4. Social Media and the Sunflower Student Movement
4.6 News E-Forum
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This fund-raising via social media showed the concern and support of the young Taiwanese for the Sunflower Student Movement.
After the protest movement ended, the PTT administrators closed the forum about the Cross-strait agreement for further discussions. However, they still keep all the posts and articles written at that time for the record. This student movement not only raised more awareness among citizens for Taiwan’s politics but also changed PTT:
the administrators of the bulletin board added a new board to the forum called “Public Issue”（公民議題版）(Hong et al., 2015, p. 229). This new forum provides a platform for discussion about the social and political issues concerning Taiwanese society.
4.6 News E-Forum
What made social media so attractive for the people during this Sunflower Student Movement? Besides the high penetration rate of social media among young Taiwanese, another important factor was the mistrust in the traditional Taiwanese media. According to one of the activist groups “news e-forum”, newspapers and TV news channels didn’t report the truth about the movement. Quite the contrary, traditional media sided with the ruling party and even ridiculed the actions of the protesters (Hong et al., 2015, p.
134). The internet offered transparent information, real facts about the movement and gave citizens the space for discussions on an equal level
As to counteract the traditional media which they found did not report the facts on this movement the “National Taiwan University news e-forum” used SNS such as Facebook and Line to create their own news platform. Peng Xiao-ting (彭筱婷) says that once someone publishes an article online, it will stay there forever. One has to bear great responsibility. On the other hand, she states that modesty is very important. This way you won’t publish random articles. This attitude is a strong point of the “news e-forum”, because all the members of the “news e-forum” are very cautious about that.
(Hong et al., 2015, p. 146).
In May 2015 an interview was conducted with one of the members of the “news e-forum”, Wei-wei Chen (陳芛薇), a graduate student of the Journalism department in National Chengchi University, Taipei. During the interview she described how she got involved in the Sunflower Student Movement and the importance of social media
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Taiwan University who founded this group in 2009. However, it was not called “news e-forum” at that time but simply “National Taiwan University news e-forum”. As the Legislative Yuan got occupied by the activists and the number of participants grew steadily, more people from other universities volunteered to join the “National Taiwan University news e-forum”. Now, there were not only students from NTU involved but also people from mostly journalist departments in National Chengchi University, Taiwan Normal University, or National Chung Cheng University (Hong et al., 2015, p.133). This led to the change of the name into the more general „news e-forum”. Wei-wei was not a member of the group before the movement. She only got involved through a friend who knew at that time that the “news e-forum” lacked members, who would report from the scene. On the evening of March 18, 2014, a few members of the group went to the Legislative Yuan where the protests took place. They wanted to record the happenings on the scene as part of a homework for one of their classes. Then, they became witnesses of one of Taiwan’s most historic events: the occupation of the Legislative Yuan. The following day their classmates also hurried to the scene (Hong et al., 2015, p. 133). Founded by 20 people, the group grew to more than 80 people who would commit their time to report on the Sunflower Student Movement. According to Wei-wei, Facebook was the fastest social media network that would suit their purpose:
to produce news for the people who could not enter the Legislative Yuan or even participate in the protests. PTT was not suitable for their purpose because their work only involved disseminating information and providing news coverage. PTT only functioned as a discussion board during the Sunflower Student Movement.
On Facebook the news could easily be re-produced by the sharing function.
Through this snowball effect more and more people, who have access to Facebook, could share the news with their friends and acquaintances. The communication application LINE18 was used for the members of the “news e-forum”. They created a chat-group within this application that was only allowed for members of the “news e-forum”. Since everyone in their group has a smartphone with mobile internet access, they could stay in contact and report news and further happenings to each other. Just like Facebook, LINE is a fast way to communicate with people.
18 LINE is a free instant messenger for smartphone devices and PC.
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Asked about her reasons for participating in the Sunflower Student Movement, Wei-wei says that she felt that the traditional media outlet in Taiwan did not report unbiased about the movement. She joined “news e-forum” not because she supported the demands made by the activists at the scene but because she, as a student of the Journalist department, cares about objective news coverage. During the interview she mentioned that she has no specific opinion about the movement itself. Even her parents did not try to persuade her to join the Sunflower Student Movement nor did they oppose her decision to go to the scene and become an active member of the “news e-forum”.
Wei-wei also admits that some members were against the motives of the Sunflower Student Movement but still stayed at the scene and reported about it. Calls from the protesters who encouraged them to actively participate were ignored by the members.
“We are the media, and don’t belong to your group!” was their response to the calls.
When the “news e-forum” was founded, the members uploaded only short news messages to their Facebook page. Shortly after it, the texts became longer and even photos were added [cf. Figure 12]. This was due to the positive feedback they received by their Facebook subscribers. Thus, the members of the “news e-forum” felt encouraged to post frequently and provide an objective news coverage for the Facebook members.
Figure 11
Number and type of posts on Facebook from March 16 – April 30, 2014.
Source: Fanpage Karma, 2014.
After the occupation of the Legislative Yuan, on March 23, the members of the “news e-forum” created an “editors stand”: before submitting the news to their Facebook page, a group of several editors screened and checked the news written by the members.
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However, on April 1 their work got interrupted when Chang An-lo (張安樂)19 appeared.
Wei-wei says that his appearance made their work harder since his actions made a huge turmoil during the protest and sit-ins outside the Legislative Yuan. At this point they had to stop their news coverage since the unrest Chang An-lo produced among the protesters, made it difficult for the “news e-forum” to produce proper and objective news. Here one can see how serious they took their job during the movement. The members of the “news e-forum” waited a while before they resumed their work.
The only article they published about Chang An-lo and his supporters on Facebook has a rather objective tone to it:
At the time the White Wolf and a group of supporters of the CSSTA want to retreat in the afternoon at 5pm, it came to a physical conflict with the Anti-CSSTA protesters at the Sheraton Plaza in Zhongxiao East Road. A large number of Anti-CSSTA protesters attacked the supporters of the CSSTA; the attacks were stopped by the police. The injured have also been taken to the hospital (2014, April 1).
Pictures of the violent escalation were added to the article. Some commenters took the chance to speak about their experience during this physical conflict. However, the article does not say who started this quarrel nor what were motives.
However, one can criticize that their report about Chang An-lo’s was rather slow compared to other coverage by other traditional media. This situation made the members of the “news e-forum” realize how hard the work as a reporter can be and how difficult it is not to get affected by their own emotions and feelings. Not talking about Chang An-lo’s actions in a sensational way showed their sincerity and values about how media should report: according to the facts and not influenced by one’s own biased opinion.
Talking about the future of the “news e-forum” Wei-wei says that they stopped using their Facebook page for now until they decide about its future. Since the Sunflower Student Movement ended and with most of the “news e-forum” members being busy with their graduate school, the “news e-forum” is on a temporary hiatus. On
19 Chang An-lo, also known as the White Wolf, who is a born Taiwanese but fled to the People’s Republic of China in 1996 after being accused of organized crime by the government of the Republic of China. He returned however in 2013 but has been released on bail by the Taiwanese police. He is the leader of the party “China Unification Promotion Party 中華統一促進黨. During the protest he called for an anti-protest 反反服貿 and tried to promote his ideas of a reconciliation between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (Xi, 2014).
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February 1, 2015, the members announced that they will stop posting news on a daily basis. In their last post they thank and apologize to all the supporters and people who raised money to fund the operation of “news e-forum”. They emphasize that from now on they only want to produce thematic news to make the most effective use of the remaining funds. Furthermore, they raise awareness to the conditions journalists have to face, not only in Taiwan, such as low salary and long working hours which results in psychological and physical stress and pressure. The last part of the article features a series of links to Taiwanese news websites, the members of the “news e-forum” highly suggest as an alternative source to their website.