About the webinar
Taiwan is the most systematically targeted democracy for PRC-linked information manipulation — and arguably the most instructive. Where other open societies are still mapping the threat, Taiwan has spent years building a response: rapid government debunking units, an active civil society ecosystem, and platform-level interventions that no other country has matched at scale. Yet practitioners closest to the problem say it is still not enough. This session examines how PRC-linked manipulation has evolved, which narratives actually shift public opinion, and what the rest of the world should be doing differently.
What we'll cover
- Narrative impact vs. circulation — PRC campaigns against Taiwan span geopolitical, technological, and cultural registers — but not all narratives move audiences equally. The session examines which messages genuinely shift public opinion, how live events around Taiwan are reshaping them in real time, and whether their grip is tightening or loosening.
- The 2024 election as a case study — Taiwan's presidential election produced a documented record of deepfakes, AI-generated content, and coordinated inauthentic behaviour at scale. The discussion assesses what those tactics achieved, where they fell short, and what they signal about future interference cycles.
- Platform exploitation and enforcement gaps — PRC actors exploit Western platforms that remain banned inside China — using Line, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube in distinct ways, with distinct blind spots. The session maps platform-specific vulnerabilities and assesses where enforcement responsibility currently sits.
- Taiwan's institutional response — How effective has the Ministry of Digital Affairs, anti-infiltration legislation, and election-period rules been in containing PRC-linked manipulation? The session assesses what the government framework has achieved and where structural gaps remain.
- What civil society got right — Cofacts, the Taiwan FactCheck Center, Doublethink Lab, IORG, and g0v have built a counter-FIMI infrastructure that no other democracy has replicated. The session examines which interventions work, which don't scale, and what other countries should adopt before the next election cycle — including how to counter generative AI at industrial scale, real-time deepfakes, and synthetic personas.
Meet our speakers
Zuzana Koskova is Head of the Red Watch program at the European Values Center for Security Policy, a position she has held since April 2023. A sinologist by training, her research focuses on Chinese media, censorship, and propaganda — including platform-specific analysis of how TikTok functions as a vector for PRC narratives in European information environments. She previously served at the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the Czech presidency of the Council of the EU in 2022, where she also completed the Diplomatic Academy program.
Jerry Yu is Analyst Lead at Doublethink Lab and a Non-resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), where he specialises in digital investigations and the analysis of influence operations. He has observed elections in 2022 and 2024 at both local and national level, and has collaborated on cross-national projects sharing findings with journalists, NGOs, and researchers across South, Southeast, East Asia, and the Pacific region.
