Political movements are happening every time in every place of the globe. However, due to the discrepancy between the regulations of local governments, they are conducted in different ways. Some of them are radical and direct, while others are moderate and non-extreme. With the development and infiltration of technologies, new media has become a very prominent approach to expressing people’s political petitions.
The power of emerging media can never be underestimated in politics. As is described in Lawrence and Boydstun’s work (2016), despite of his campaigns’s “lack of expertise and organizational strength”, Donald Trump made an “entertaining, sensational, inflammatory words and actions make him the kind of phenomenon we just can’t look away from”, successfully influencing US citizen’s decision to win the presidential election. The fact is, it is the same with ordinary people’s political petitions, in which social media play a crucial role to get their opinions heard.
Golden Horse Awards (GHA) is a film festival and awards ceremony held annually in Taiwan. The awards ceremony is usually held in November or December in Taipei, which is regarded as the Oscar of Chinese-speaking world, including Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as Singapore. However, on the 55th GHA held on November 17th, 2018, the entertainment-oriented event was twisted into political. When Fu Yu, a Taiwanese director, was giving her speech, she said: “I hope one day our country will be recognized and treated as a truly independent entity. This is my biggest wish as a Taiwanese.” Soon afterwards, when a Mainland actor Tu Men gave his speech, he said: “It is my honor to be a guest here at Taiwan, China.” These two people apparently represent for opposite political stands in terms of “One China Policy”, which has been debated both officially and unofficially over decades.
Dramatically, the state of GHA augmented these two voices and triggered a disputation between netizens with different political views. Despite the censorship from the Mainland government, the majority voice heard from Mainland social media (predominantly from Weibo) is “Taiwan is part of China”, but Taiwanese people insisted “Taiwan should be treated as an independent country”. Because of the internet censorship in Mainland China, people with contrasting ideologies encountered on Twitter and Facebook, where the governmental regulations are weak. They simply turned the internet into a battlefield between Mainlanders and Taiwanese.
Compared with the “Facebook Expedition” movement happened two years ago, in which about 23,860,000 Mainland netizens were organized to leave bantering yet political comments on mainstream social platforms of Taiwan, the GHA event was more spontaneous and expeditious. Even under the censorship of the Mainland government, citizens found a way to confront with each other, making sure their respective opinions are conveyed. From the perspective of Mainlanders, the awareness of usisng social media to evolve in political events has been raised by the infiltration of technologies. People who participated in “Facebook Expedition” are mainly “geeks”, and they used to be incapable of having any dialogue with one another. New media, however, has built a bridge between people in Mainland China and Taiwan, making it possible for millions of netizens to converse, or feel as if they are conversing.
Petitions have never been ceased, but the means are constantly changing. People used to hold demonstrations with signs, but now they also rely on the internet to express what they want to. Just as mentioned in Chadwick’s work (2017), online organizations such as 38 Degrees realize the power of social media and try to digitalize the petitions. However, it does not necessarily mean that the traditional forms are completely replaced. New media only adds to the conventional forms of petitions, but also effectively strengthens people’s voice.
Despite the fact that traditional and new media forms are coexisting and intermingling, people feel empowered by the abundant ways of participating in political events. Nevertheless, the seeming power of new media users can pale in comparison with the capital possessors and government. In fact, the sense of political participation is merely a bubble. Specifically, even though people can use new media platforms to convey messages as they wish, the freedom is still controlled by the platforms. Netizens sometimes ignore the insinuations from new media. While feeling involved, people are actually manipulated by new media and the real powers behind. In the competition of ordinary people and the powers, the former ones are never victorious. Unfortunately benumbed by the illusion of freedom of speech, they have never been empowered.
References
Chadwick, A. (2017). The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford university press.
Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards. (2018, November 19). Retrieved November 18, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Horse_Film_Festival_and_Awards.
Lawrence, R. G., & Boydstun, A. E. (2016). What We Should Really Be Asking About Media Attention to Trump. Political Communication, 34(1), 150-153. doi 10.1080/10584609.2016.1262700.
Sui, C. (2018, November 18). Golden Horse awards hit by controversy over Taiwan. Retrieved November 18, 2018, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46250674.
2016年中国大陆网民”出征”Facebook事件. (2018, October 7). Retrieved November 18, 2018, from https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016年中国大陆网民“出征”Facebook事件.