Yu‐jui Chen and Pin‐yu Chu
3. Methodology
3.1 Targeted samples and Facebook pages
Using Taiwan incumbent legislators’ Facebook as a case study, the study applies the content analysis method to review and compare differences in communication strategies and patterns of the Facebook posts of incumbent legislators during the legislator election in 2011 and during the regular legislative sessions in 2012. The data collected for the 2011 legislator election began on December 1, and ended on December 31. The 2012 regular legislative session began on October 1, and ended on October 31.
The study employs the stratified sampling method to select a nationally representative sample from the two major political parties in Taiwan. Our final samples cover twenty legislators from Kuomintang( KMT) and ten legislators from Democratic Progressive Party( DPP), the two major political parties in Taiwan. Although some legislators have both personal Facebook account and Facebook page, we choose their Facebook pages from the direction of hyperlink as our targets considering their accessibility to citizens. Table 1 summaries the Facebook accounts of legislators we study. The unit of analysis is a Facebook post. We totally analyze 1,526 Facebook posts in the election periods, and 897 Facebook posts in the regular sessions.
Table 1: Facebook accounts and pages of study targets Facebook account Political party Facebook title of study targets
Personal accounts
Facebook pages
KMT Ting, Shou‐chung, Lee, Hung‐Chun, Lin, Te‐Fu, Chang, Ching‐Chung, Tsai, Chin‐Lung, Huang, Chao‐Shun, Chen, Ken‐Te, Hsu, Yao‐Chang, Lin, Tsang‐Min, Cheng, Ru‐Fen, Lin, Ming‐Chen, Ma, Wen‐Chun, Liao,
Kuo‐Tung. DDP Huang, Wei‐Cher, Lin, Shu‐Fen, Chen, Ming‐Wen, Su, Chen‐Ching. KMT Tsai, Cheng‐Yuan, Wu, Yu‐Sheng, Lin, Hung‐Chih, Huang,
Chih‐Hsiung, Yang, Li‐Huan, Wong, Chung, Wang, Ting‐Son. DDP Chen, Ting‐Fei, Hsu, Tain‐Tsair, Kuan, Bi‐Ling, Lin, Tai‐Hua, Liu,
Chien‐Kuo, Pan, Men‐An.
3.2 Strategies and e‐participation patterns of Facebook
Based on the amalgamation of the available literature presented above, this study proposes six main strategies for analyzing Facebook pages of Taiwanese legislators as follows:
• Daily information‐sharing: Legislators provide their daily information, and connect their daily lives with their supports’ and other citizens’ experience and feelings( Carlson & Strandberg, 2005; Trammell et al., 2006).
• Emphasis on personal characteristics: Legislators emphasize their positive personal characteristics and distinguish themselves from other politicians. Those characteristics include ability, toughness, persistence, experience / education, amiability, moral values, stylistic qualities, political philosophy, professionalism, youthfulness, and appearance( Bystrom et al., 2004; Trammell et al., 2006; Wang, 2009).
• Endorsement: Legislators provide testimonials for specific supporters or groups of supporters, including statistics, expert sources or officials( Bichard, 2006; Carlson & Strandberg, 2005).
• Mobilization and participation: Legislators provide information of activities, in which they invite citizens to volunteer, donate, and participate in various campaign activities( Bichard, 2006; Trammell et al., 2006; Wang. 2009).
• Opponent attack: Legislators attack their opponent about flaws, records, inadequacies, and weaknesses( Bichard, 2006; Trammell et al, 2006; Wang, 2009).
• Political information: Legislators provide information such as statement, positions of public issues, and political ideology to express their points of view on public affairs( Carlson & Strandberg, 2005; Bichard, 2006: Trammell et al., 2006; Wang, 2009).
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