Taiwan’s success in countering misinformation offers lessons for UK

Despite a barrage of disinformation, fake news and propaganda – largely coming from China – the Taiwanese election this month passed without serious incident. That’s thanks to an established civil society network of fact-checking organisations, which have worked to counter disinformation, including crowdsourcing corrections and using AI to detect fake news. Taiwan has faced a concerted propaganda and disinformation campaign from China for decades, focused both on attacking politicians and parties unfriendly to Beijing, and exploiting “faultlines” in Taiwanese society to degrade trust in democracy and government. Taiwan’s tactic is to publish corrections and counter-narratives quickly, rather than attempting to stop the flow of disinformation altogether. In a year where more than 50 countries are heading to the polls, other democracies including the UK should take note.