Summary
- Beginning on September 5th, in the 20-day period before the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP, 中國國民黨, Kuomintang, KMT) chairmanship election, number of Facebook posts related and dedicated to Chang Ya-chung (張亞中) surpassed those of the other 3 candidates. His numbers ranked 1st for over 80% of the time during this period.
- Overall, Eric Chu (朱立倫) has the most dedicated posts and pages on Facebook.
- Chang has received the most dedicated posts from a group of CTI-related Facebook pages and a pro-China page “Taiwan Headlines” (兩岸頭條), surpassing Chu.
- Pages dedicated to Chang are the most enthusiastic. Number of Chang’s dedicated posts published by his dedicated pages is higher than that of Chu.
- In September, Chang’s dedicated pages published a large amount of dedicated posts of him. Except for a few days, Chang ranked 1st in the number of dedicated posts.
- Chang’s dedicated pages include: multiple pages that support former Kaohsiung mayor and former CNP/KMT presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), pro-China page “Taiwan Headlines”, EBC program “Crucial Time” (關鍵時刻), and “Fong News” (溏風報傳媒). “Taiwan Headlines” supports Chang’s proposal of signing a “cross-strait peace agreement”. Fong News is connected to Hualien legislator Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁).
- A network of at least 19 Facebook accounts was discovered participating in boosting Chang during this chairmanship election. Common features of these accounts include: misappropriating photos of women as their profile picture, mentioning “Son of Mars Prophecy”, and managing 2 Facebook groups of Han supporters.
- Accounts in this network also support Chang Ya-chung and Dennis Peng (彭文正). Some have spread manipulated narratives regarding Taiwanese pork and vaccines with CCP participation.
- What’s up in September: typhoon preparedness. Top China-related topic: import ban on Taiwan’s custard apples and wax apples. Top domestic topic: COVID-19 pandemic.
“Dedicated” post and page of a candidate P
- Dedicated post: a Facebook post that mentions only P’s name
- Dedicated page: a Facebook page that has “not too little” and “much more” dedicated posts of P than any other candidate
- “not too little” = more than 10
- “much more” = number of P’s dedicated posts is N times more than the runner-up Q, while N is above average
Full version of this Dokidoki Alert is available in Taiwanese Mandarin. Please visit https://iorg.tw/da/14 for more.
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