TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Remember when collaborators were treated like traitors? Well, China is paying foreign collaborators to spread its disinformation in target countries, and these collaborators are often so-called "influencers" with many followers on social media platforms like Twitter. <br /><br />That's the finding of a new study published on Monday. The study also found that China pays collaborating news organizations to spread its disinformation. Here are the details:<br /><br />Taiwanese officials accused China on Monday 24 May of spreading fake news about the COVID-19 situation in Taiwan. <br /><br />That same day, Taiwan's DoubleThink Lab released a report that details how Chinese government-backed disinformation flooded Taiwan in 2020. <br /><br />The disinformation amplified discord prior to Taiwan's elections and spread COVID-related rumours aimed at delegitimizing Taiwan's democratic government. <br /><br />The researchers analyzed thousands of posts to determine their origin, purpose, effect, audience, and mode of spreading. <br /><br />They found that one tactic China uses is to pay news outlets to repackage Chinese propaganda as real news. <br /><br />Another tactic is to work closely with real online influencers in the target country to get them to share the disinformation through their platforms. <br /><br />China also uses websites that aggregate low-quality articles to spread disinformation, often through Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and other platforms. <br /><br />Another tactic is to mobilize Chinese nationalists to post and amplify disinformation online.<br /><br />The report concludes that the Chinese government has developed a sophisticated set of disinformation tools that it is deploying inside liberal democracies. <br /><br />It says that Beijing's disinformation operations in Taiwan follow a set pattern, which is also being deployed elsewhere.
