Asia Fact Check Lab , 2024 winner
In late 2023, Taiwan was in the crosshairs of a massive Chinese government disinformation effort. As the island prepared for its 2024 presidential elections, the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, was inundating the island with sophisticated disinformation tactics aimed at seeding conspiracy theories and sowing doubt in the minds of Taiwanese voters.
But thanks to the efforts of Radio Free Asia’s Asia Fact Check Lab, audiences across the island, and on the mainland, were able to sort fact from fiction.
The success of the Asia Fact Check Lab – which was just a year old at the time — has been recognized by the highest echelons of Taiwanese politics. In a January news conference ahead of the elections,Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu spotlighted the lab’s investigative report exposing fake polls created by the pro-China online media outlet “Finger Media.”
The lab also revealed that the CCP planted narratives aimed at increasing skepticism about the U.S. commitment to Taiwan, fear of friction among U.S. allies in the region, and anxiety about a conflict with China.
Most recently the lab launched a video service for its Chinese audiences to expand its reach – not just in exposing lies, but revealing the concerted and calculated effort by the Chinese government to spread those lies.
And their coverage goes beyond Taiwan – the AFCL has tracked the Chinese government’s efforts to amplify Russian narratives about the Ukraine war, and recently has partnered with other notable fact-checking organizations to analyze the similarity of Chinese and Russian propaganda during the first 100 days after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
In total, AFCL produced close to 200 reports during the pivotal year of 2023, including fact check pieces, media watch reports and in-depth analyses.