An Anatomy of a Taiwanese Misinformation Storm

The final speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Chen-Ling Hung, who presents a case study on typhoon Jebi’s impact on Japan in September 2018, which forced the closure of Kansai airport and led to substantial disruptions especially for the city of Osaka. Many travellers, including especially Chinese tourists, were affected, and there was a subsequent political storm in Taiwan, especially also in online media, when it emerged that Taiwanese citizens may also have received assistance from Chinese consular authorities if they identified themselves as Chinese (rather than Taiwanese).

This event, and the information and misinformation that circulated around it, can be seen as an example of the current information disorder. What were its informational and communicative dynamics? How did a typhoon in Japan result in a political storm in Taiwan?

News reported at first simply that the Chinese consulate in Osaka had evacuated some 750 Chinese citizens from Osaka, and Chinese online media users commented positively on this effort and shared amateur footage from the evacuation buses. Chinese media then further reported – apparently falsely – that some Taiwanese tourists had also received help.

This caused complaints in Taiwan about the Taiwanese’s embassy’s inaction, comparing the two countries’ reactions, with Taiwanese officials responding via Facebook. Tabloid outlets and 24-hour news channels in Taiwan reported the controversy, generating further visibility for the story and generating additional negative news frames as a result.

Opposition parties in Taiwan also exploited this controversy for political ends, and in the end the Taiwanese representative in Osaka committed suicide over the allegations of his inactions during the crisis. The inadvertent or deliberate distribution of misinformation about the event claimed a life.