[2022 Youth Verification Challenge_Mandarin-Chinese Zone First Runner-up] From Fact-finding Young Family Member to Verification Challenge Contestant

The Google News Initiative APAC Youth Verification Challenge Contest 2022 that just ended last month was an event aiming to raise awareness and increase verification knowledge among the youth, and it was a continued and expanded effort of the first 2021 GNI University Verification Challenge. 

This year’s verification contest saw hundreds of young people aged between 15 and 24 participate, honing their verification skills and teaming up to win a grand prize in the final battle. There were four stages in the contest, the first and second of which involved fact-checking tutorials and the sharing of fact-checking and misinformation-busting experiences and examples from seasoned professionals. The third required participants to form teams and battle in their respective language zones, and the respective winners then went into the final APAC-region-wide live verification battle.

The Taiwan FactCheck Center hosted the Mandarin-Chinese zone contest, where teams from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia competed. This year’s contest lowered the age threshold to include high school students, and surprisingly, the three teams with the highest scores in the Mandarin-Chinese zone contest were all composed of high school students.

The TFC had interviews with the three teams (readers can also find our interviews with the champion and the second runner-up), where the students shared their backgrounds and their views on disinformation with us.

The first runner-up in the Mandarin-Chinese Zone contest of the 2022 Youth Verification Challenge, Yu Chih-fan (余致帆) and Lee Wei-shu (李維書), school schoolmates from Changhua Senior High School, vowed to return next year for the championship.

From Changhua to Asia-Pacific

On the evening of September 17, Lee went to Yu’s place in order to share the atmosphere while taking on the challenge of the Mandarin-Chinese Zone verification contest. When “Applesucks,” the name the two went by in the contest, was shown first on the ranking when the first question ended on Quizizz, the platform used by the contest, “our confidence was boosted,” said Lee.

After finishing the four challenges in the contest, “Applesucks” ranked second in the 37 teams hailed from Taiwan, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. Yu shouted to his mom, “We are going to the Asia-Pacific battle!”

Image: The first runner-up in the Mandarin-Chinese Zone contest of the 2022 Youth Verification Challenge, Yu Chih-fan (余致帆, L) and Lee Wei-shu (李維書), school schoolmates from Changhua Senior High School, vowed to return next year for the championship.

A Six-month-long Journey

It was Yu who first got to know about and participated in the verification tutorials of the first stage before inviting Lee, his friend since junior high, to come along. The two then together embarked on a six-month journey in verification.

Neither of them had learned fact-checking or verification techniques before. But both of them had plenty of experience in using the Internet to search for information, or were somewhat familiar with using Google Images. 

For example, they said, they would use Google Images to see if the photos uploaded by a Facebook group selling certain items were authentic or from somebody else, before making the decision to purchase the goods.

Lee said he learned a lot in the eight tutorials, which helped diversify his techniques in information searching; using map tools was one of his newly acquired skills.

Yu, on the other hand, recommended InVID Verification Plugin, a software he found especially useful when analyzing video footage. InVID is a toolkit developed by various European media outlets and research institutions that provides and integrates a variety of tools for searching and analyzing images. 

Disinformation Abounds in Everyday Life

Receiving messages about wrong information related to food or health from family elders in the family chat groups on the LINE application was, both said, not an uncommon experience for them. And many of the messages, as they later found out, have actually been around for years, or what are also called “zombie rumors.” 

In fact, this was how they got to know about the Taiwan FactCheck Center. That the older people in the family shared dubious information in chat groups prompted the two to verify the messages by searching on Google, which brought them to the TFC’s reports.

“At school, media literacy was mentioned, and we were cautioned to be suspicious of online information, but fact-checking techniques were not taught,” Lee said.

Instead of reacting to each of the disinformation-containing messages shared by the older family members and telling them the messages were wrong, what is more important, Yu and Lee said, is “everybody having basic fact-checking concepts and skills” and “developing the fact-checking habit.” In this case people can remain alert to and debunk disinformation when facing the sea of information.

Determined to Return

The Asia-Pacific-wide final contest saw the participation of a total of 27 teams, comprising the top three teams from each of the nine language zones. The teams from India, Thailand, and Singapore were the final winners. 

Yu and Lee got two questions right out of the five challenges posed by the contest. They regretted that they had not done more practice before the contest.

“We sort of panicked already at the first question when we didn’t find [the answer] right away,” Yu said.

But the two still found the six-month journey, starting from the tutorials in April, fruitful. They

have already made plans for their NT$9,000 reward: upgrading their headphones.

They were determined to return to next year’s tournament. “We have to participate,” Lee said, adding they will be aiming for the championship.