Digital Civic Participation and Misinformation during the 2020 Taiwanese Presidential Election

Abstract: From fact-checking chatbots to community-maintained misinformation databases, Taiwan has emerged as a critical case-study for citizen participation in politics online. Due to Taiwan’s geopolitical history with China, the recent 2020 Taiwanese Presidential Election brought fierce levels of online engagement led by citizens from both sides of the strait. In this article, we study misinformation and digital participation on three platforms, namely Line, Twitter, and Taiwan’s Professional Technology Temple (PTT, Taiwan’s equivalent of Reddit). Each of these platforms presents a different facet of the elections. Results reveal that the greatest level of disagreement occurs in discussion about incumbent president Tsai. Chinese users demonstrate emergent coordination and selective discussion around topics like China, Hong Kong, and President Tsai, whereas topics like Covid-19 are avoided. We discover an imbalance of the political presence of Tsai on Twitter, which suggests partisan practi

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Media and Communication ; 9 (2021) 1 ; 144-157

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Politik

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (who): SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
• (when): 2021
• Creator: Chang, Ho-Chun Herbert ; Haider, Samar ; Ferrara, Emilio

Further information

• DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3405
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2022091916041479599802
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 15.08.2025, 7:22 AM CEST