Audrey Tang: My office door looks like this, and it shows my schedule. I also travel around Taiwan to talk to people and connect back to this space as well.

Interviewer: How many people are dropping by in one day?

Audrey Tang: They’re very, very variable, but usually maybe 10 every Wednesday.

Audrey Tang: Which cup of coffee is mine?

Interviewer: This one I think is mine.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. You get one too.

Interviewer: Taiwan has a digital minister, you. What’s your job exactly? What do you do as a digital minister of Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: Do I talk to you, or do I talk to the camera?

Interviewer: Talk to me.

Audrey Tang: If I introduce some concepts, do I introduce it to the front or to my screen?

Interviewer: I think better to your screen.

Audrey Tang: To my screen. I will move it a little bit here.

Audrey Tang: As digital minister, my work is to further the sustainable development goals through digital means that connects the economy, the society, and the environment together through enhancing reliable data, encouraging effective partnerships, and open innovation. I wrote my own job description three years ago.

Interviewer: You did? [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Yes. I’ll read you my job description. It goes like this.

Audrey Tang: When we see the Internet of things, let’s make it an Internet of beings. When we see virtual reality, let’s make it a shared reality. When we see machine learning, let’s make it collaborative learning. When we see user experience, let’s make it about human experience. Whenever we hear the singularity is near, let us always remember the plurality is here.

Interviewer: It’s like a poem. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: It is a poem.

Interviewer: Would you today write the same job description as three years ago, or would you change something?

Audrey Tang: I just wrote a new poem yesterday.

Interviewer: How does it go, the new poem? Also job description?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s also job description-ish. It goes like this. It says, “Whirling ocean, beautiful islands. A transcultural republic of citizens.”

Interviewer: This sounds like those Japanese haikus.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s…

Interviewer: …the meaning of it?

Audrey Tang: Yes. Taiwan, of course, is not only the land part of it. It’s also our surrounding ocean and sea that has 10 percent of the total ocean biodiversity on earth. It’s always important to begin a view that is not just on the land but actually through climate actions and the sustainable growth to expand our horizons toward the ocean. That’s why it’s begun with “Whirling ocean.”

Audrey Tang: Then, it’s not just one island. There are many islands. There’s the Pescadores islands, the Orchid Island, the Green Island, and so on. It is not just enough to take care of broadband as a human right on the main island. It is now also very important to get all the smaller islands also connected to the broadband as a human right to make telemedicine, tele-education, and so on, work.

Audrey Tang: “Transcultural” means the freedom to move from culture to a different culture, just like the freedom to move from a country to another, because starting this year, in Taiwan, we have more than 20 official languages.

Audrey Tang: We have the Formosan languages from indigenous nations. We have the Taiwanese Tâi-gí, Hakka, and Mandarin, and many other languages as well. They’re all equally official. It’s a new thing as of this year.

Audrey Tang: To make machine learning, for example, learn not only from people who speak English or Mandarin but also from all the different languages, all the different cultures and traditions, and be able to communicate through those cultures. That’s what I meant by “transcultural.”

Audrey Tang: “A republic of citizens” means that starting next year, our referendums are in different years than the elections.

Interviewer: Ah yeah.

Audrey Tang: Yes. Yes. There used to be, I would say, capturing of agenda of the deliberative part of democracy by the representative part of democracy, but now, because there will be on alternating years, there will be one year of presidential election and then one year of national referenda, and then one year of mayoral election, and one year of national referenda.

Audrey Tang: It allows a entire year of deliberative action outside of party politics and outside of representative politics. It’s a new design that allows for more direct participation in agenda-setting by the citizens, without a political setting that captures them by the political parties – That’s what I meant by republic of citizens.

Interviewer: A lot of meaning in those few lines.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Interviewer: As a digital minister, what worries you the most?

Audrey Tang: What worry I the most? In order of sequence, if people don’t care about the ocean, if they don’t care about the climate. If people work on only furthering one interest at the expense of the others, like economy, if it’s done in a linear way at expense of society. Environment, or innovation at expense of social justice, privacy, and things like that, that would worry me.

Interviewer: What about the upcoming elections? What role does social media play in the upcoming elections?

Audrey Tang: Social media is a great amplifier of people’s both prosocial tendencies but also antisocial tendencies. It’s social, but it doesn’t say whether it’s prosocial or antisocial.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, what we’ve seen is that it tends to reward mostly the more extreme voices so that they amplify more. There may only be five divisive ideas among all the possible ideas that concern the society, but social media, when it’s designed in a antisocial way tend to over-amplify the voices of the divisive and give less room for the consensual.

Interviewer: How does social media work in Taiwan? Does it work a little bit differently from other countries or is it same-same?

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, because we have broadband as a human right, no matter where you are in Taiwan, you’ve got 10 megabits per second at â¬15 per month. Because of that, everybody is very much into video producing and video sharing. I would say that it is not only text-based.

Audrey Tang: A lot of it is image- and video-based. People very easily start their own broadcast stations sharing their views, their livestreaming. There’s a lot more livestreaming going on compared to other jurisdictions, mostly because it’s unlimited data for everyone.

Audrey Tang: I would also say that the use of end-to-end encryption is maybe more in Taiwan through a app called LINE. A lot of people is using LINE for end-to-end encryption, not only among individuals but also among groups of people.

Interviewer: What does this mean if you have more streaming and not only text?

Interviewer: On social media, does this have a impact then, for example, on all those topics like fake news? Do you have less fake news because everybody’s more streaming versus the other thing? Less possible because it is live streamed?

Audrey Tang: Nowadays, it’s also easy to synthesize video, so it’s not being fake. [laughs]

Interviewer: I forgot about deepfakes.

Audrey Tang: [laughs] It’s not exactly alike. It’s harder.

Interviewer: So the problem with the video?

Audrey Tang: The problem actually become bigger because people would believe it more if they have seen a picture or a video as compared to text. Text is open for interpretation. A image is usually very final in its presentation. I would say that it actually amplify especially the feeling of anger and helplessness if people show you a image.

Audrey Tang: For example, there was this image that says “during the Hong Kong protest, the payment for the rioters is such that, at most, they pay up to $20 million for murdering a police” – which is a piece of disinformation.

Interviewer: Is this also something which went viral in Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: Yes. That was a photo. This is a comic drawing that calls for so-called 死士 or suiciders. Again, this is a piece of disinformation. There was no such event going on in Hong Kong. You can very easily see because it’s not spelled in Cantonese. It’s spelled in Hanyu Pinyin, which no Hong Kong protesters would use, but unless you are…

Interviewer: You mean Hanyu Pinyin is in Mandarin, not Cantonese?

Audrey Tang: It’s written in Cantonese to make it look like Cantonese, but actually, it uses Hanyu Pinyin, which is Mandarin Pinyin, only used in PRC. In Taiwan, we would use the Zhuyin system. It also has some Cantonese characters.

Audrey Tang: What I’m trying to say is that if it’s only this text, it will not be as provoking as a drawing or maybe a synthesized image or a video.

Interviewer: Is the fake news problem bigger in Taiwan because people are using more picture and more video?

Audrey Tang: I would say it incites more emotion but then it also makes clarifications more important. The website that I’m showing you here is clarifying this as false. Because they can cite from the video and from the images, it also makes clarification more pertinent to the message because you can then compare where the image came. It was from Reuters, but they changed the caption.

Interviewer: What does this mean for the upcoming election? Everybody is extensively using social media, people from Han’s party, but also Tsai’s. Everybody’s using social media. Does this also mean that the whole presidential elections are going to be quite harsher and also angry?

Interviewer: We have those people from Han’s party who are accusing the opposite of fake news and also vice versa. I get the impression that it’s quite heated.

Audrey Tang: We’re a young democracy, so elections are always heated. Social media is unique in that it allows turning the helpless anger into a outrage very easily by clicking share.

Audrey Tang: Whenever people feel anger, they may not have the mental capacity to check the veracity of the image or video. They can very easily turn it into something more positive, subjectively, by clicking share and sending a message of outrage so that people are angry about the same thing together instead of a individual anger. That tend to spread, yes.

Interviewer: Say this again?

Audrey Tang: Anger as it…

Audrey Tang: …I was just showing you, that was also equally people devote their time to fact-checking, committed to respond to each and every of those messages within 60 minutes. I think the deadline from each ministry is two hours. Within two hours, they have to produce the clarification cards that are also visual. Within two hours, within 200 words, at least two pictures that clarifies this disinformation.

Interviewer: How does this work? Is this one of the means how you protect against fake news? In every ministry is only having a look at the fake…

Audrey Tang: The trending disinformation.

Interviewer: Is it the trending ones or just the trending ones concerning that ministry?

Audrey Tang: Of course they can only respond to the ones concerning their ministry. The trending one also is a volunteer basis. People either report it on the LINE system directly to a public dashboard, like flagging a spam email, or people can work with the Taiwan FactCheck Center and say, “I see this trending. Would you like to check it?”

Audrey Tang: One way or another, it will end up on the ministry’s radar, and they will look at whether it’s a intentional, harmful untruth. If so, within two hours, usually within 60 minutes now, they will roll out two picture cards that are less than 200 words and easy-to-grasp in arguments.

Interviewer: The people from the ministry, they don’t themselves do the monitoring? The people are doing the monitoring, and then they will respond?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Interviewer: Do you have a good example from the past?

Audrey Tang: This is a very humorous one. This is clarifying a rumor that says perming your hair many times a week will be subject to a million-dollar fine starting next week. That’s not true. The payload, which is less than 200 words said, “I may be bald now,” says a younger version of the prime minister, “but I would not punish people with hair.”

Audrey Tang: The fine print says, “What we’ve done is introducing labeling requirements for hair products starting July 2021.” Then the prime minister, as he looks now, says, “However, while perming your hair many times a week will not damage your pocket, it will damage your hair. When serious, you may end up looking like me.”

Interviewer: It’s then also approved by the minister himself and his team?

Audrey Tang: Of course, the image will have to be pre-cleared to use. It’s a very tight pipeline. You can think of it like a sitcom producer, a memetic engineer team that can easily and swiftly put the clarification messages from the ministry into this memetic packaging so that it goes viral.

Audrey Tang: Now if you, for example, search our search engine, the keywords that we just showed or something like that, then the first few hits will be this clarification messages and its derivatives.

Interviewer: Can we also have a closer look at this piece?

Tech: I want to go through the whole thing again just so that we can have you just remember it.

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Interviewer: We are doing it afterwards or shall we already do it?

Tech: No, I’d say afterwards, then we don’t interrupt you.

Interviewer: I’ll just make a note.

Interviewer: The hair scene.

Audrey Tang: The hair thing, yes.

Interviewer: Yeah, the hair thing, the whole thing, maybe your whole lines in the beginning to have a bit of close-ups and everything.

Interviewer: How many people are doing this for you? I read somewhere five people.

Audrey Tang: They’re not doing it for me. They’re doing it for their minister. I’m mostly advocating this way of a swift, open, and structured response. The actual coaching is by our spokesperson, Kolas Yotaka. In each ministry, they have a team of five people or more, but five is basic.

Interviewer: Do you also have another example, for example, something which is also connected to the elections?

Audrey Tang: I would say one of the important things, that our clarifications are not fact-checks. These are our clarifications, like a piece of the puzzle from the administration. We don’t directly deal with election. Those would be from Han, or Tsai, or Soong’s office.

Interviewer: They’re doing it themselves?

Audrey Tang: They’re doing it themselves, but that’s not our purview. Our purview is common to the administrative functions. We’re not doing it for the elections.

Interviewer: When it comes to fake news, this is one of the main tools you have, or are there other tools?

Audrey Tang: When I said that our FactCheck Center, every piece of fact-check that they do, that they combine information from various different sources. For example, this one, the Hong Kong one, once they clarify it as not correct, it’s dialed down on Facebook. Facebook, when people share this piece of disinformation, they will no longer reach people’s newsfeed that easily.

Audrey Tang: You have to scroll two hours to see it. It’s exactly like moving a piece of junk mail from your inbox to your spam box. People, by default, don’t look into it, but it’s not a takedown. If you look specifically for it, it’s still there.

Interviewer: How big is, in general, trolling a problem in Taiwan, especially when it’s concerned to China and foreign countries?

Audrey Tang: Trolling, if you mean the automatic or semi-automatic posting of messages…

Interviewer: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: …to elicit negative emotion to distract from public discussion, then we have evidence, of course, there are hundreds of thousands of fake accounts.

Audrey Tang: For example, on the Honk Kong protests alone, there’s 200,000 fake accounts on Twitter designed to troll discussions. They’re all semi-automated from the same block of computers within the PRC that doesn’t need to bypass the Great Firewall. They’re blessed by the Great Firewall to directly troll Twitter, Facebook, and Google.

Interviewer: Are there also such trolling farms when it comes to questions concerning Hong Kong?

Audrey Tang: I think so. Just recently, people discovered that there’s a set of content farms that re-publishes in traditional Chinese language script whatever the simplified Chinese messages that’s pushed out by the PRC Weibo or something, instantly, or even before they post in simplified Chinese. That’s a instant translation of the messages as pushed out.

Audrey Tang: For example this Hong Kong one, which is a good example because it’s also posted on the Weibo of the Chang’an Sword, which is the official Weibo of the 中共中央政法委员会 in the PRC. It’s not merely spreading this in Taiwan. It’s rather taking something of official propaganda and localize it in Cantonese, in traditional Chinese, and spread it in the social media.

Interviewer: Is there something that it can do to hold that propaganda and re-target it, let’s say, for the Taiwanese market and China?

Audrey Tang: For the Taiwanese market?

Interviewer: For the Taiwanese…

Audrey Tang: That’s like, “Who would buy this?” Maybe in a different sense of buying.

Audrey Tang: As you can see, there are many pertaining only to Taiwan messages. Some of them are not disinformation. They’re rather mal-information.

Interviewer: What’s for you the difference between disinformation and mal-information?

Audrey Tang: Disinformation is untruth with a intention to do harm. Mal-information is information spread with the intention to do harm that may or may not be true, but they are intended to be framed in a way to do harm.

Audrey Tang: For example, there was a protest back in 2016. There was a real video of that protest but it’s almost three years ago. Then there’s a reframed message of such a protest as if it’s happening right now.

Interviewer: What’s the message behind it?

Audrey Tang: It’s trying to discredit the institutional media. The framing is there was such a very loud protest in front of the presidential office building but the media turn a deaf and blind eye to it. That was the framing.

Interviewer: For example, such kind of a message, did this get to the people, to the Taiwanese?

Audrey Tang: Of course it’s only after it’s shared by many people do they get flagged to the attention of the Taiwan FactChecking Center. They, of course, by default, have to reach at least some volunteers that flag this for the Taiwan FactChecking Center to get notice.

Interviewer: For example, this one got 160 shares.

Audrey Tang: When it’s reported to the TFC. It’s maybe only within one hour, but while it’s spreading, the TFC is, in parallel, doing its fact-checking work.

Interviewer: Through this whole fact-checking work, how many cases are your people or the people in the other ministry dealing with when it comes to China and Taiwan? It is a lot?

Audrey Tang: If you mean China as in the land, the territory that they currently govern, then there is many. For example, this was about a epidemic in rat. There’s also a virus in pigs, as in swine fever. There’s some concerning that area of their jurisdiction, but I would say it’s not a majority.

Audrey Tang: All what they want to do is to sow discord, so a local topic makes more sense to do so. For example, this one is disinformation about Dr. Tsai Ing-wen and a dialog with, allegedly, a small vendor from a…

Audrey Tang: …changed the name from Li Ke-Qiang to Tsai Ing-wen and re-spread on social media.

Interviewer: This was also one that already trended?

Audrey Tang: Yes, trended before the TFC looked at it.

Interviewer: Do you have an example what’s the post which trended the most?

Audrey Tang: I don’t. Maybe you can ask the TFC.

Audrey Tang: It depends on how early they intervened. Once they publish this as disinformation, as false, it will stop the virality. The virality as determined by Facebook will be dialed down to less than one-tenth of the previous. The earlier this fact-check appears, the slower it will trend afterward. We could never predict what would happen if not for this fact-checking.

Interviewer: But everyone say that China is trying to interfere in the social media, Taiwan, it’s maybe about the elections, the general one. What of your people?

Audrey Tang: We know for sure that they have hundreds of thousands of fake accounts. Some of them, of course, gets deleted by Twitter and published their metadata, corroborated by Facebook and Google.

Audrey Tang: Based on the fact that there were this amount of bots or fake accounts that are blessed by the Great Firewall, I think it’s safe to say that there are some still remaining, even though some of them get suspended.

Interviewer: Is it a big problem or a not-so-big problem?

Audrey Tang: It depends on who you’re asking. To me, comparatively, it’s less a big problem for this election than the previous one.

Interviewer: Why?

Audrey Tang: The previous election was also a referendum. There’s many different places where you can sow discord. Basically, each and every referendum topic is one in which disinformation, mal-information can operate.

Audrey Tang: For this election, because we’ve decoupled the referendums with the presidential elections, there’s less room for disinformation to navigate. It’s not to say that they’re not serious. It’s just to say the surface of disinformation is narrower this time.

Interviewer: How does that happen?

Tech: I don’t know if your question, if you wanted maybe not to tell her to…

Interviewer: In general, it is a problem of fake news and mal-information, disinformation from China. What can you do against it?

Audrey Tang: Working with journalists is, by far, the best way, and to revitalize people’s participation in journalism. As I said, everybody is a YouTuber and live-streamer. It’s not just about media literacy, which is about readers’ literacy or viewers’ literacy, but about media competence.

Audrey Tang: When everybody is a media broadcaster, what kind of competence do they need to make sure that this kind of viral, angry messages don’t spread? Rather something that’s more humorous, that’s more to the point, and so on, may spread easily. That is the kind of competence education can play a large role.

Audrey Tang: We see a lot of institutional media now working with social media, as well as a lot of participation from the volunteer group to voluntarily type in all the presidential candidates’ public speech into transcripts, validating its correctness, and then do a fact-check to each and every part of what a presidential candidate has said.

Audrey Tang: By participating in that process, it shows everyone how institutional media does fact-checking, source-checking, and journalism in general. Which is why we always say “disinformation” in Taiwan, not “fake news.” Unfortunately, in Taiwan, news and journalism translate to the same word. There’s no way to say fake news in Mandarin without offending journalists.

Interviewer: In…

Audrey Tang: Mandarin.

Interviewer: It’s the same word?

Audrey Tang: News is 新聞 and journalism is 新聞工作. The department of journalism is 新聞系 and a journalist is 新聞工作者.

Interviewer: Fake news is?

Audrey Tang: 假新聞, which would also describe a fake journalist, fake journalism. Journalism, by definition, is the opposition of fake because it’s a process to determine reality, if not truth, but at least reality from different perspectives.

Audrey Tang: By combining these two together, in Mandarin, it is a affront to journalists. Because my parents were both journalists, out of filial piety, I cannot say that word.

Interviewer: It’s disinformation then?

Audrey Tang: Disinformation, 假訊息, has no such problem, because it pertains to the intentional harm by untruths. Of course, a journalist would never do that.

Interviewer: In the end, that’s the main tool is fact checking. The fact checking can be done partly by…

Audrey Tang: Institutions, yeah.

Interviewer: …the government. It can be…

Audrey Tang: Volunteers, mm-hmm.

Interviewer: …done by people who volunteer?

Audrey Tang: Mm-hmm. But also, the product of fact checking need to be clarified in the sense that our humor stands alone.

Interviewer: Why has it to be humorous?

Audrey Tang: Humorous?

Interviewer: So, it’s catchy, or…?

Audrey Tang: Well, first step, yes. It’s catchy, that it can spread more than the disinformation, because joy spreads further than anger. Also, if you feel a helplessness in the anger, humor turns it into joy, and that blocks the psychological pathway that turns it into outrage, and so people actually have more mental capacity to look into this thing together, rather than it being a very divisive mood.

Interviewer: When did Taiwan start this whole…?

Audrey Tang: Humor thing? [laughs]

Interviewer: You know, this whole humor thing and there’s humor against like, I can say, against like fake news, disinformation.

Audrey Tang: Because you’re a journalist…

Interviewer: I can say it.

Audrey Tang: Exactly. You can say it. [laughs] It’s one of those shibboleth [laughs] where it’s…

Interviewer: Is it one year ago, two years ago, or when did Taiwan start?

Audrey Tang: I remember that I started proposing this idea, I think, early 2017. That’s when I outlined using my Internet experience in working to counter spam. That was almost 20 years ago. I proposed that we give swift, open and structured responses.

Audrey Tang: The structure is a memetic structure, that is to say to make humorous so it spreads faster. That is an idea that I raised in cabinet meeting, but it’s gradually realized by spokesperson Kolas Yotaka in the past couple of years.

Interviewer: Do you think it has already changed a lot during the…?

Audrey Tang: I would say so, especially for this election, because of the surface is more narrow. The referendums is out of the picture. I think a lot of disinformation necessarily, then, pertains the administrative functions.

Audrey Tang: The clarification from the ministries played a larger role on this, because the referendum agenda are set by the people. Often, disinformation pertaining your referendum, there’s nothing a ministry can say. But presidential candidates are representative, and so their platforms, of course, all pertain to administrative functions. These are something that ministry has something to say.

Interviewer: Also, the people already are more educated, and they…

Audrey Tang: Yes, and more aware that this is going on.

Interviewer: So quite a fast process. I didn’t have the imagine that it could change so fast, that people would change so fast.

Audrey Tang: I would also like to credit, for example, the LINE media system, where they have a dashboard that just showed the latest trending clarifications, and they arranged to work with many different fact checkers, as well as the 行政院, the administration, so that they give a section of their popular media channel, LINE Today.

Audrey Tang: They can show every day how many people flagged messages as disinformation for fact checking, and how many people eventually got around to share or read the clarifications instead of the disinformation, so it shows this pipeline.

Audrey Tang: I am grateful, I think, that online today, if you can look at the top news, it’s below the gossiping and entertainment, but then it’s the second section after the gossiping and entertainment, the clarification for rumors. Because of that, it’s very funny. Then after that, it’s world news, social issues, like everyday issues, and trendy video, and so on.

Audrey Tang: It’s good that we’re on the second section, the clarifications. I sometimes tell our ministerial colleagues that that’s because we’re not funny enough. That’s why we’re on the second section. If we’re funny enough, we will be above entertainment and gossip.

Interviewer: [laughs] Do you have an example, from like you ministry, which really went trending because it wasn’t so funny?

Audrey Tang: Yes. I can show you a short video.

Interviewer: One in which you have like really outdone yourself..

Audrey Tang: All right. I’ll show you a short video that I did. Like, if you just look at virality, this video went somewhat viral. It has more than, well, 140k views. But it’s also syndicated by various different fan pages that all together bring it to more than one million views. It’s just a very simple thing.

Audrey Tang: I can show you, first, the original, and then the remixes.

Interviewer: I have seen that there…

Audrey Tang: You have seen this?

Interviewer: Was it not just a five-minute interview on NDW?

Audrey Tang: That’s the five-minute one, yeah, right. The first few seconds went viral.

Announcer: The people of Hong Kong have been protesting for democracy and against what they perceive as a growing influence by the mainland government from China. As an official from Taiwan, an island, which Beijing considers a breakaway territory, how do you view these protests?

Audrey Tang: [responding in video] The breakaway was at the Neolithic age, I believe.

Audrey Tang: Just there, it went viral.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: People started remixing and adding a lot of kind of rap culture to it, and things like that.

Interviewer: Do you have an example of a…?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of a remix?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: I think the first remix was from TaiwanWarmPower, which is basically just captioning, and just highlighting that particular perspective. That, also, went somewhat viral. I think there’s, then, a lot of other short versions started to come.

Audrey Tang: Then the mainstream media took notice of it. Then it went viral again on mainstream media. Let me show you, again, the remix.

Audrey Tang: Or I can just go to one of my friend’s wall. That was a while ago. It’s around this time.

Audrey Tang: Here. You can see, for example, a Photoshop.

Interviewer: With that glass as well.

Audrey Tang: Yes, with sunglasses, and then it shows the fan page, the memetic engineer that’s responsible for it. Then, of course, we can go into here, and then look at how the Photoshops went. Then we’ll see that people are actually then supplying the Neolithic geographic information…

Audrey Tang: …and explaining how exactly the plate tectonics is. As I said, humor brings a curiosity in people.

Interviewer: And creativity.

Audrey Tang: And creativity. People actually wanted to learn how the breakaway exactly happened 8,500 years ago.

Interviewer: When it comes to this other platform and join the government DW, I understand there’s also an initiative.

Audrey Tang: Yes, this one.

Interviewer: What’s the most popular topics, nowadays, this platform?

Audrey Tang: Well, we can look. We don’t have to guess.

Audrey Tang: From the petition part of it, there’s, of course, also regulations and budget. But the petition part, which is more popular, I guess, and you can search in it, and you can easily sort it by the number of petitions. Then you can see all the historically trending ones or just the newer trending ones.

Audrey Tang: In the newer trending ones, you will see that animal rights and animal welfare is by far the largest topic. For example, this one concerns larger dogs and very large cats, and whether there are friendly transportation options in the Taiwan rail system for them.

Interviewer: Why do you think especially…?

Audrey Tang: That it’s popular? Because it’s cute.

Interviewer: It’s cute, not because Taiwanese have such a special relationship to cats and dogs. Even your president is posing with cats…

Audrey Tang: That’s our first family. You cannot corrupt them, except very briefly by catnips there, you corrupt them. [laughs]

Interviewer: We Taiwanese have that really special relationship to cats and dogs?

Audrey Tang: Well, there’s also a petition going on in public transportation options. Also, one on animal welfare, seeking out alternatives to competitions by weight for pigs raised for ceremonial ritual purposes. Animal welfare, I would say, is by far the largest.

Audrey Tang: There’s also many ones concerning to the right to access nature. For example, this one is about amateur fishing in the harbors. There’s also a similar topic that people participated a mountaineering trip. Previously, these were forbidden, the sea and the mountains were forbidden for ordinary people to access without permit because it is a martial law legacy.

Audrey Tang: Maybe the mountains are dangerous, because people at that time thought there may be guerrilla warfare going on – if you allow too many people to access deeper into the mountains, and so on; which is no longer a problem now.

Audrey Tang: We’re systemically using the Join platform to engage people relaxing the rules and increasing the self-regulation of mountaineering, amateur fishing, and all the sea activities and mountain activities.

Interviewer: How successful is that initiatives?

Audrey Tang: Pretty successful.

Audrey Tang: …effective policy change?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: Yeah. Of all the cases that we work with directly, almost 60 cases now, half of which resulted in decisive regulatory or policy change. The other half get maybe something different. But I would say, not necessarily what’s…

Audrey Tang: For example, there was one petition – wow, nice number – 8,000 people strong that says Taiwan should change the time zone to GMT+9 for some reason. Then there’s a equally strong petition, also 8,000 people strong, that says we should remain in GMT+8, without changing to GMT+9. Obviously, you cannot please both petition subjects.

Interviewer: For example, also as it comes to China, I’ve seen several petitions, for example, ones who are saying we want to have a counter-propaganda department against China, and who like…

Audrey Tang: On the Join platform? I haven’t seen that.

Interviewer: Yes, I’ve seen it on this one.

Audrey Tang: Do you have a key word or something that I can search for it?

Interviewer: I have…

Audrey Tang: It needs 5,000 petitions for it to raise to our monthly meeting for discussion offices.

Interviewer: I think I’ve sent it. It’s… I think those other ones which happens…

Audrey Tang: Oh, yeah. It’s the PRC flag one. That’s a really good one, because you can see how the Minister of Justice answered.

Interviewer: I think this one with the PRC flag and this one was something else.

Audrey Tang: Classical text in education?

Interviewer: Ah yes.

Audrey Tang: The flag one is actually very nice, because we actually changed the regulations around the e-petitions because of this. When it was in its first incarnation, you can see the response from the Minister of Justice that says this.

Audrey Tang: “According to the constitutional ruling, number 328, the constitutional definition of the original territory is a 重大政治問題. It’s a political question of the most serious level. It is outside the judicial branch, and indeed the Minister of Justice’s purview. It should not be done by the court, or indeed the Minister of Justice to make such a decision.”

Audrey Tang: They basically said that this is something that concerns an exclusively presidential purview. It’s outside of the administration, the ministries to tackle it.

Audrey Tang: This is, I think, the one that you are referring to. Right after that, we changed the regulation, saying that the petition must pertain only to the ministerial functions within the administration. Saying that issues pertaining to diplomacy, to defense, that are especially presidential purviews is not for the Join platforms administrative section to deal with.

Interviewer: How do they have it?

Audrey Tang: This is the administration…

Audrey Tang: …and this is National Auditing Office. This is the cities.

Interviewer: When I have a search, where do it…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, sure, sure. You just type it in here.

Interviewer: Thanks. I think I searched for…because one of them…

Interviewer: You remember we looked for like the people and suggested that they’re going to have a ministry and about disinformation.

Audrey Tang: This one?

Interviewer: Yes.

Audrey Tang: Again, it’s rejected because it is a presidential issue.

Interviewer: It’s because of this…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, that there’s a clause. There’s a clause.

Audrey Tang: Basically, we look systemically at what is the presidential purview that the administration should not touch because those are political questions pertaining to the president. We said that it is basically issues pertaining to the Chinese continent, issues pertaining to foreign affairs, issues pertaining to national defense.

Audrey Tang: These are the things that you can write to the president about, but it is beyond the minsters to respond. Because a minister cannot respond and an e-petition calls for a ministerial response, so it is falling outside of the purview of the ministerial part, the administration part of the Join platform.

Interviewer: I suggest because it’s already 9:50, that we start with the shooting of the…

Audrey Tang: The screens.

Interviewer: Yeah, the screens.

Tech: Can you read the last answer for me?

Interviewer: Um…

Audrey Tang: I can say it again.

Interviewer: I think the reason we have it already for, and he explained about the flag thing…

Audrey Tang: It’s the same answer, really.

Tech: Just before.

Interviewer: Just before?

Tech: If you think it’s important just be careful, it’s moved again, because in the end…

Tech: I was more focusing on your hands than your…

Interviewer: Then let’s say, how can I frame it? Not every question, not every petition…

Audrey Tang: Will be subject to this 5,000-signature collecting.

Interviewer: Yeah. For example, we have one. People want to have a new ministerial department against China interference, for example, and it wasn’t approved.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. Right after the original petition about a flag, we took a systemic view at what are the presidential purviews for political questions. These are issues concerning the Chinese continent, foreign policy, as well as national defense.

Audrey Tang: Because these are, by Constitution, something that the president has a say, but neither the ministers nor the administration have a say about. Because our petition system basically demark only responses from ministers, so we’ve changed the regulations pertaining to the petitions.

Audrey Tang: It says, if you propose something that is outside of the purview of the administration, then we will not enter the collection stage of the petition.

Audrey Tang: We’re good? Great.

Interviewer: Let’s not reflect and perhaps the screens of the Join.gov.tw, and I hope I can see through my screen.

Tech: What was really good was the very first one, already, which… OK, then you…

Interviewer: This is like the…

Audrey Tang: The original one. The one from 2017.

Interviewer: That one, yeah. Like the important thing is this, that it’s a…

Audrey Tang: It is a response. Yes, it’s a political question, so here is where it cites the constitutional court’s ruling, saying that this is a major political question. According to the separation of powers constitutional idea, the branches are not in line to answer this directly.

Audrey Tang: Neither the judicial branch can determine a political question directly, nor should the Ministry of Justice do so.

Interviewer: Can you go back to also the link at the top again to see what…?

Audrey Tang: To the top again where you see the proposal?

Interviewer: With, yeah, the proposal.

Audrey Tang: Here is the proposal.

Interviewer: Also, we only have the title, or just have…?

Audrey Tang: This, maybe here. We changed the regulations shortly afterward.

Interviewer: Then, let’s go to the hair picture.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the hair picture.

Tech: This one was maybe the protest student.

Audrey Tang: The protest student, yeah.

Tech: Could you even stop it? Not really?

Audrey Tang: I can search for it.

Tech: No, that’s fine.

Audrey Tang: You can search for it, too.

Tech: We didn’t see it before.

Audrey Tang: It’s fact-checked as false.

Tech: Maybe scroll down under here?

Audrey Tang: I can show you more videos, but these are the same. We mixed various different…

Tech: Yeah, it’s fine. I remember we saw that.

Audrey Tang: OK.

Interviewer: The hair?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the hair thing, so maybe it’s good if I just Google and then we switch to pictures, and there you can see the clarification cards. These are the two clarification pictures, one from our premier and one from our deputy premier.

Audrey Tang: This is our premier getting a haircut. Maybe they were trying different ways of tackling this, but I think this one went more viral. As you can see, this is on the top of the search result.

Interviewer: Can you just…

Audrey Tang: Focus on this one?

Interviewer: Yep.

Audrey Tang: I can also show the English translation if that that works. This is the English translation. I didn’t translate this part where it says if you perm your hair, you will damage your hair.

Audrey Tang: More screens?

Interviewer: The poem.

Audrey Tang: Oh, the poem, yes.

Tech: Also the Hong Kong…

Audrey Tang: The Hong Kong one, yes. What would you like from the Hong Kong one?

Interviewer: We had the example of the…

Audrey Tang: Yes, let me search for one. There’s quite a few Hong Kong ones in the Taiwan FactCheck Center. It’s very much trending. That was the picture.

Tech: Scroll onto the picture now.

Audrey Tang: OK.

Tech: Up again so that you don’t see it, and then go back to the picture.

Audrey Tang: It’ll be just a second. Another picture, and back to the picture.

Interviewer: What do I have on my list? I have your poems.

Audrey Tang: From the very beginning?

Tech: This will…

Audrey Tang: This is not true. It shows why it’s not true, then it shows the picture, and then it shows the source of the picture.

Audrey Tang: Then it shows the false-flag comic of this supposedly call for suiciders, but written in Cantonese that are not really right and spelled also incorrectly using Hanyu pinyin. When you actually join the group, you will see that it’s mostly spam. [laughs] Somebody probably trolled. [laughs]

Interviewer: Then you have the poems?

Audrey Tang: What else? The poems.

Interviewer: Genau, the poems.

Audrey Tang: The first one, I’ll just go through it. Maybe it’s easier for the camera. I’m reading right here.

Audrey Tang: “When we see the Internet of things, let’s make it an Internet of beings. When we see virtual reality, let’s make it a shared reality. When we see machine learning, let’s make it collaborative learning. When we see user experience, let’s make it about human experience. Whenever see that a singularity may be near, let us always remember the plurality is here.”

Audrey Tang: Yeah, OK.

Tech: This is not the first time you’ve done this.

Audrey Tang: Right. But this is new.

Interviewer: Yeah, this is the new one.

Audrey Tang: This is I just wrote yesterday.

Tech: Just for us?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Tech: Wow.

Audrey Tang: It’s actually for you, because I was thinking about Switzerland, actually, and how this transcultural republic of citizens is a pretty good description of people from different cultures coming together by direct democracy.

Tech: All right, the background.

Audrey Tang: The back? This one?

Tech: So…

Audrey Tang: Maybe I say it.

Tech: Yes, sure.

Audrey Tang: “Whirling ocean, beautiful islands, a transcultural republic of citizens.”

Audrey Tang: Or maybe matter.

Audrey Tang: On there, it’s funny. I think it’s just…

Interviewer: How long did you think about this poem?

Audrey Tang: Just all day yesterday, all day yesterday. This first eight words are commonplace, everybody in Taiwan above my age, or even a bit under my age, learns it from the, I think, it’s high school textbook.

Audrey Tang: It’s part of the foreword of 臺灣通史, the Taiwan history that talks about 「婆娑之洋 美麗之島」, whirling ocean and beautiful islands. What I really did yesterday was to write those eight characters, 「公民之國 在花之中」. Literally, a republic of citizens between flowers.

Interviewer: I think you have, also I would like to have, if you could like also throw in a few gadgets here in, for example.

Audrey Tang: Flowers, OK.

Interviewer: We get a little bit of the impression, yes, it is a digital…

Audrey Tang: Digital workplace.

Interviewer: Digital workplace.

Tech: Of course, the Matrix thing?

Audrey Tang: Oh, yeah. Is it on?

Tech: Almost as beautiful.

Interviewer: Are we on-time?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we are on-time.

Interviewer: OK.

Audrey Tang: OK.