The Sunflower movement’s power of mobilization and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) explosive force finally forced Taiwan’s major political parties to face the potency of the Internet generation. Building an army of Internet supporters has now become an important task for all parties.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is organizationally weaker than the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), but it is better at conveying information. It is more familiar with and better at handling Internet media than the KMT, and many DPP politicians have Facebook accounts where they share ideas and news with friends and followers. The KMT, which in the past owned several traditional media outlets, has had to start from scratch, and it has arranged classes at the Presidential Office, the Executive Yuan and its party headquarters in the hope of catching up with the Internet generation.
The Internet is a powerful tool that can be used to spread information directly, quickly and cheaply. Social media connections enhance the influence of information and the power to persuade and mobilize. The Internet also allows organizations to become more transparent, and it follows the principles of democracy, equality, freedom and public oversight. Internet-accessible government seems to be closer to direct democracy, but the Internet is not a panacea for the current political situation.
While Internet use is widespread in Taiwan, it is not universal. For example, in Taipei, online elections for government departmental heads, opinion polls and uploading government documents are measures that improve transparency, but city residents who do not use the Internet are denied such rights. Even if voters electing a government leader or choosing a policy in an online vote are more involved in politics than they were in the past, politicians and policies chosen in this way only represent the views of Internet users, not the public at large. Sometimes results will be distorted by the characteristics of Internet users and their social and economic status because it differs from the general public. In case of a conflict of interest, this could lead to misjudgments; and this is something that must be carefully considered with Internet politics.
Furthermore, although former KMT Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) and Ko made use of the Internet’s power during their campaigns, the KMT hired college students to write blog posts, monitor Internet debate and press “like” on Lien’s Facebook posts. This is not the right way to use the Internet.
The Internet is just a vehicle, and while it is an important medium, content is even more important. The reason that the Sunflower movement managed to mobilize the support of millions of people and bring hundreds of thousands of people to the streets was that its calls resonated with many young people and others who wanted to help spread their message. This “Internet army” gathered information and wrote articles to spread that information and protect the movement. This is a force that a passive, mercenary Internet army could never compete with.
It is a good thing that political parties want to mobilize battalions of Internet users, but they must not become bogged down by technicalities. The Internet is a tool and what is most important is that policy values comply with the values of public opinion. If they do not, as was the case with the trade in services and goods agreements for example, there will always be protests online, regardless of how hard the government works to sway Internet users’ opinion. Using it the wrong way will be useless, regardless of financial might and access to other resources, as Lien found out in November last year.
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