Taiwan Information Environment Research Center (台灣資訊環境研究中心, IORG), originally named Information Operations Research Group, was formed in 2019 by media workers, social scientists, data engineers, and activists in Taiwan. IORG is currently (2023) a registered legal entity in Taiwan, with its coordinating office physically located in Taipei City.
Information Environment Research
IORG conducts multidisciplinary scientific research on the Mandarin information environment based on IORG’s Information Environment Archive and Directory. Refer to IORG Information Environment Research Framework for more information.
IORG publishes public reports to share its research findings with the general public. IORG’s reports are also frequently referenced by government agencies, military intelligence, academic researchers, and educators.
IORG publishes and contributes to scientific research papers on information environment-related data analysis and technical development, including text-based rumor evolution (2021) and image-based propaganda detection (2023).
Information Literacy Education
IORG promotes research-based information literacy education with school educators and civil society in Taiwan.
IORG continues its collaboration with Taiwan Pàng-phuānn Association of Education from 2020. In this partnership, IORG provides real-life cases and credible research and contributes to the translation of research content into suitable material for teachers’ training (研習) and co-planning (共備), student lectures, and teacher-student co-creation workshops (師生共創工作坊) in middle and high schools across Taiwan.
IORG continues its collaboration with community workers in northern, middle, southern, eastern regions, as well as the outlying islands of Taiwan from 2020. In this partnership, IORG and its local partners combine research and education with local languages and communal culture, host information literacy workshops within the local context, promote basic competency of fact-checking and information credibility evaluation, and strengthen trust-based linkages.
IORG, in collaboration with Rive Gauche Publishing House, published “A Guide to Information Literacy” in May 2022, including the methodology “information credibility evaluation”, which has been adopted by middle and high school teachers across Taiwan.
Information Environment Partnership
IORG believes in strengthening democratic resilience through building networks of trust with openness, transparency, and collaboration.
IORG works – in its founding spirit of a research group – to build the Information Environment Partnership as a network of scientific researchers, educators, community workers, and international organizations in the Indo-Pacific region. IORG facilitates information sharing and cross-disciplinary collaboration among contributors of this Partnership. Through this Partnership, research and educational capabilities can be strengthened and collective efforts can be amplified so that authoritarian influence can be better deterred and democracies can be better defended.
Open by Default
Research findings, methods, data, and code produced by IORG are open by default. Refer to Open IORG for more information.
Members
Josh Wang
IORG Co-director. President of the Taiwan Pàng-phuānn Association of Education.
Chihhao Yu
IORG Co-director. M. Fine Arts, Digital Media. Software engineering, information design. g0v contributor and co-founder of the g0v International Taskforce.
Shaohong Lin
IORG Data Engineer. M. Political Science. Public opinion polling, research design.
Wei-Yang Chang
IORG Data Engineer. M. Computer Science. Multimedia data analysis, machine learning.
Liang-Yi Hsu
IORG Researcher. M. Political Science. Public opinion polling, quantitative analysis.
Hsueh-Yi Shih
IORG Researcher. M. Political Science. Local politics research.
Kuang-Shun Yang
IORG Researcher. Co-founder of U.S.-Taiwan Watch. Member of the Consultative Committee of the Foundation for Future Generations, Taiwan. Former Non-Resident Research Fellow at the 2049 Project Institute. M. Political Science. U.S.-China relations, Taiwan national security, U.S. politics.
Hsiaochiang Hsu
IORG Research Fellow. Political science.
Jasmine Lee
IORG Research Fellow. International relations.
Urda Wan-Ling Yen, IORG Research Director 2020-2021.
Baliyoho Cheng, IORG Researcher 2020-2021.
Wesley Chia-Wei Lin, IORG Data Engineer 2020-2021.
Chìnkhun Lîm, IORG Data Engineer 2020-2021.
Wen-Yi Wang, IORG Data Scientist 2020-2021.
Advisors
Ming-Hung Wang
Social media analysis, information security. Assistant Professor of computer science at Feng-Chia University.
Jaw-Nian Huang
China’s authoritarian diffusion, Southeast Asia’s media politics. Assistant Professor of development studies at National Cheng-Chi University. Research team member for China Impact Studies at Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica.
Thung-Hong Lin
Class inequality in Chinese societies, global and local sociology of disaster. Research Fellow at Academia Sinica.
Titus C. Chen
International norms and systems, Chinese foreign policy, human rights and the rule of law. Applying text mining to human rights research in China. Associate Professor of political science at National Sun Yat-Sen University.
Ming-Chun Ku
Cultural politics in contemporary China, sociology of religion. Associate Professor of sociology at National Tsing-Hua University.