 Good morning from DC, wherever you are. Hope everybody is safe and well. I wanna say good morning in particular and thank you to the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University and Professor Stephen Livingston for co-hosting this event with NDI. As originally conceived, George Washington University had planned to host us all in person, but we had to move online. So I am grateful to Professor Livingston and his team for their help and flexibility moving forward with this event. I also wanna take a moment to thank my own team, the NDI team, who probably don't want me to do this, but I wanna thank them. In particular, I wanna recognize Victoria Wellborn and the Asia team for putting together this event and the documentary on which it is published. Can't list everybody who helped and NDI but suffice to say it truly was a team effort and I wanna thank them. And of course, thank you all out there for joining. Taiwan is in the news these days and generally for all the right reasons. It is garnering well-earned appreciation for the way it is handled the coronavirus on its soil and the responsible ways it is sought to assist global prevention and response. The situation of course is not over yet as long as the virus exists anywhere and there remains no vaccine, continues to be a threat everywhere. We are only as strong as our weakest link but Taiwan has done its part becoming a leading example for the world and it's done so by utilizing the advantages of its democracy. That is its commitment to openness, transparency and particularly civic freedom which provide the space for independent citizen activity. Far from seeing their citizens or facts as a threat or something to fear, the Taiwan government has empowered citizens and treated them as allies. Indeed, the experience across the globe is shown that civil society is often the best and the most effective messenger, the most efficient service provider during a crisis. So in this case, the important role was played by citizen digital technologies, the so-called civic tech community. They led the way and were key to Taiwan's success to date in mitigating harm from the coronavirus. The effort was led by local groups like GOV-0 but supported by government leaders like Digital Minister Audrey Tong who's with us today. We'll discuss all this in greater detail in just a moment. But even before COVID-19 hit, the civic tech community was already attuned and mobilized to combat another virus that puts not just the island but all democracies at risk. This virus has spread rapidly in recent years and is unlikely to go away anytime soon. That virus is the scourge of disinformation. Information, facts, and debate are the essential lifeblood of democracy. But as such, it can be weaponized. As you all know, authoritarian actors and spoilers of all kinds, foreign and domestic are seeking to do just that, utilizing a growing digital toolbox to sow confusion, division, discord, and distrust in democracies worldwide. No country is immune to this virus of disinformation. Some countries are being uniquely targeted, often for geopolitical reasons. And some are developing more effective response to mechanisms than others. Taiwan is one of those places that potentially offers a model for the rest of us to consider and to emulate. NDI has worked with Taiwan for several years now on this issue. What's recently last September to be exact is part of the US-Taiwan global cooperation and training framework for GCTF. NDI co-hosted a workshop with the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the American Institute in Taiwan, and Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, entitled Defending Democracy through Media Literacy. During that event, we heard from those in the front line of Taiwan's disinformation war as the January 2020 presidential elections approach. We remain so impressed by the work of Taiwan's vibrant civic tech community, and frankly, so concerned about the potential implication of digital attacks when spoilers have crossed the Taiwan Strait in advance of the election, that we decided it would be valuable to capture campaign conditions and share the work of the civic tech community with others around the world. The result is a short documentary film that we produced entitled NERI, An Indigital Coal Monument. Documentary is available on NDI's website, nvi.org. I hope many of you have already watched it in the events of this event this morning. If you haven't had a chance yet, we strongly encourage you all to do so in today's event. It is only about 12 quick minutes long. And then putting together the documentary, we spoke to citizens, civic technologists, academics, and government officials to gain a better understanding of the realities of the disinformation landscape in Taiwan, as well as the tools and tactics Taiwan used to deal with digital foreign influence ahead of the January elections. It features in a way of remarkable Taiwan citizens, including two very good friends who are with us here today, patching in from Taipei, and to whom I should say good evening to you all out in Taipei who are watching this. So let me do introductions really quickly of the panelists today, and then we'll start our open discussion. First up, Audrey Tang. Audrey has been digital minister of Taiwan under President Tsai Ing-wen since 2016. In her role as the digital minister, Audrey has become a leader in developing more open citizen-centered policy-making processes in Taiwan and helped rethink government culture to be more transparent and inclusive. She really has become a global advocate for digital transparency tools, and a possible source for the transformative democratic potential of civic tech, and in particular how governments who play an active role in ensuring information integrity online. She has been a true friend of NDI since her days as a civic tech activist. Out of government, so we are always grateful for the opportunity to speak and learn from her. Dr. Kedi Chen is the vice president of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, TFD. TFD is the only international foundation in Asia dedicated uniquely to promoting and supporting democratic development, and as such has become a critical institution for Asia. As vice president, Kedi has played a central role in increasing TFD's presence globally, and thus showcasing Taiwan's growing value in the democracy and governance space. We at NDI are excited to expand our partnership with TFD. We thank Kedi and her team for their great work and their wonderful dedication. And finally, I mentioned in the professor Stephen Livingston. Stephen is the founding director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University. He had served as a senior fellow at the CAR Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School until last summer. We approached Stephen and his team about collaborating on this event during the important research and work they are doing, bringing together stakeholders across media, government, and civil society to understand and create solutions to the threats posed by malign influence in the digital space. So thank you all for joining us. We will be engaging in a conversation among ourselves at first, and then we will open the Q&A from all of you out there. We will be taking questions from Google Hangouts. So please use the Q&A button on your screen to ask any questions in the panel. I'll get them forward to me on my cell phone and we will get to them during the second half of the program. So, enough of my speaking. This is not about me. This is about the panelists. Let me turn now first off if I may to the digital minister of your time. Let me start with you. I understand you have a short presentation explaining the Taiwan situation, the Taiwan response, particularly during this coronavirus moment. So let me turn to you and let me just tell folks that you can watch this live on the screen here, but also at live.pdis.tw. But let me turn it over to you, Audrey, to take us here. Thank you, Derek, for the introduction and thank all of you for putting the event together. I think the digital social innovation indeed is one of the, as you mentioned, the main way that a civil society, or as we say here around Taiwan, the social sector, become the powerful force not only at counter-disinformation, but also countering the other virus, which is the coronavirus. So I will take five to seven minutes to first outline some of the approaches that the social sector has been supporting this entire anti-coronavirus or counter-coronavirus practice. So it will be like three very simple terms, fast, fair, and fun. So let's first talk about fast. Unlike many other countries, Taiwan started working on counter-virus last year. Most countries started working this year in 2020. And this is because the whistleblower, Dr. Lee Wenliang at Wuhan, shared a piece of information on the social media in his private group that says that there's seven cases of SARS in the Huanan market. And immediately, the day after that, in the very, very earlier early morning, the Taiwan equivalent of Reddit, PTT, has this person no more repiped, reposting this information from Lee Wenliang's social network. And at the same hour, Dr. Lee Wenliang is being investigated by his hospital of spreading possibly rumor, and later he will be disciplined for whistleblowing. But in Taiwan, the opposite happens instead of this person no more repiped being disciplined in any way. Actually, the CDC medical officer just saw this from the PTT, decided that this merits response, and then we immediately started treating as if SARS has reoccurred in Wuhan. And so as you can see, the effective approach of inspection of flight passenger from Wuhan is implemented the very next day. And so we rely on the social sector with the complete freedom of speech on PTT to serve as kind of a early warning system that without which there's no way for the medical officers in the CDC here to detect such a early outbreak. And so we do so because we hope the freedom of speech of assembly as one of our core values. According to the Civicus monitor, Taiwan is the only jurisdiction in Asia, and along with New Zealand, one of the only two in Asia Pacific that have a completely open civil society, meaning the minister's words is at best the same weight as a journalist would, and we never encroach on the press freedom. And so because of this, and thanks to the early whistleblowing of Dr. Lee Wenliang, Taiwan Today remains open for business, for schools, and so on. And so, and this is not just a one-off event. Very quickly, the National Command Center for Epidemic Control, the CDC, set up a dedicated line, the line that takes phone calls from pretty much anybody. So we have to field a large number of phone calls every day, but they tip us on all sorts of different ideas, all sorts of different social innovations, all sort of early warning systems. And every day there's a press conference that is live streamed, and we work with the journalist community so that when they ask anything, the Minister of Health and Welfare, who is also the CDC commander, answers each and every of the questions and consider the journalism community a partner. So just one example is that there was a one journalist that said there was a small boy that because the medical mask that he received was pink. And so he thought that he would not be treated right by his peers in school. So he refused to go to school because of the pink medical mask that he received. And so the very next day, everybody in the press conference or the commanders and vice-commanders war pink medical mask in a way to build this kind of report with the civil society and to put all the ongoing issues into a same matter of fact discussion ground. And so I think the civil society trusts the CECC not to make them disappear as other jurisdictions do. And the CECC trusts the social sector to share relevant information on the 1922 line, the telephone line, as well as online. And so the second principle is fairness. The fairness is evidenced by, for example, that anybody can collect such medical mask. They don't get to choose the color, but otherwise the same medical mask anywhere in a nearby pharmacy. And so we work with the pharmacy so that they publish every three minutes their real-time stock level so that if you take your national health insurance which has more than 99.9% coverage in Taiwan to a nearby pharmacy, you can collect mask without any panic buying. And so the civil society, the GovZero community and other people builds more than 100 tools in a sense of fairness so that if people with blindness, people with deafness, people who speak different languages, indigenous people and so on, they can all find their respective tools that directs them to a nearby pharmacy to collect the mask. And even the shortcomings of the pharmacies like the oversupply of certain areas and so on are also being analyzed by civil society which then informs our own mask distribution policy. So for example, people correctly pointed out that in Xinzhou or Taipei, the northern municipalities, there are many people who work so long hours so that by the time they finish off our, all the pharmacies have been closed. And so based on that feedback, we implemented a convenience store 24-hour pre-order and collection so that you can still collect at the convenience store and actually starting this Wednesday, you can take your same NHRI card to the convenience store for the pre-order. So this is about ensuring fairness in all regards. And finally, as I understand, I only have one minute left, this is about our counter-dissiparation tactic. It's called humor over rumor. And this is because in a time of panic and anxiety, it very quickly turns into outrage if there is no information that are mimetically funny. And so the same person that you saw in the last slide, our premier, our prime minister, notably put out the social media campaign that says, please do not panic by the tissue papers. We have plenty in stock because there was a rumor that said they're being woven by the same material as the medical mask. And because we produce so many medical masks, the tissue papers are going to run out soon. But actually they're produced in the different places and so on. And the subject here is that we only each have one botok. And so this is like hilariously funny and it went viral. And then very quickly we found out that people who push out those rumors are actually themselves resellers of tissue papers. And so within like two days, the entire rumor died out because it was just so funny. And not to mention the CECC spoke stock that translates all the CECC guidelines, including as you can see here, social distancing, covering your mouth when sneezing, not to put your hands through your mouth and reminding you to pay for the pre-order and so on, all using very cute spoke stock that makes people feel not only relaxed, but also engaged so that they will share the information. And so for more information you can read about in Taiwan can help that US, but that is the basic overview of how digital social innovation helps to fight the coronavirus. Thank you, Audrey. That is wonderful. I don't mean to rush you at all. We want to hear as much as we can from all of this because it's really remarkable work by the civic tech community which civil society writ large in Taiwan, as you say in partnership with government. Can I ask you though, just continuing very quickly, were there tools that you use that did not work? Is there anything that you tried that you found just didn't take that we can learn because oftentimes you learn from failure as much as you do from all the success? Oh yeah, very much so. For example, when the very first day of the mask map where you can see the real-time stock numbers, people very quickly found out that there are pharmacies that instead of taking one NHI card, swipe it, deplete the stock number and hand out the mask, there are certain pharmacies that just collect the NHI cards and give them some labeled numbers and tell them to collect back in the afternoon. And so the stock numbers will be out of sync because it's essentially batch processing it. And that actually put a lot of pressure not only to the pharmacies who will get a lot of flurry of costs that says, hey, the mask map says that you still have mask in stock, what happens to them? As well as the pharmacies having to say again and again that they really want to change the open data to add a field that says, we only hand out those numbers in the morning but you can only collect in the afternoon. And so this is what we call a data collaborative. This is how we engage all the different stakeholders. So today, all the pharmacies actually have a special function that they can say click close which is by default in Sunday. They close on Sundays now, but in other days, as long as they want, they can just issue all those numbered papers and then just say close and they would just disappear from the open data mask map or they can pre-declare their opening hours and so on. And so a lot of the civic tech community took this multi-stakeholder facilitator role to allow for the pharmacies to file their complaints really to the data quality, to the update policy, to the distribution policy and so on. And that then become useful criticism that we look at every Monday in the premier hosted meeting to change our relationships and our policies vis-a-vis pharmacies. So in this sense, the social sector's playing also a facilitator's role. Right, keeping that flexibility, that rapid response is critical of feedback loop on the regular data. That's the flexibility of an open society. Thank you, Audrey, for that. Let me just ask Keti a few things. I mean, TFD's mission is to consolidate democracy, to help Taiwan help consolidation of democracy worldwide and in Asia. And obviously, disinformation can impede that. Can you give a sense just on Taiwan? How much has Taiwan in your view been affected by disinformation campaigns? I mean, what kind of disinformation has Taiwan been subject to and how much has it really affected in your view, Taiwan's own democracy? I think that disinformation has always been around for decades. But then in recent years, you see a hype of distribution of disinformation. But I think Taiwan's very vibrant civil society and civic tech community have all been coming together, trying to combat disinformation, which in turn tarnish the productivity, the trust between people or shrinking space of people who can engage in productive conversation. So, well, you asked about the kind of disinformation for, from my post at TFD, we really see different kinds of disinformation through the years. And you see a kind of metamorphosis or transition of, for example, and at the end of 2018, we did a research on disinformation that has been circling and distributing through Facebook fan pages. But then civic tech community, working with Facebook, working with government, trying to combat this epidemic, you see that disinformation transition into, for example, now a lot of things on videos, popular YouTubers and through videos, disinformation has been distributed. So, how much has Taiwan been affected? Well, through the election you see from 2018, when we had our local election, leading up to our national election, there's a dramatic increase of disinformation. But at the same time, I would think that Taiwanese citizens have been, as the NDI documentary mentions, the canary in a digital coal mine, have been exposed to disinformation so much that I would not say that everyone has immunity to it, but then I think that there is still the kind of alarm within Taiwanese citizens that you read something that is too good to be true to our landers that people really think critically before they would pass the information to their colleagues, their friends or schoolmates. So, disinformation influenced society that's polarized, but at the same time, I think Taiwan has been building up its own immune system to the disinformation that's been hitting us. Yeah, you've been on the front lines of attacks for decades, so you're used to, I guess, mainland particular China attacking and trying to confuse and create problems for, but do you have a sense that it is accelerating? Did you see it accelerate in the recent, in January, presidential elections, do you see it accelerate over coronavirus? Are you seeing it kind of steady state? Do you see it evolving, morphing into something different? It's a bit different. As I mentioned in 2018, when Taiwan has its local election, there's a kind of disinformation trying to confuse people, create perceptions of one administration or one party member towards another, but then leading up to the national election, there is a change of disinformation, of sowing distrust of people of their elected government officials, shrinking space for people to discuss and have a productive conversation if they have different ideologies, shrinking of that space, and then now with the pandemic happening, there's another kind of disinformation trying to tarnish Taiwan's positive way of dealing with the pandemic to the international community, the straight through disinformation such as crop screens of Korean zombie movies with the caption saying that this is actually the city of Taipei. So things like that, that's been changing through time, but we're not really missing, we're not really getting away from the attack on disinformation, even through election from the pandemic and probably in the future. Yeah, I imagine, Audrey, you probably have a lot of fun with the zombie clip. If you wanna make that fun and let me turn it over to Stephen, if you can put this into context, Taiwan's experience in context, give us a sense of what we can learn, what do we take away from Taiwan's response? What can other countries who are facing these threats learn both by what Taiwan has done in response to the elections, as well as the pandemic? Thank you, Derek. And again, let me thank you and NDI for the opportunity to participate in this event, the Institute for Data Democracy and Politics, very happy to do that. And we hope that we can revisit the possibility of actually in-person events at the university in the future. I think that both Kenny and Audrey have begun to answer the question you just put to me and that is both have emphasized the important role of civil society. And I think that for me, that really stands out as the key determinant in how successful any given nation state is at responding to disinformation. Broadly speaking, there are two broad answers as to what is disinformation? How do we understand it? The tendency is for everyone to focus on the technological, which is appropriate. We need to focus on the built-in features of various platforms that promoting, exaggerating, extremist content and offering a platform for those who want to elude and misdirect attention. So let's not let the platforms off the hook, but I think that it's also important for those of us who study it and think about disinformation to step back and offer another point of analysis and that has to do with politics and society. There are key sociological features of a targeted population that determine how susceptible that population is to disinformation, to disinformation. Almost all of these campaigns that we see around the world are for the purpose of exaggerating and deepening preexisting points of lack of social cohesion or what Robert Putnam called social capital. So in this instance, we would look to the robustness of civil society organizations. We would look to the level of trust and transparency that's involved in civil society as well as state organizations to the degree to which trust is high and government, authoritative government institutions are trusted, disinformation is not going to be as effective as it otherwise might be. So it's not the prowess of the technology alone, but rather the robustness of the institutions found in any given society. Where government, authoritative government institutions for instance, or at least previously authoritative government institutions are suffering from credibility that opens up a vacuum and that vacuum is what's filled by disinformation. If this is true, then we need to spend as much time finding ways of not just addressing the technology but actually strengthening and providing additional support for civil society organizations as well as making sure that government institutions don't squander the credibility by mishandling crises such as the coronavirus. So those are the thoughts that most immediately come to mind. This is something that we're looking at at IDDP along with the Social Science Research Council at looking at American institutions through this lens. So this is really quite exciting. You see this around the world, the Baltic States tend to have a better track record at addressing disinformation because of the robustness of their open society, the credibility of their institutions and the role of civil society in their response. I think the same is true of Taiwan. Right. And do you feel that, I mean, the personal relationships among citizens, you talk about government and government institutions or civic institutions and people, but among the citizens themselves, you find in some countries that families to get information from those you trust who you're closest to, I mean, what is the hierarchy of trust if you don't have those institutions necessarily? What are the other arenas where you can build at least some resilience to disinformation from your experience? Yeah, I think it does. This is where the role of civil society organizations that have a track record of offering authoritative information, excuse me, become so important. And we need to be clear. What do we mean by a civil society organization? Certainly NGOs, citizens groups, but also the news media. This goes back to what Audrey was saying, that Taiwanese news media is not controlled. It's open. Not all news organizations, as I understand it in Taiwan are held in the same esteem as others, but there are news organizations that are trusted. And it's in those instances that you can turn to an authoritative source. It may be highly critical of the government in some instances, but if that newspaper is trusted, if it has built into its DNA the logic of if we make a mistake, there's a reputational cost to be paid. That's the key distinction. If the news organization is going to pay a price for getting something wrong, that means it's signaling that it is a trusted news organization. To the contrary, if there are news organizations that pay no price for factually incorrect information, but are instead involved in identity confirmation or in actually creating greater degrees of anxiety, that's what you want to avoid. So look for places where people are concerned about the reputation and that's a good start. Yeah. And you said just finally on Steven's day with you, what do you see any difference between the approach to combat disinformation related say to COVID and an election or is it pretty much the same? And I could even ask Audrey that. Do you see any differences in the approach to combating these types of disinformation? Is it pretty much standard? Audrey, do you want to go first and then Audrey? Yeah, Audrey, please. Okay, certainly. So the basic principle of transparency and humor over rumor stays the same, but election is very high stake and the coronavirus situation is ongoing. That is the main difference. And so a lot of the disinformation around the election tries to, as Kelly have mentioned, to discredit the entire institution of voting itself. So for example, this was trending. Like a lot of people have seen this during the election. This was one of the trending disinformation that says the CIA is always the CIA made two special invisible ink for ballots. So one for the other presidential candidates magically fades and the other invisible ink magically appears so that whomever you vote, Dr. Tsai always wins. And so we see that begin trending literally as soon as people start going to vote. And that is because they really want to undermine the result of the election. And we don't see that sort of a single event based disinformation during the coronavirus. And the solution again is through civil society participation, in this case YouTubers who are participatory journalists, right? So because everybody is a capable journalist now if they are allowed to livestream the counting process. And that is exactly what I have done. We invite people, in fact, many of the major parties invited people, trained people to livestream the counting process. And once you livestream the counting process from across many parties and by many prominent or soon to be prominent YouTubers, there's no doubt about invisible ink one way or another because then everybody can see for themselves and it's hip to just share what you have seen in the counting process. So for this kind of event-based disinformation, it really takes a lot of design before that event to win over the trust on that particular event. But for coronavirus, there's ongoing disinformation that's not narrative-based but rather scam-based. We see a lot of scams, like just by sharing this post and leave your personal information, you could get a medical mask for free. That's phishing. Actually, they don't get mask, they get computer virus maybe. And so the way to counter that again is by civil society participation, but that is a more ongoing process. So I think they don't differ that much in the sense of how they've spread, but they do differ about the election being premeditated and therefore need a premeditated response and the coronavirus being ongoing and therefore needs an ongoing relationship. Yeah, I would only add to that. First of all, Audrey, I think that by coincidence that photo of the polling station that you offered, I think I was there as a matter of fact. And I was very impressed by the level of transparency in the citizens of the back of the room, live streaming, videotaping, the count and the people who are doing the counting, holding the ballots up in the air. Yeah, for people to film, yes. That's an institution. That's what I refer to as an institution. It is designed not only to decide who the president's going to be, but also it's designed to do so, do it in a way that builds trust in that institution of presidential elections. That's so important. I would also just simply add to what I heard you say. Number one, the difference between an election and the coronavirus is that an election has a set endpoint, though sometimes here in the United States that doesn't feel that way. It is a stressful period that institutions have to address. They have to be able to stand up to the pressure, but it's over at some point where with the coronavirus, this is an ongoing series of stresses on the credibility of institutions, and especially when you have a large complex federal system as the United States has, there isn't one answer to how well the institutions are working in some places well and other places not. And so it is a different kind of stress test on institutions in some way. Right. All right, we're starting to get questions in from folks who are watching. So let me start asking those. I'll start with one from one of our own staff from our office in Moldova about, and I've got a few questions like this about civic education as a resilient factor of resilience. How can we teach young people to identify misinformation or disinformation? And is, let's see, in any full age education in Taiwan about fake news about disinformation or is the government's efforts focused on adults over 18? So you think about that either Kedi or Audrey in a Taiwan context? Kedi, would you like to say something about this? Yeah, I'll say a little bit about media electricity and then I'll give the floor to Minister Tang. So for our work at TFD, we have done two regional level media literacy programs. And within the program, we include Taiwanese NGO and civic tech community to trying to share their experience on how to educate young people about disinformation and think critically. But I think for Taiwan's case and for cases of many other countries, educating young people is one, I said, task that we have to engage, but also we have to provide this kind of media literacy education to some of our more senior folks as well within our society. So when it comes to the younger people, how to decipher disinformation is because their world is permeated with information constantly. So I think in Taiwan, we have, I think Minister Tang and other government agencies have been working with the Ministry of Education to provide curriculums for younger people within Taiwan. This one in case you need some support. Yes. Please go on. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, so there's different parts of media literacy within the ministry. So, and it's categorized in different aspects of different categories. So this is some of the government institution as Audrey was showing. So the executive end under the, the Ministry of Education, NCC. So these are some of the institutions that we actually invite to our GCTF programs and also we work, collaborate with Taiwan Factrix Center and also some NGOs that has to do with the welfare of adolescents and children. So these are a lot of things, again, as we mentioned at the outset of this program, it's the combination of NGO, civil society and government institutions that's providing the kind of, all around, all encompassing education to the different age groups within Taiwanese society. Right. Any further, Audrey? I'm interested. Let me ask then about the older folks, maybe 60 and above, we did get a question on that specifically. Okay. The suggestion here is that people 60 and above are watching GSTV for the most part. I don't know, maybe that's true, I don't know. But what kind of solution do you recommend to apply to folks like that? Who may be more set in their ways a little older? I don't know. Do you think about targeting older folks as well? Yes. So, first of all, I think this is important to stress that we, the mentoring work, so Google Translate isn't quite very accurate here because this website is called Metisuya, which we translate as media competence or media competency rather than Metishidu, which would be media literacy. So just fill in competency wherever you see literacy here. And we do draw a distinction in our primary and middle school media literacy competence teaching plan because people, no matter who they are and where they are in Taiwan, they enjoy broadband as a human right. Even on the top of the Taiwan, the Sabia, the Yuzhan Mountain, almost 4,000 meters high, everybody is having access to 10 megabits per second at around 16 euros per month for unlimited data connection. And so the result is that everybody is a broadcaster. Everybody is, if they want, a journalist, a media. So instead of talking about literacy, which is treating them as consumers of media, we talk about competence, which is their capability of producers of media, and we weave that into our curriculum starting from the first grade from when people are seven or eight years old because they need to understand that they're producers of media when they're sharing live streaming things and so on. And so I think as for the people who are more elderly, this resource is very important in trying to find people who speak different regional languages. We have more than 20 national languages and the human kind of connections that you can make. For example, the points that you can say, instead of having your children, grandchildren correcting you all the time, sometimes with a robot dog to help them, you can also contribute and correct them all the time. And that sometimes I get people listening and so on. So we have a cute spokes dog called Dr. Message. And it's from the leading antivirus company and you just add it to your line, which is your end-to-end encrypted connection channel. It's like WhatsApp. And then it just scans like an antivirus scanner, all the incoming messages, including pictures and videos, and give out the clarifications. And because it's cute and it's user experience is quite good. And especially because it counters not only this information, but also telephone scan and things like that. The elderly people are much more willing to install this from a leading antivirus company. But that idea, of course, came from the social sector, the civil society, the COVAX project. This stuff is remarkable. I know you were traveling a lot and Kedi you're traveling around a lot. And we at NDI are working with a number of the civic tech groups in Ukraine and the Baltics and all around the world for a design for democracy program, things like that. I'm just curious specifically Audrey and Kedi, how much do you share, we got this question in, how much are you working with other countries in sharing this type of creativity? It's remarkable, kind of new adaptations and applications to different contexts, country context. Are you regularly engaged with other countries and other civic tech groups? How is that working? So maybe Kedi first? Yeah, at TFD we, on the regular basis, have collaborative conferences and information info sharing workshops. We host them in Taipei. And of course, we invite our partners and people, our partners, partners to come to Taiwan. So we could, for the most part, we will invite a civic tech community within Taiwan to share how they use technology to combat disinformation. But we also are wanting to learn from our regional partners of the kind of disinformation they are trying to tackle within their countries. So we could provide assistance or they could also teach us the kind of disinformation that perhaps Taiwan would encounter in the future. So at least, for example, last year, we have several, the largest one being GCTF. And we did that for two years in a row, Minister Tang being our first keynote speaker at our GCTF. So we actually are expanding. Last year's GCTF, we included European countries as well. So if we are able to get over the pandemic, we are looking to expand the program. But at the same time, now we're learning to conduct conferences online, to share information online via different platforms and applications. And for the past few weeks that I've done it, it's working quite well as well as well. So, and it's very budget consuming also, not very budget consuming. So people could kind of just come in to listen. So we're actually in the process of trying to reorganize under the current circumstances, information sharing workshop through the cyberspace. That's excellent. Yeah, I would just add in my other heart, as a zero contributor, sometimes it's easier for the social sector to build such international connections. I mean, during the GCTF, which is a mini-elateral, growing to be not so mini-elateral nowadays, with four or more host countries per GCTF, we share basic concepts like humor over rumor. And we share some worked examples, for example, again the premier, saying that we will not find people who prime their hair because he used to have hair and he will not punish people who had hair like he was and when he was young. But if you prime your hair many times during a week, maybe your hair will fall off and you will look like him. And things like that. So it also went viral, it's really a good piece of comedy. But obviously we don't export that sort of mementic engineering to other jurisdictions, we just show them what the work and they have to develop their own comedic teams. But the tools such as Covax that I refer to, that we can introduce through the civil society. So this was the initial Covax website with people who forward any disinformation or rumors to the bots and the bots will collectively build a clarification database. And so the GovZero community shared with the, for example, people at the Jurorong Go University in Thailand and we helped them to build a workshop with the Jurorong Go University's media communication arts department. So by the time that our cross-textual team went there to have a full day workshop and by the time we go back to Taiwan, suddenly there's Covax.org. So if you were to remove the S from Covax to Covax, you get into the Thai version of Covax, which is pink and beautiful and even more humorous as we can see recently on Twitter. And they have a different configuration when it comes to social sector, private sector and public sector partnership. Maybe they start first with things around health. Maybe they start not as much as in Taiwan about political ideology and so on. So they need their own cross-sector collaboration model but a basic source code that is the underpinning algorithm and so on that is entirely shared and co-developed with the GovZero community. Dennis asked to follow up very quickly. You mentioned Thailand there. Any specific countries that you've established partnerships with, you feel comfortable in the documentary we show in Ukraine and others that are doing similar type. But are there formal partnerships of the specific countries that you would wanna mention here that you're working with? Well, in the GovZero hackathons regularly, people from Korea, from Japan, from Hong Kong, they're regulars because we share very similar time zones. And there's also interests from the GovTech part in Singapore as well. Although we understand that Singapore has a different social configuration, politically speaking, on the source code level, we can still share. And so I think especially around the coronavirus thing, for example, when Tokyo Metropolis worked with Kofu Japan, which is their equivalent of GovZero to develop the stock COVID dashboard, we immediately started translating it into different languages so that nowadays you can just click, for example, the English website and see how things are going in Tokyo. And because it's open source, means that you can always find a Octocat, which is here, that points to the source code, you can very quickly then see that there's many other people in many other municipalities just forking, meaning taking it and making a different version. And there's almost 2,000 different versions out there, each taking care of a different need or a municipality or even in Taiwan, there's people using the same numbers to help visualizing things and comparing things in a very apple to apple orange to orange basis. So I think these are the powerful collaborations that doesn't go through official diplomatic channels, but nevertheless have a real impact on the official channels as well. So when I changed one letter here in the language selector for the Taiwanese version, the mayor of Tokyo actually thanked me for it on Twitter. And so it became somewhat diplomatic, but I contributed only through my social sector credentials. Steve, let me ask, yeah, go ahead. You wanted to ask, Audrey, a question. So is that like an Ushahidi event mapping platform that you're using, your crowdsourcing the data that's coming in and then you're aggregating and displaying and using it as a feedback loop to respond. Yeah, that's really very good. Yes, yes. And we do that, or by we, we say the zero community do that for like the mass distribution, any pharmacy, any visitor to the pharmacy can report what's happening there. And there's multiple systems that enable this kind of underground real-time feedback. Yeah, Derek. Yeah, Stephen, let me ask you a question. Hey, man, much has been written about rushes, this information campaign and the recent adaptation in this crisis. How do you think China is learning and adapting? Yeah, I think that my colleagues on the panel would indicate that there's emerging evidence that PRC is beginning to emulate some of the Russian tactics. And that is concerning, generally speaking, for the most part, the PRC has been focused on information management control internally, but now it's starting to reach out. And I know Taiwan has been an exception to what I'm saying for some time, but there is a more aggressive, robust effort on the part of the PRC to especially distract attention from its responsibility with COVID-19 epidemic. It is coming up with alternative narratives, saying, I don't know about the CIA, Audrey, but that others, other than what the events in Wuhan are responsible for the coronavirus. So that's the sort of thing that we're seeing a lot of now these days. A question here about encrypted platforms. Could speak to effective methods of countering disinformation spread via encrypted platforms like WhatsApp, literally WhatsApp. How do you think about that? How do you address that? Yeah, so far as I understand the line, information platform, which is also into an encrypted, other than the stickers, I don't know about stickers, but other than the stickers, things are into an encrypted event group chat. And so things like Dr. Mitzvich, like Covax, and so on, they're just bots and bots that could be invited into your group discussions and so on. So this is the same model as actually counter spam. You flag things as spam, not by a single state authority telling you to flag spam, but rather working through spam extensions in your mail reader or through your email providers, builds in anti-span measures so that you can flag individual emails. And social contract is that once you flag something as spam, you basically donate it into the research community so that they can help finding where the spams are coming from and block incoming spams from your inbox, and rather it will land into your junk mail folder, which we check only when we have too much time. And so the same thing is happening through this into an encrypted channel and the bots involved. It is not by one single central command. It is by multiple vendors of antivirus and so on, offering their solutions as chat bots. And the platform companies, I think need to provide accountability dashboard as of which of those partners are acting responsibly and who do you contact if you see something wrong with those counter spam bots because they can also propagate different ideologies and so on. And so for example, the line platform do provide such a dashboard telling you how many people are flagging, how many messages through their fact-checking and clarification partners, what are now the trending rumors and misinformation and who are they working with. And two of these four, Michael Penn and the Taiwan Fact-checking Center are also partners in the International Fact-checking Network so they also enjoy solidarity and technical support from the international community. But it is this transparent dashboard that allows everybody to transparently see that these fact-checking and clarification partners are not pushing their own agenda somehow. Well, I think we have time. There's one last question here. Are there any laws, excuse me, are there any laws in Taiwan that control or against this information and fake news? Thank you. Well, in Taiwan as a legal concept we do not say the f-word. And especially speaking personally because both my parents are journalists. I do not say the f-word, that is to say the fake news word. And the reason is that in Taiwan, the news, Xinwen and journalism, Xinwen Gongzuo are really the same word. And so journalism is literally news work. And because of that, if we say fake news, we say also fake journalists and alienating journalism is never the good thing to do here. And so in Taiwan, there is a legal definition of this information. It is very specific and very narrow. It is intentional, harmful, untruth. And the harm must be to the public, not to the minister's image, which is just good journalism. And so all the existing laws have been upgraded to basically say very specifically that only intentional harmful untruth are countered through legal remedies. And that is the extent of it. And so for example, when the people in PTT as my very first slide are sharing that there may be SARS outbreak in Wuhan, it may or may not be true, but it is certainly not intentionally harmful. And because of this, this kind of whistleblowing will not be penalized by the legal apparatus. Well, let me just ask one sum up question to all of you. You know, this is a remarkable story that Taiwan is doing and what sharing for the world really is spotlighting just how much Taiwan has to offer to the international community. What is your biggest worry in all this? I like the way folks are focusing on the positive, the can-do, the find a way to make this happen instead of wallowing in concern about, oh goodness, we're on an under attack and digital technologies. We sort of medic-depressive about digital technologies 10 years ago, it was gonna be saving us all. More recently, it's the thought of all evil. And now it's a tool. It's a tool that can be used for good and not good. And I love the can-do spirit of Taiwan so they kept community and those in government. We're saying we have to work with this. But what is it that you see this evolve? What's your biggest worry about how it's receiving? Katie, do you want to start? I think the story. Yeah. I think for myself, looking at the extent of disinformation that we receive every day, every government agencies, every organizations and entities, we have been bombarded by disinformation. It takes a lot of work hours for individuals. So I know that the civic tech communities is working really hard to catch up with how to combat disinformation. And I want to echo Minister Tang's words in the beginning that we need to be able to combat disinformation, but at the same time protect our journalists, integrity and our rights to free speech, the values that we share as democracies. So I would not just say that this is my worry, but I think this is a challenge that we have to face dealing, you know, living in the digital world that we live in right now. That's excellent. So this is part of the slide that I shared both in NDI and in SIS. So talking about disinformation. And back at that time, one year ago, I used this as a metaphor and now it doesn't seem like a metaphor anymore. We're literally focusing on these sustainable development goals as the entire world. But the same idea still apply. If we over concentrate on the quarantining, the social distancing of not only countering coronavirus, but also metaphorically about making sure that the social media platforms built in a lot of protective measures that may actually over focus our energy on these things that may also have a negative. And I'm not talking only about infringing on media freedom and so on that you have already so eloquently put. But also just like the term social distancing itself, it puts a distance between people. But around the time of coronavirus, we do need the social support that we can get from people over Google Hangout Meet or things like that. And so instead of saying, you know, distancing socially or distancing from sharing on social media distancing, think twice before you share, which are all very good suggestions. I think it's even more important to achieve a universal health coverage, both in the sense of Taiwan's NHL single payer system, but also in the sense of communicable information like the cute dog that everybody loves and can share and make sure that they travel faster than the rumors, than the disinformation to make sure that these kind of clarifications in public announcement travels half the world before the rumor can even catch up flipping the coin on this regard. And I would worry if people start over focusing on the prevention and especially penalizing the criminalization of this part of the things and neglecting the vast importance of the first two steps, which is achieving the universal mental health coverage as well as supporting the research and development of more pro-social media platforms so that all social media become more pro-social instead of anti-social media. I would worry if people start painting everything as a us versus them, black versus white, disinformation versus the good people. Great, thank you. Steven, any thoughts, final thoughts? Yes, but quickly because I think we're running out of time very quickly. At the beginning of the program, I said that there are two components to disinformation. One is technological and second is sociological. Let me tap into the first one first. Technologically, I'm concerned about evolving out of sources of automation and the ability to more easily create synthetic content. I'm thinking about something called GANs, Generated Bethesering Networks, that can create images of people right down to their pores but the people don't exist. The other is face swapping technology and also audio technology that allows for almost the mass production of synthetic content. When that sort of stuff is flooding in the information environment, it makes it all that much harder for people to sort out what is real and what is not. So as that technology develops, it's causing a concern. At the sociological, political level, the world is in the midst of this drift towards authoritarianism and authoritarian regimes are not interested in truth. They're interested in preserving their own privilege. And we need to do something about that trend and that's a really large question but it's a really important one. So in a larger context, I think this information needs to be addressed by addressing the fundamentals of democratic government. Well, you're speaking our language, Steven. That's what NDI does worldwide. And look, I wanna thank all three of you. We have, excuse me, we have gone about five minutes over time. I think it's worthwhile. This was extremely important topic, extremely important to spotlight what Taiwan is doing and to share the success is not just of Taiwan but everyone around the world who is, we're fighting for democracy, fighting for the truth, fighting for facts and need to be collectively working together across boundaries to deal with this because it is something that's not simply national. It is international. And we have people like Minister Audrey Tan, Dr. Kedi Chen, Professor Steven Livingston. I think this is the foundation for that pushback and for supporting democratic development worldwide. So I wanna thank all three of you for your help. I wanna say again, for those still listening, patch on to NDI.org to watch the documentary, 12 minute documentary that we produced about the Taiwan Civic Tech community surrounding the January 2020 elections. I think it's very, very interesting. Share it with friends, share it on Twitter, share it on Facebook. And I just wanna thank everybody for your contributions to this conversation. Thank you all very much and you all have to be safe, be well and we'll see you soon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.