Resisting disinformation: theorising whole-of-society and sociotechnical resistance through the Taiwan case
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- Senate House (Paul Webley Wing)
- Room
- S312
- Event type
- Seminar
About this event
The Centre of Taiwan Studies is delighted to welcome Mariah Thornton to give a talk on Taiwan’s whole-of-society resistance to transnational disinformation and its democratic innovations.
How can states resist transnational disinformation campaigns? Analyses in the field of International Relations (IR) have offered a variety of explanations which index the harms of disinformation to state power, yet state resistance to disinformation remains underexplored and under-theorised.
Through the concept of a ‘mobilisation of resistance’ and based insights from Social Theory and Science and Technology Studies (STS), Thornton posits a social-processual framework to explain whole-of-society resistance to transnational disinformation and the role of sociotechnical systems in facilitating this resistance. This approach emphasises the agency of civil society actors and sociotechnical systems in articulating resistance to transnational disinformation alongside the state. I specify four mechanisms through which a mobilisation of resistance to disinformation can be expressed through technology: enframing, co-production, legitimation and humour.
As a country at the forefront of combatting disinformation from China, Taiwan presents a valuable empirical site through which resistance to transnational disinformation can be understood. Taking Taiwan’s open-source governance (OSG) and algorithmic co-governance (ACG) as paradigmatic cases of whole-of-society sociotechnical resistance, Thornton seeks to illustrate how these four processes have been materially enacted to resist Chinese disinformation campaigns on the one hand while promoting a democratic social order in Taiwan on the other hand.
About the speaker
Mariah Thornton is a Teaching Fellow at the Department of International Relations and a researcher at LSE IDEAS. She completed a BA in Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford and an MSc in Chinese Politics at the SOAS. Her research focuses on Taiwanese whole-of-society and sociotechnical resistance to disinformation, China’s foreign policy and strategy toward Taiwan, cross-Strait relations, as well as Taiwan in digital IR. Before joining LSE, Mariah worked as a press and communications officer at the Taipei Representative Office for over two years under Taiwan’s then representative to the UK and former foreign minister David Lin.
Image credit: Timo Volz via Unsplash
