Take a peek at any political discussion here (not just in IP), and that should paint a clear enough picture. 
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At New Bloom, Brian Hioe interviews a faculty member at National Taipei University, who discusses the nuts-and-bolts of content farms in Malaysia, Line groups, YouTube, and tactics of information warfare:
Guy
To keep this thread up-to-date, I’d like to also include this piece linked by the inimitable @GooseEgg in the March 2020 coronavirus main thread:
Guy
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We’ve spent a lot of time this past year speculating about whether or not the PRC will use its military force to try to disrupt or even annex Taiwan.
Yet, as this professor continues to emphasize, ongoing disinformation campaigns may be just as threatening:
Guy
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More disinformation campaigns uncovered, linking the PRC with Taiwan, Thailand, and the US; three Taiwanese have been indicted:
Guy
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Another nice example of disinformation was noted in today’s Taipei Times: an official looking but fake document claiming that Taiwan will be importing radioactive water from Fukushima (hint: it won’t).
How to decode such fakes?
Presidential Office spokesman Xavier Chang (張惇涵) in a statement yesterday said that the document was “a complete fabrication” and uses language that would not be used in a government document.
Tsai on Facebook reiterated the statement, saying that errors and the use of simplified Chinese suggest that the creator of the document was not familiar with Taiwan.
The social media post is “a typical example of cognitive warfare,” Tsai said, without elaborating who might be behind the document.
Threatening activities by military aircraft and ships, as well as spreading fake news to undermine the solidarity of society, are common cognitive warfare strategies, Tsai said, adding that cognitive warfare would likely become more sophisticated.
Taiwanese should be aware that disinformation from unknown sources might serve a cognitive warfare agenda, Tsai said, adding that people should not further spread such social media posts.
Source: Tsai rebuts rumor of water delivery from Fukushima - Taipei Times
Guy
The current COVID-19 outbreak is clearly an disinformation opportunity that cannot be missed, as reported in today’s Taipei Times:
National security agencies have confirmed that Beijing has ordered numerous disinformation attacks on Taiwan, Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said.
[ . . . ]
Beijing’s use of disinformation and cognitive warfare is an effort to deepen internal conflicts in Taiwan, prolonging the time used to develop cures for the pandemic, decreasing Taiwanese manufacturing capability, and further destabilizing Taiwan’s economy and stock market, Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) said yesterday.
Lee urged the public to maintain solidarity to overcome the challenges presented by the outbreak.
Lots of possible examples, many of which involve spreading misinformation using Line, appear in this article, which is well worth reading.
Guy
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The awesome @Icon posted this piece from the Financial Times in one of the COVID threads, but I think it fits nicely here too. All credit to Icon!
https://amp.ft.com/content/f22f1011-0630-462a-a21e-83bae4523da7?__twitter_impression=true
“Negative stories or fake news about vaccines have dominated the most-discussed topics we tracked over the past few weeks,” said Yu Chih-hao, co-director of Information Operations Research Group (IORG), a non-governmental group that tracks Chinese information manipulation aimed at Taiwan. The group identified a role of Chinese state media and other Chinese sources in either creating or spreading them (Beijing has usually labelled disinformation accusations as themselves “lies and disinformation”).
Late last month the dominant narrative was that the US, Taiwan’s unofficial protector, was “not selling Taipei a single vial of vaccine”. Earlier this month, Beijing claimed that tens of thousands of Taiwanese people were flocking to China to get vaccinated. Then Chinese media reported that Taipei was planning to give jabs to its diplomatic allies although it did not have enough to vaccinate its own population. Both claims have been denied by Taiwan’s government.
Most recently, after Taiwan’s vaccination campaign picked up speed, Chinese media spread stories of old people dying from the jab. Taiwan’s vaccination rates have since levelled off as many elderly have grown fearful of vaccination.
This has been amplified by Taiwanese media which have focused on elderly people dying after getting the Covid jab, drawing a causal link the health authorities say is unscientific.
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Might be worth pointing out here that there are a lot of CCP sympathizers and fellow-travellers in Taiwan, quite possibly within the media and government too. It is not inconceivable that these assets could be used to bring Taiwan under CCP control by destabilizing the country - possibly to the point of complete economic collapse - at which point they will be able to ride to the rescue.
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No doubt this is part of somebody’s plan.
Guy
I had already forgotten about some of the nonsense spread by the so called news. Unfortunately, the elderly haven’t.
It may be the case that journalists will next move toward platforming views that suggest all COVID-19 vaccines cause sudden deaths, as seen in questions at CECC press conferences that suggest that the Moderna vaccine also causes deaths. Similarly, journalists may begin to cast doubt on the effectiveness of currently available vaccines against the new variants of COVID-19, suggesting that the vaccines are useless against the new vaccines, and so that individuals might as well avoid the risk of sudden death by not being vaccinated.
More generally, journalist questions at CECC have failed to keep in mind that journalists have a responsibility to be careful about granting legitimacy to questionable ideas by platforming them.
And so it should not surprise either that journalists have generally failed to hold the CECC to account or clarify public knowledge about issues, as is the responsibility of the Fourth Estate when confronted with the government—any government, pan-Blue or pan-Green. Instead, they continually ask the same questions day after day, even when the situation has not changed and one receives the same answer as yesterday.
One can see this with endless questions about plans by Terry Gou to purchase vaccines, asking about a possible shift to level four, or, more recently, asking when level three will be lifted. Otherwise, questions are asked to try and catch CECC officials unaware, as a “Gotcha!” moment, rather than to clarify and make the public more informed.
I agree it is not a good scene at all.
Guy
Are they reading some comments on Forumosa?
I think those guys make forumosans look pretty good.
I can’t believe I wrote that.
Guy
I must say this is pretty bizarre. They spent weeks putting the fear of God into people with their 24-hour broadcasts of people dropping dead in the streets, and now they’re doing it again with the vaccines. What’s the point?
In most other countries there were some specific policy goals that had to be pushed, but there seems to be no obvious agenda here except to mess with people’s heads.
Perhaps part of the problem is that journalists simply don’t understand the science. They are incapable of interpreting either the statistics on COVID mortality or the harms caused by vaccines. Happens everywhere: journalists read some paper that “proves” X, Y or Z and get completely the wrong end of the stick.
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Evidently clicks and views.
Ethics or basic self-awareness do not seem to be high on the list.
Guy
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A new report from Reuters (via CNA in Singapore) sheds light on how China is conducting disinformation campaigns across multiple languages and platforms:
Guy
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Much ado about nothing, IMO. Even in mainstream media, it’s impossible now to tell the difference between what might actually be true and what’s just made up from whole cloth. The best solution for the typical citizen, I suggest, would be to switch off, tune in, and drop out. There are too many vested interests now competing for Joe Public’s limited attention span.
Says a guy posting on forumosa! 
[i.e. You are still switched in. And if you commented in good faith on the Reuters piece linked above, it meant you actually read it, further straying from the path you are saying we should follow . . .]
Guy
forumosa is the only place I post. Don’t have facebook, TV, twitter, news feeds etc.
If you don’t read news channels that are being co-opted by propaganda mills, you aren’t going to fall prey to propaganda. Has forumosa fallen? 