About this piece:

In the 00s and 10s, rapid and constant political and technological evolutions occurred in Taiwan. Growing up in that time and place, I experienced firsthand how the scale, speed, and anonymity of social media can be exploited by political forces as a propagandist device.

The anti-democracy, pro-China political parties inside Taiwan and the CCP, the dictating party in China, have long raised information warfare in platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and LINE that the Taiwanese predominantly use. Besides one of its biggest persecution targets, Taiwan, CCP's propaganda can be easily found in everyday cyberspaces in the Philippines, Japan, Malaysia, and many East and Southeast Asian nations. Fabricating fake news and falsified content, presenting false balances, and media-framing issues into targets of hate speeches via social media, propagandist cyber warfare has vastly created echo chambers. Xi's regime operates its state-sponsored web brigades, nicknamed Spamouflage, Dragonbridge, or the 50 Cent Party, and internationally supervises the anti-freedom and pro-China parties inside Taiwan to exploit such echo chambers to sabotage Taiwan's democratic elections and policy making.

Titled "You Think Dictatorships Aren’t on Social Media?" this illustration aims to raise awareness of the common propagandist tactics of globally powerful dictatorships on social media. China and Russia have shared evidenced launches of global information warfare that intend to alter political narratives from criticizing their international oppressions. Hate speech, human rights abuses, disinformation, and glorified dictatorial nationalism, disguised as Twitter posts, TikTok videos, Facebook memes, and YouTube comments, are distributed through Beijing- and Kremlin-sponsored influencers, web brigades, and media outlets, as well as through clueless Westerners' retweets and exotic-fumed uploads.

Through this work, I wish media literacy and "searching it up" could be one's second thoughts after their initial reactions when encountering a fearmongering media piece.