There is a culture among netizens that proclaims: “We can make the change.” First came the “Twitter revolution” in Tunisia, followed by Egypt’s “Facebook revolution.” Now Taiwan’s elections for county commissioners and city mayors have borne further witness to the fact that Taiwan, too, is entering the age of Facebook “revolution 2.0.”
Independent Taipei mayor-elect Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) says that his election victory shows the power of the Internet age. Be it online donations, spreading ideas or recruiting people to join activities, this election battle gave citizens many opportunities to take part in politics. While Ko took the lead in developing this culture of election campaign participation through the Internet, its effects have spread to many counties and cities where the pan-green political camp emerged as winners.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) has maintained real interaction with netizens since 2010. In this election she set the record for having the highest rate of interaction with Internet users among all of Taiwan’s mayors and county commissioners, and she ended up garnering almost a million votes.
DPP Taichung mayor-elect Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has maintained a presence on Facebook for several years, and when the election battle entered the closing stage of close-quarters combat, his daily stream of posts, and his wife Liao Wan-ju’s (廖婉如) open letter and associated video with the theme of “let’s walk together in the light” set the scene for him to win the vote by a margin that hardly anyone imagined.
Even the DPP’s Lin Chih-chien (林智堅), who entered the fray for mayor of Hsinchu only 100 days before polling day, succeeded thanks to his use of Facebook. Although he won by a margin of just 1,000 votes, he brought gasps of amazement for beating his Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rival in this traditionally pro-KMT constituency.
“If you want to have a free society, just give them the Internet,” Google Egypt marketing director Wael Ghonim told CNN on Feb. 11, 2011 — the day fromer Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak fell from power.
When CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer asked Ghonim what would happen next after the events in Tunisia and Egypt, his reply was simply: “Ask Facebook.”
The miracle wrought by Taiwan’s recent elections was a Facebook revolution. Why have young voters finally become willing to walk away from their computer screens and into polling stations to cast their ballots?
One reason was the series of popular movements over the past couple of years that has sharpened people’s civic awareness, but there is also the concept that Ghonim talked about in relation to what he called “revolution 2.0” in Egypt: “No one was a hero, because everyone was a hero.” This permits creative citizens who have their own ideas to collaborate in making this revolution, infusing young people with a collective feeling of “I am not alone,” and it has engendered the possibility that Internet users can win out over politicians who possess enormous power and resources, and even over traditional media.
With its grasp of new broadcasting technology, the new generation has become more capable of forging ahead with democracy. Social networks enable young people to challenge the monopoly that traditional media have had in the past and the one-way delivery of news that holds to certain political standpoints. Following the emergence of social media, citizens are no longer passive recipients who can easily be manipulated by politicians, governments or media; they are a new generation of citizens who can challenge the dominant discourse and share their differing points of view.
In the past, the opinions expressed by young people stayed in cyberspace, and when elections came around it was hard to get them to actually go out and vote. For this reason, they were mocked as “air votes.”
However, this election has seen the emergence of a new generation of people who have maintained a high level of interest throughout campaigning, always ready to respond to candidates’ online posts. They have been paying close attention to policy white papers that candidates publish online, sharing commentaries posted by Internet pundits and playing a practical role in the creation of satirical campaign material. Finally, when polling day came, they got away from their computer screens to walk down the street or travel to their hometowns to vote. These developments have made a reality of the new generation’s dreams of establishing social connections, expressing collective identities, connecting with society and helping to bring about change.
In the Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections, the nation witnessed how social media set up by countless individual netizens worked together to create a “public screen” and brought about a miracle in participatory politics. However, candidates who have surfed to victory on the wave of this Facebook revolution must now face up to the fact that the “public screen” of participatory politics will enable the public to continuously examine their political performance. How will the Facebook revolution change Taiwanese society and politics in future? Only time will tell what marvels lie ahead.
Lillian Wang is a professor at National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of Journalism.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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