Information Threats to Democratic Societies of UK and Taiwan: Inter-regional and Interdisciplinary Approaches

这个拟议的项目将汇集学术和非学术机构的研究人员，他们对包括信息泄露/错误信息在内的信息威胁的研究感兴趣，并将重点放在中国和俄罗斯，以及这种威胁对英国和台湾民主社会的影响。信息威胁的形式多种多样，前提是了解其出现的区域背景，分析产生信息威胁的敌对行为者，了解信息威胁针对的受众，以及信息威胁对某些受众和更广泛的民主社会的影响。正如DoubleThink实验室的研究表明，信息威胁至少出现在九个不同的领域，即媒体、学术界、经济、社会、军事、执法、技术、国内政治和外交政策(https://china-index.io/domain).许多具有社会意义的交流都是通过媒体进行的，因此我们的项目将专注于该领域及其与前面提到的其他“信息威胁”领域的关系。更具体地说，我们的项目将涉及到21世纪最大的挑战之一--媒体中的散布/错误信息传播。有必要了解散布/错误信息的产生、传播、接收和内容。还有必要超越识别假货的范围，研究传播中的观点构建，这是国家和非国家敌对行为者用来操纵和影响公众舆论的一种微妙但强大的方法。虽然事实核查工作针对的是明显的虚假，但观点构建--唤起对事件和情况的某些框架--是一种更有害的虚假信息形式，超出了当前大多数事实核查工作的范围。视点构建技术不仅是语言的，而且是多模式的：它们结合了文字、语调、手势和动作以及其他非语言元素。它们严重依赖于文化、历史和其他语境知识，导致受众得出错误的结论、做出有利于敌对行为者的评估或意见。要真正理解媒体传播，必须全面理解它的复杂性，而集视觉、语言和声音模式于一体的多模式传播已成为满足这一需求的核心研究领域。处理散布/错误信息需要在敌对行为者和目标社会的宏观一级，以及在媒体内容及其对受众的影响的微观一级，在速度和规模上查明和确定操纵战略和技术。只有同时存在宏观和微观层面的分析，并利用技术，才能完成对信息威胁--以及作为其表现之一的虚假信息--的研究。需要迅速和大规模地完成这种完整的分析，这就要求开发新的跨学科方法。它还要求进行区域间分析，以揭示原本几乎看不见的现象。该项目将确定我们在台湾和英国的研究团队以及相关学科的学术界最感兴趣的领域。它将确定研究重叠以及英国和台湾政策制定者最感兴趣的问题。来自台湾和英国的研究人员将共同制定一份政策驱动的研究问题清单，使我们能够以最佳和完整的方式解决信息威胁，更具体地说，是传播/错误信息。该项目将进一步发展一个由研究人员和非学术合作伙伴组成的国际网络，专注于来自中国和俄罗斯的信息威胁。它将提交一份立场文件，介绍一种新的研究设计，用于跨学科和跨区域分析信息不实/错误信息。该项目将致力于准备一份开展试点研究的资金申请。

The proposed project will bring together researchers from academic and non-academic institutions which are interested in research on information threats including dis/misinformation, with the specific focus on China and Russia, and the impact of such threats on democratic societies of UK and Taiwan. Information threats come in various forms and presuppose appreciation of the regional contexts in which they appear, analysis of hostile actors which produce information threats, understanding of audiences which information threats target, as well as the impact of information threats on certain audiences and democratic societies more broadly. As research by the Doublethink Lab has demonstrated, information threats appear in at least nine different domains, namely media, academia, economy, society, military, law enforcement, technology, domestic politics, and foreign policy (https://china-index.io/domain). Much socially significant communication occurs through the media, hence our project will focus on that domain and its relation to other aforementioned 'information threats' domains. More specifically, our project will engage with one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century - dis/misinformation communication in the media. There is the need to understand production, communication, reception and contents of dis/misinformation. There is also the need to go beyond identifying fakes to researching viewpoint construction in communication, which is a subtle but powerful approach used by state and non-state hostile actors to manipulate and influence public opinion. While fact-checking efforts address obvious falsehoods, viewpoint construction - evoking certain framings of events and situations - is a more pernicious form of disinformation outside the scope of most current fact-checking efforts. Viewpoint construction techniques are not just verbal but multimodal: they combine words, intonation, gesture, and movement, and other non-verbal elements. They rely heavily on culture, history, and other contextual knowledge to lead audiences to draw a false conclusion, make an assessment, or come to an opinion beneficial to the hostile actor.To truly understand media communication, it must be understood in its full complexity, and multimodal communication - integrating visual, verbal and sound modes - has become a core research area to address this need. The tackling of dis/misinformation requires the identification and characterisation of manipulation strategies and techniques, at speed and at scale, both at the macro-level of hostile actors and targeted societies and at the micro-level of media content and its impact on audiences. Only if both macro- and micro-levels of analysis are present, leveraging technology, is research on information threats - and disinformation as one of its manifestations - complete. The need for such a completeness of analysis performed at speed and at scale calls for development of new interdisciplinary approaches. It also calls for inter-regional analysis to reveal phenomena which can otherwise be almost invisible. The project will determine areas of most research interest to our Taiwan-based and UK-based research teams and more broadly to academic communities in relevant disciplines. It will identify research overlaps as well as issues of most interest to policy makers in the UK and Taiwan. Researchers from Taiwan and the UK will work together on developing a list of policy-driven research questions which will allow us to address information threats and more specifically dis/misinformation in an optimal and complete fashion. The project will further develop an international network of researchers and non-academic partners focusing on information threats coming from China and Russia. It will deliver a position paper featuring a new research design for interdisciplinary and inter-regional analysis of dis/misinformation. The project will work to prepare a funding application to conduct pilot research.