國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
4. Anatomy of the sunflower student movement
Event Description: The sunflower student movement
Many students occupied the Taiwanese Parliament Building on March 18, 2014. On March 17, Taiwan’s ruling KMP attempted a unilateral move in the Legislative Yuan to force CSSTA to the legislative floor without giving it a clause-by-clause review as previously established in a June 2013 agreement with the opposing DPP. This
agreement is expected to cast huge impacts on the life of ordinary people, including considerable job losses or worsen working condition in several enterprises. This civil movement is called the sunflower student movement, known as the "March 18 Student Movement" or "Occupying Taiwan Legislature". Students have seen off the police’s serial breaching attempt around the Taiwanese Parliament Building. This was only the beginning of the resistance for these students. They attempt to stop the undemocratic coalition of some political elite in both Taiwan and China. Students spread messages and videos to whoever is committed to the principle of democracy, transparency, and participation. They posted as well as shared posts on Facebook and even created fan pages to fight against CSSTA. Since March 18, protesters have spread messages, shared thoughts on the fan pages established by supporters on Facebook and other social media.
According to Facebook Developers, posts include the following: (1) Number of Facebook likes (2) Number of shares (3) Number of comments. In order to explore the behaviors of Taiwanese young adults on Facebook, our study analyzes these reactions from users’ behaviors. The reactions include to like, share, and comment on posts.
Because this dataset comes from 20 selected fan pages, our study focuses on posts of fan pages. These students create 20 fan pages. Our study does not consider posts of
‧
personal pages or groups. Datasets of fan pages are public.
Findings
This dataset includes 2,533 posts, 7,264,762 Facebook likes, 256,027 shares and 176,942 comments. 84,781 users react to these posts during the sunflower student movement. A comment, Facebook likes, and share represent three different reactions to posts.
Table 7. The total number of posts, shares, and comments for 20 selected fan pages
Fan page’s name Abbreviation Number of posts
‧
We rank the 20 selected fan pages according to the number of posts in Table 7. TUE fan page publishes 1,992 posts during this civil movement and it is the most active fan page. On average, it publishes about 80 posts. BIN fan page is the second active fan page but has the maximum numbers of shares and comments. BIN fan page has 116,247 shares and 86,932 comments; the average numbers of shares and comments per post are about 212 and 158 respectively. This average number of comments is the maximum value, but the average of shares is not the maximum one in 20 selected fan pages. On average, a post of AP fan page has 228 shares. It is the maximum number of shares. AP fan page does not publish many posts, but posts are shared by plenty of users. Posts of AP fan page reverberate around this civil movement.
Figure 2 presents numbers of posts in 24 days (between March 18 and April 10, 2014). TUE fan page has a large number of posts every day, especially March 24 with 321 posts. It is the maximum number of posts in 20 selected fan pages during this movement. For 20 selected fan pages, there are 492 posts on March 24. On average, 13 posts are published in one hour. It shows that this fan page publishes a large number of messages to fight against CSSTA on March 24.
Figure 2 shows some peaks because these dates occurred some events, such as 323 the Executive Yuan event and 330 demonstration. Students publish posts on Facebook to call on people to support these events; more students participate in these events.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Now is a network-lead time. For a single day, Figure 3, Figure 4, and Figure 5 present numbers of Facebook likes, shares, and comments, respectively. BIN fan page gets 344,582 Facebook likes that is the maximum value of Facebook likes of all posts on March 21. In this day, there are 344,582 users to like posts on this fan page. On March 21, BIN fan page just posts 76 posts; for a post, the average number of Facebook likes is about 4,533. BIN fan page also receives 12,788 comments on March 24 and 13,026 shares on March 30. Although BIN fan page is not the most active fan page, it has a large number of fans to share and comment on posts. We discuss it further.
Figure 2. Daily number of posts
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Figure 3. Number of Facebook likes per day
Figure 4. Number of shares per day
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Figure 5. Number of comments per day
The posts of the top-10 shares are published by BIN, AP and ABT fan pages in Table 8. There are 8 posts published by BIN fan page and 2 posts published on March 24 and 30, respectively. The posts of the top-10 comments have 6 posts belonging to BIN fan page in Table 9. There are 2 posts published on March 24. The posts of the top-10 Facebook likes have 8 posts belonging to BIN fan page in Table 10. There are 2 posts published on March 24 in Table 9, too. The two days (i.e., March 24 and March 30) are known as 323 Occupation Executive Yuan event and 330
Demonstration. Next, we analyze BIN fan page further.
Table 8. The posts of the top-10 shares Post Created Time Type Number of
Shares Fan page
A1 2014/3/25 12:37 PM null 7,442 BIN
A2 2014/3/19 6:48 AM null 5,558 BIN
‧
Table 9. The posts of the top-10 comments
Post Created Time Type Number of
Table 10. The posts of the top-10 Facebook likes Post Created Time Type Number of Facebook
likes
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
C10 2014/3/25 7:31 PM null 35,397 ABT
We find that BIN fan page is a particular fan page in 20 selected fan pages and then we discuss it. First, Figure 6 shows the daily number of posts for BIN fan page. All posts of this fan page are 560 and the average number of posts per day is about 22 posts in 24 days. On March 19, there are 96 posts published by BIN fan page and the daily number of posts is the maximum value. This day was the second day of the sunflower student movement. “The sunflower student movement” name came from BIN fan page that issued a post on Facebook on March 19. The content of this post is
“we hope to help buy sunflowers to cheer for the student movement”. This post was published widely on Facebook and BIN fan page published many posts about this name.
Figure 6. Daily number of posts
For BIN fan page, Figure 7 shows the daily number of Facebook likes. The total Facebook likes of all posts are 1,612,847. On March 30, posts of this day receive 180,644 Facebook likes being the maximum value. There are just 34 posts published by BIN fan page. The average number of Facebook likes is 5,313 on March 30.
Although BIN fan page does not publish many posts in this day, it receives the
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
maximum number of Facebook likes. On average, the daily number of Facebook likes is about 67,201. For a post, the daily number of Facebook likes is about 2,800. On March 30, the number of Facebook likes is more than the average number of Facebook likes.
Figure 7. Daily number of Facebook likes for BIN fan page
Figure 8 and Figure 9 show the daily number of shares and comments, respectively.
The total shares of all posts are 116,166; the total comments of posts are 85,192. On average, the daily numbers of shares and comments are about 4,840 and 3,550; the sharing and commenting number per post are about 207 and 152, respectively.
Obviously sharing a post is easier than commenting on a post. 10,598 shares are the maximum value on March 30 and 12,929 comments are the maximum value on March 24 in Figure 8 and Figure 9. Compare the sharing with commenting numbers, and we find that the commenting number is more than the sharing number on March 24, April 5, 7, 8 and 9 in 24 days. In the normal circumstances, the sharing number is more than the commenting value because sharing a post is easier than commenting on a post. However, in the five days, most users comment on posts voluntarily. They comment on thoughts on Facebook. A particular event happened on this day.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Figure 8. Daily number of shares for BIN fan page
Figure 9. Daily number of comments for BIN fan page
Next, we observe the hourly numbers of posts, shares, and comments during the period from March 29 to March 31 for BIN fan page. Figure 10 shows the hourly number of posts and exhibits a peak at around 10-11pm on March 30. It publishes 10 posts in one hour. On average, the hourly number of posts less than one post. On this day at 22:00, the Presidential spokesperson quoted Ma President’s assertion that this event is peaceful, rational and successful today. The presence of their demands has been carefully contemplation. For these students continuing their occupation of the
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Legislative Yuan, Ma President hoped that these students respect the constitutional system and withdraw from the Legislative Yuan in order to resume normal operation for Congress. We think students posted their opinions and minds about Ma President’s announcement.
Figure 10. Hourly number of posts
Figure 11 and Figure 12 show the hourly number of shares and comments, respectively. Figure 11 exhibits the reaction peak at around 3-4am on March 30 and the second peak at around 6-8am March 31. Figure 12 exhibits the peak at around 10-11pm on March 30. On average, the hourly number of shares and comments are about 300 and 130, respectively. It also shows that sharing a post is easier than commenting on a post. From Figure 11 and Figure 12, we find that BIN fan page did not publish new posts and users share and comment on posts continuously. For example, on March 30 at 6-7am, BIN fan page did not publish new posts, but the number of shares and comments are 749 and 226, respectively. It shows that users share and comment
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
on posts continuously any time.
Figure 11. Hourly numbers of shares
Figure 12. Hourly numbers of comments
The previous research noticed that the US cities of San Francisco and New York exhibit similar shapes, where reactions peak at the beginning of work hours [2]. For Paris, the reactions peak in the second half of working hours, while for London most reactions are expected towards the end of working hours in [2]. For Tokyo, it is quite different from the rest with two peaks, occurring off working hours [2]. They analyze
‧
users’ behaviors in normal circumstances across the five cities. Compared with the five cities, the behaviors of Taiwan students are so different. We discuss how to face and handle the particular event for these students. Therefore, our study focuses on the particular period, not the normal circumstance.
In summary, this dataset contains 2,533 posts, 7,264,762 Facebook likes, 256,027 shares and 176,942 comments. Observing the dataset, there are 950,484 users liking posts, 84,781 users sharing posts, and 72,196 users commenting on posts during the sunflower student movement. Therefore, there are 987,420 users who have at least one reaction for posts and 36,936 users that never like posts but share or comment on posts. We draw the following conclusions: (1) Percentage of users sharing posts is about 9%.; percentage of users commenting on posts is about 7%. (2) A user likes 7 times, shares 3 times and comment on 2.5 times on average. (3) A post has about 2,868 Facebook likes, 100 shares, and 70 comments on average.
Table 11 shows the maximum values of daily shares for 20 selected fan pages. On March 24, there are 5 fan pages having the maximum number of shares. This day happened 323 Occupation Executive Yuan event. This event is one of symbolic events of the sunflower student movement.
Table 11. The maximum values of daily shares
Fan page Number of shares Posts are shared maximum people in one date
FS 1,528 2014/3/20
‧
The above exploration focuses on posts and fan pages. Then, we discussed further the users that participated to like, share, comment on posts. We analyze the top-10 active users who like, share or comment on posts. In our study, we define the top-k users who like, share or comment on posts as the active users. They are active regardless of the reaction.
Who likes maximal posts?
From this dataset, we find that 950,484 users like the posts. We use public data collected from fan pages on Facebook. The accounts of users are set to public. Uid is user id and it is virtual in Table 12. We find top-10 users who like the maximal posts in Table 12. The user U1 who likes 1,079 times is the most active user. For a post, a user likes only one time but could share or comment more than one time on Facebook.
Consequently, the user U1 likes 1,079 posts among 2,533 posts. On average, the user U1 likes about 45 posts every day. Then, the user U2 likes 1,044 posts and this user likes about 44 posts every day.
Table 12. Top-10 users who like maximal posts Uid Number of Facebook likes
U1 1,079
‧
Among 950,484 users liking posts, 441,966 users like just one post. For a user, the maximal number of the reaction is 1,079, and the average number of the liking-reaction is 7.64. In Figure 13, the standard deviation is 21.8; the mode is 1 and the median is 2. The frequency distribution is a positively skewed distribution with mean greater than median and median greater than mode. For a positively skewed
distribution, the mean is typically greater than the median. In addition, we notice that the tail of the distribution on the right-hand side is longer than left-hand side.
Figure 13. Frequency distribution of the number of Facebook likes
Who shares maximal posts?
In this dataset, 84,781 users share posts. The user U9 shares 441 times and takes part in 13 fan pages to fight against CSSTA from Table 13. It shows that some users
0
The number of Facebook "likes"
‧
join in many fan pages. For the top-10 users, the number of fan pages through sharing-reaction is almost over 10 fan pages.
Table 13. Top-10 users who share maximal posts
Uid Number of shares Number of related fan pages
U9 441 13
Among 84,781 users sharing posts, 51,534 users share one time. For a user, the maximal number of the sharing-reaction is 441, and the average number of the sharing-reaction is 2.12. Figure 14 shows the frequency distribution of the sharing number for every user. In Figure 14, the standard deviation is 4.22, and the mode and the median are both 1. The frequency distribution is not a symmetric distribution with mean equal to median equal to mode, and it is a positively skewed distribution
because of mean greater than median. 3,649 users share more than 10 times. 60% of all users share just 1 time. It exhibits that most users rarely share posts. In other words, only a small number of users share voluntarily posts of fan pages on Facebook.
‧
Figure 14. Frequency distribution of the number of shares
Who comments on maximal posts?
In this dataset, 72,196 users comment on posts. In Table 14, the user U201
comments on 267 times and takes part in 8 fan pages to comment on posts. The user U205 takes part in 12 fan pages to comment on posts. For the top-10 users, the number of fan pages through commenting-reaction is under 10 fan pages except the user U205.
Table 14. Top-10 users who comment on maximal posts Uid Number of comments Number of related fan pages
U201 267 8
Among 72,196 users commenting on posts, 49,354 users who comment one time.
0
‧
68% of users comment on a post during the sunflower student movement. For a user, the maximal number of the commenting-reaction is 267, and the average number of the commenting-reaction is 2.12. In Figure 15, the standard deviation is 4.19, and the mode and the median of numbers of comments are both 1. The frequency distribution is shown in Figure 15, and it is similar to that shown in Figure 15. There are only 4,345 users who comment more than 10 times. 6% of users comment on posts more 10 times. Only a small number of users comment on posts.
Figure 15. Frequency distribution of the number of comments
In summary, each user likes 7.64 posts, shares 2.94 posts, and comments on 2.11 posts voluntarily. It shows that users often like posts but rarely share and comment on posts. Therefore, the liking-reaction is easier to give or have than the sharing-reaction or reaction on Facebook. For the sharing-reaction and commenting-reaction, users are more interested in sharing posts than commenting on posts. No one is both top-10 who shares and comments on the maximal posts. However, the user U9 appears in both Table 12 and Table 13; U9 is an active user who likes and shares posts. Furthermore, the user U10 is an active user who likes and comments on posts;
U10 appears in both Table 12 and Table 14. It also shows that the liking-reaction is easy. On the other hand, these users are active in Table 12, Table 13, and Table 14.
They positively and voluntarily participate in this civil movement. Their participation
0
‧
can influence their friends. These users are active and influential users on Facebook.
As of May 2018, the statuses of the 20 selected fan pages show in Table 15. After two years 5 fan pages are closed in the 20 selected fan pages. We cannot search them again. In Table 15, no post has been published for most of fan pages recently. Only a few of fan pages concern the new Government Act.
Table 15. The last post for 20 selected fan pages as of May 2018
Fan page’s name Abbreviation status
台大新聞Ｅ論壇 TUE The last post was published on April 12, 2014. This post stated for thanks.
黑色島國青年陣線 BIN The last post was published on June 22,
2016. Its title is “318 movement did not end.”
反黑箱服貿協議
ABT The last post was published on June 25, 2014. Its title is “People confronting with police denote their restricted freedom.”
遍地開花！反黑箱服貿 協議
RFT The last post was published on December 10, 2015. However, the content of this post did not discuss the sunflower student movement.
Sunflower Movement 太 陽花學運
SFM The last post was published on October 13, 2014. Its title is “Detailing how the younger generation in Taiwan and Hong Kong are taking to the streets to determine their future.”
我反服貿、全臺聲援大 串聯
DAF The last post was published on March 19, 2014. This post discusses the sunflower student movement.
海外留學生聲援台灣反 服貿運動
RD The last post was published on November 8, 2015. Its title is “Opposing to Ma Xi
Meeting, Defending Taiwan democracy”
懶人時報 LN LN fan page closed.
在英台灣學生反黑箱服 貿總部
FFD The last post was published on March 24, 2014. This post discusses the sunflower student movement.
‧
FS The last post was published on April 18, 2014. This fan page continues to publish posts.
ACN The last post was published on September 29, 2014. However, the content of this post did not discuss the sunflower student movement.
Appendectomy Project 割闌尾計畫
AP The last post was published on November
AP The last post was published on November