The Effect of Social Media on Vote Choice: The Case of Taiwan

• In Event: Social Media, Big Data Analysis, and Electoral Politics in Taiwan

Abstract

The use of social media changes the way voters receive political information, especially during an election campaign. Unsurprisingly, the influence of social media has received a vast amount of scholarly attention since the mid-2000s when social media campaign was launched. While social media has become an indispensable part of modern electoral campaigning, scholars have only begun to examine the impact of social media usage on voting behavior in western democracies and have not fully extended their effort to explore this relationship in the new democracies. To fill this gap in the literature, we collect the original panel data from the 2018 Taipei mayoral election and aim to delineate how social media usage may affect the individual electoral decision in Taiwan, an Asian new democracy. We contend that the use of the five most common social media platforms – Facebook, LINE, YouTube, Instagram and PTT (the largest terminal-based bulletin board system (BBS) in Taiwan) would influence vote choice. Specifically, our findings show that people with frequent use of Facebook and PTT are more likely to vote for the incumbent, Ko Wen-je, but the use of Instagram would decrease the likelihood of voting for Ko and the use of LINE and YouTube have no influence on vote choice. Overall, this study suggests that there is a statistically significant relationship between the use of certain social media and vote choice, but the effect may vary. Candidates need to develop their social media campaigning strategically to turn their "Air Force" into real ballots.

Authors

• Lu-Chung Dennis Weng, Sam Houston State University

• Chi Huang, National Chengchi University