Mental Awareness Does Matter: Examining Taiwan Political Party Facebook Uses

• In Event: Media and Political Polarization in Taiwan

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the current debates on theories of normalization/equalization, recent studies have often argued that the use of social media revitalizes small and fringe parties because of low using thresholds and decentralized communication spheres. On the other hand, normalizing theories argue that the domination of mainstream parties on social media still benefits from resource distribution (i.e., campaign budgets). Contradicting to both theoretical arguments, neither all small parties are good at communicating on social media, nor all mainstream parties know how to correctly allocate their resources during the campaign periods. Therefore, this dichotomous classification cannot fully explain party competitions on social media. Beyond the debates of normalization/equalization, this study argues that mental awareness—know-how which helps political parties to cater to voters’ preferences and attract their traction on social media—is an important but seldom discussed factor. Mental awareness could be formed by organizational structures (e.g., average ages of party memberships) and campaign experiences. To further gauge this research void, this study examines Taiwan political parties’ Facebook utilizations during the 2016 and 2020 parliamentary elections. In total, 37 Taiwan political parties (18 for 2016 election and 19 for 2020) are included. Methodologically, two approaches will be adopted. First, party Facebook profiles will be retrieved in order to analyze their social media utilizations. While the analysis of Facebook data depicts a general result, this study will interview these political parties to further dig out whether the mental awareness helps them to win the elections.

Authors

• Da-Chi Liao, National Sun Yat-sen University

• Jiun-Chi Lin, National Sun Yat-sen University (TW) & KU Leuven (BE)

• Mateusz Cytarzyński, Institute of Political Science,National Sun Yat-sen University