Does Fake News Matter to Election Outcomes?: The Case Study of Taiwan’s 2018 Local Elections

Abstract

Fake news and disinformation provoked heated arguments during Taiwan’s 2018 local election. Most significantly, concerns grew that Beijing was attempting to sway the island’s politics armed with a new “Russian-style influence campaign” weapon (Horton, 2018). To investigate the speculated effects of the “onslaught of misinformation,” an online survey with 1068 randomly selected voters was conducted immediately after the election. Findings confirmed that false news affected Taiwanese voters’ judgment of the news and their voting decisions. More than 50 percent of the voters cast their votes without knowing the correct campaign news. In particular, politically neutral voters, who were least able to discern fake news, tended to vote for the China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) candidates. Demographic analysis further revealed that female voters tended to believe fake news during election periods more compared with male voters. Younger or lower-incomed voters had the lowest levels of discernment of fake news. Further analyses and implications of these findings for international societies are deliberated in conclusions.

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