so the public doesn’t need to be nervous and do not need to know whether there is a confirmed carrier in this specific community; but the public will inevitably panic and start speculating when they see disinfection trucks in their community. To be honest, we have no ability to fact-check in this situation. </p>
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<p class="txt"><b>How does TFC improve the visibility of its fact-check reports?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">Our fact-checking center has established many cooperative relationships with other groups. For example, we cooperate with MyGoPen, via Cofact we access the “Aunty Meiyu” database (a chatbot on LINE, which is a social media platform popular in east Asia) and starting in May we’ve been cooperating with anti-fraud experts Dr. Message, whose chatbot has access to our database. Through such multilateral cooperation, the fact-checking center can use the database to respond to a large number of user questions. The other is to cooperate with Facebook; during the pandemic, what was more important was a wave of minor Internet celebrity posts at the end of January--that pandemic in southern Taiwan was out of control at the time, and many bodies were sent to the crematorium. At the time I happened to be participating in eight medical association seminars. I asked the medical experts what their response was to these false reports. We followed up with the information security team and Facebook, and subsequently Facebook took down about 60 accounts that were spreading rumors.</p>
<p class="txt">The Center for Disease Control (CDC) used their LINE account to recommend us and Cofact to the public, and at the CECC’s press conferences they also encouraged people to report fake news to us to fact-check. We believe in doing independent verification, so we follow up on officially issued information with other verification methods before we produce our reports. We are not about helping the government, it’s the public we are doing our investigations for, which is more influential. </p>
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<p class="txt"><b>Can you share with us the role Taiwan’s fact-checking played on the world stage, and what is unique to Taiwan?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">Taiwan is blessed with a group of chatbot services, and there are many civic organizations that cooperate with the government in many ways, which is rare in other countries. In addition to participating in IFCN, TFC's role in the Asia-Pacific region is to assist other organizations that aren’t yet able to participate as an IFCN member with their inquiries, such as how to apply for IFCN certification and how to prepare fact-checking reports for Chinese-speaking communities. For example, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FactcheckLabHK" target="_blank">Factcheck Lab</a> in Hong Kong started doing fact-checking during the anti-extradition law protests (protests against a proposed law that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be extradited to China to be tried under authoritarian Chinese law), and they turned to Taiwan to learn the system and format for producing reports. Additionally, in Malaysia and Mongolia they reached out via advisers to enquire about operational details. Of course, countries in Asia are moving fast on this, and groups in the Philippines and Indonesia are better than us in terms of skills and capabilities, but others just getting started can learn from us. In addition, from our previous analysis of our audience, it’s not just Taiwanese and the Chinese-speaking countries, it includes Malaysian, American and Australian Chinese-speaking communities, and the cyber-security firm Trend Micro is including our reports in their development of the North American market. </p>
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<p class="txt"><b>What do you think is unique about Taiwan’s efforts against this pandemic, and why? </b></p>
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<p class="txt">The CECC responded quickly and held comprehensive press conferences, leaving rumors no room to breed. Even though there is a time lag between investigation and results being released--and news would spread--the time lag wasn’t too long. Quick reaction time was crucial, and it wasn’t just the work of the CECC, it was also the result of our democratic system. While the CECC was still investigating the developing situation, questions from journalists would impact their decision-making. </p>
<p class="txt">Some specific examples: flights to and from Wuhan were suspended during the Lunar New Year holiday and the CECC announced they would be monitoring the epidemiological situation in Chinese cities to determine if there was a community outbreak. A journalist asked, noting that Wenzhou appeared to be having a serious outbreak and the city was under lockdown, why haven’t flights been suspended? Four hours later, the CECC held a second press conference and announced flights to Wenzhou would be suspended. Another example was during the Tomb Sweeping Festival. Initially, the CECC encouraged people to travel to reduce the economic impact, but on the first day of the festival it was reported that large crowds were forming in scenic spots, and doctors and the media noted online that Japan’s confirmed case numbers exploded after their spring break holiday. After reporters asked about this at the press conference, the next day the CECC announced corresponding countermeasures and the public and businesses responded in support of these countermeasures. These examples showed that the CECC wasn’t an omnipotent organization, that it would listen and respond to the public’s concerns and criticisms, and that the public’s concerns weren’t just hot air. If there was new information, the CECC wouldn’t put it off until the next day, they would hold another press conference later the same day. These actions shortened the time available for rumors to breed. </p>
<p class="txt">TFC found that asking experts to clarify which information was false or which information was accurate but included incorrect solutions, asking them to clearly explain what parts were untrue and explain the reasons why meant that the those that got the message would be immune to the falsehoods going forward. For example, there were rumors that mosquitoes could transmit the coronavirus. To clarify this we asked Dr. Michael M.C. Lai, a fellow at Academia Sinica who has studied infectious diseases for 56 years, to provide a detailed explanation as to why mosquitoes can’t transmit SARS-CoV-2. The public spreads false pandemic information, and it is out of fear that all sorts of information spreads to cater to that, leading to false information circulating more widely than correct information. Pandemic prevention work breeds information gaps, and while the government consults with experts, the public doesn’t understand and will think up all sorts of things on their own. This information gap must be carefully balanced out, and refuting rumors helps deal with this. When I attended the seminars, some people brought up that this was experienced during SARS. Back then a group of medical students helped tackle this, and from that they learned that the more people understood, the more they could help fight the spread of the virus. The open-minded attitude of these experts could be said to be a legacy of the SARS experience. </p>
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<p class="txt"><b>The government at times has said simply catching the rumormongers is enough. What’s your take on how the government handled false information?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">CECC's quick response is indeed worthy of recognition, but in the handling of follow-up issues many controversies arise. For example, after we issued our full election report the police went after the rumormongers. I don’t want this to be the kind of influence we have, turning us into a reference source for the police.</p>
<p class="txt">In another case, there was a rumor that an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest case in Taipei’s Beitou District had the coronavirus. According to the Infectious Disease Prevention and Control Law, the body should be cremated 24 hours after with the consent of the family members, and on the second day of the lunar calendar the funeral parlor and the internment workers turned on the furnace to deal with it. At the time, the test results hadn’t yet been released, and the funeral professionals of course handled things to the highest standard. Later, the CECC came out with a test report saying it was negative, but did not inform the funeral professionals. As a result, those professionals and firefighters only knew there were rumors that the patient was a confirmed case without knowing that the test was negative. While the rumors were spreading amongst them, the CDC and the police sought us out to ask who the rumormonger was, and we practically started arguing. At the time, the situation was handled according to rules for handling coronavirus cases, but you guys didn’t inform them about the negative result afterwards, can you blame them for passing on the rumor? I felt that all those involved are implicated in this, but since the government wanted to handle everything on their own, everyone involved should have received adequate information, understood what standards were used in handling this situation and when the test results came out they should have been informed immediately. If you don’t inform people, they will become anxious and panicky, which provides rumors an opportunity to spread. </p>
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<p class="txt"><b>What do you suggest all parties can do to reduce the harm of false information?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">From the perspective of pandemic prevention, the harm in false information is making it difficult to handle the pandemic scientifically. Rumors cause confusion, cause people to panic and make unnecessary choices, and makes it hard to conduct a scientific approach to pandemic prevention. Speaking in general and aside from the pandemic, in my experience false information hinders rational discussion. The premise of a rational dialogue is to have common information or facts, and only by exchanging opinions on this basis can dialogue be possible. False information provides wrong information, so that all parties to the dialogue are trapped in anger, and the dialogue cannot come together. Fact checking is about filling this information gap, confirming information for all parties to agree on, and hopefully leading to open discussion again.</p>
<p class="txt">In fact, all fact-checking organizations not only publish inspection reports, but also have academic and educational functions. Google sponsors us to hold events for international organizations to teach us digital skills. Through training and applied learning we gain knowledge, then we hold professional media sessions. We’ve also held three workshops for the general public, with half of the participants teachers and students, ranging from elementary and middle school up to the university level. </p>
<p class="txt">Aside from doing investigation, international fact-checking organizations also set up parallel organizations to cooperate with academic organizations to do educational work involving media literacy. However, for us, the education part is not done by TFC itself, but rather by the Media Literacy Educational Resources Network (MLERN), which is a cooperative effort by Professor Yuan-hui Hu and the Ministry of Education. Professor Hu introduced the National Association for the Promotion of Community Universities (NAPCU) to Google, and they did quite a few teacher training sessions. Through this resources can be brought to the community, achieving results nationally. Our overall structure is we do fact-checking, and through this impact the media environment. We believe that fact-checking is a social movement for the general public. TFC’s “indicator” for this is not quantity but influence: the release of reports at critical times has an impact, and the ultimate goal is to bring fact-checking back to the people. </p>
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