Social Environments’ Influence on 2014 Taiwan Sunflower Movements’ Student Participants in the Internet Age

• In Event: Activism in education: teacher advocacy and social movements

Proposal

With the rapid development of digital devices, student movements have turned over a new leaf. Specifically, the influence of internet/social media has been prevalent and overarching in civic society. The 2014 Taiwan Sunflower Movement is the perfect example of how digital developments supported student movement and influenced college students to be engaged in civic engagement. This movement not only successfully awakened Taiwanese students’ political awareness but also encouraged more young adults to stand in elections afterward. The modern democratization of Taiwan must be further discussed and explored, especially based on digital activism. So, this is why we focus on the 2014 Sunflower Movement, which has significantly shaped college students’ citizenship and civic engagement since then.
However, we know little about the delicate process of citizenship formation and civic engagement that college students go through in the digital age. Thus, this study delves more into how internet/social media impacts students’ families, schools, and then shapes young adults/college students’ citizenship and civic engagement during the 2014 Sunflower Movement in Taiwan to help future researchers, parents, faculty/administrators of higher education institutions and policymakers gain more insight and understanding from these youth.

The Sunflower Movement erupted in the Spring of 2014 as a resistance against passing a controversial agreement that opened up the bilateral flow of the service industry’s capital and workforce between Taiwan and China. Enraged by the ruling party’s passing of the agreement within 30 seconds amidst congressional chaos, a group of civilians occupied the national legislature for 24 days, inspiring a widespread social movement that led the government to pause the Agreement. Noteworthily, the Sunflower Movement’s leaders and followers were primarily students who cited values such as democracy, nationalism, generational justice, and opposition to free trade with China as motivations (Chen & Huang, 2014; Ho et al., 2020).
Our understanding of Taiwanese students’ experience with civic engagement during the Sunflower Movement is guided by Cambron et al.’s (2018) Social Development Model (SDM). According to the SDM, children learn to act prosocial or antisocial based on (1) their beliefs and values and (2) perceived rewards and pressure. Furthermore, exogenous factors such as social constraints and an individual’s position in the social structure define the space in which an individual makes these decisions. As children enter different development stages, they operate in different sub-development models. Perceptions of rewards, social bonds, beliefs, and behaviors in earlier development periods condition perceptions in the new development period. In the Internet age, the connections and contradictions between different sub-models are undoubtedly amplified. We employ the SDM to understand how Taiwanese students navigate various social bonds, beliefs, and power dynamics from different social environments during the Sunflower Movement.

The research question guiding our investigation is: how do Taiwanese young adults (20-30 years old) attending universities in Taipei understand the influence of their surrounding social environments on their civic engagement beliefs and behaviors during the Sunflower Movement? Specifically, we’re interested in understanding how college students understand if and how their families, schools, and exposure to and engagement on the Internet influenced their civic engagement beliefs and behaviors.
To answer our research questions, we plan to conduct 20 virtual interviews (1-1.5hrs each) that ask young Taiwanese adults how their family, school, and social backgrounds influence their civic engagement beliefs and behaviors. As both authors are insiders (then university students in Taipei) who witnessed and participated in the Sunflower Movement, we plan to use snowball sampling to recruit peers who attended top universities in the Taipei metropolitan area in 2014. All interviews will be recorded, transcribed, and imported to the analytical software, where we will conduct an integrative and recursive data analysis. We first use an inductive approach to identify initial themes and codes reflecting the participants’ perspectives. We then refine our coding scheme by comparing multiple data sources and conducting deductive data analysis informed by our theoretical framework.

The purpose of the study is to (1) understand the family, school, and social backgrounds of young Taiwanese adults (born in 1985-95) who attended universities and graduate schools during Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement in the Spring of 2014 and (2) explore how different family, school, and social influences help shape these young adults civic engagement beliefs and behaviors during the Sunflower Movement.
Findings from the qualitative analysis of interview data can help answer how Taiwanese young adults’ family, school, and social environments work together to influence their beliefs about civic engagement. Furthermore, we hope to understand how such beliefs shape Taiwanese young adults’ civic engagement behaviors and decisions during the Sunflower movement.
This study’s findings will enrich our understanding of how Taiwanese young adults, as a generation coming of age in the democratic and Internet era, understand, navigate, and negotiate with the different political values and perspectives they encounter in their diverse and sometimes conflicting social settings.

Previous studies related to the Sunflower Movement are mostly from Sociology and pay more attention to the macro level of this movement. In the field of education, very few studies have been conducted related to the 2014 Sunflower Movement. In fact, we lack studies on the students’ process of civic awakening shaped by social environments. The way how these young people acted as citizens needs to be articulated. So, this study also contributes to the relationship between Taiwanese youth’s civic engagement and their interactions with family, school, and internet/social media.
In addition, while previous studies have focused on the leadership of the movement or seen this movement as a whole (Chen et al., 2016; Ho et al., 2020), our study seeks to highlight a more diverse group of students’ personal engagement experiences. This is essential to understanding the success of the 2014 Sunflower Movement as a grassroot movement. By looking at this diverse population beyond the leadership, this study expands the application of the SDM and delves deeper into the intersectionality of college students’ family, school and internet/social media experiences, which help contribute to the theory building.

Authors

• Kathy Li, UCLA

• Ting-Yu Ariel Chung, University of Maryland - College Park