Yu‐jui Chen and Pin‐yu Chu
[ t( 29) = 2.03, p = 0.029 < 0.1 ] usage reveals that legislators tend to see Facebook as a political campaign tool, instead of a conversation platform during the elections.
Similar to the results of previous research on political campaigns( Jackson & Lilleker, 2010), there is evidence that Taiwanese legislators still favor a monologic approach to manage their interaction with citizens on Facebook. Although Facebook has potential to become the“ public sphere” which creates more citizen participation and more public values( Robertson et al., 2010), the premise is that legislators and public administrators accept Facebook as a two‐way communication tool that can be used to promote their relationship with their supporters, as well as to learn about and network with other citizens and groups. However, it takes a lot of time to make full use of this two‐way“ social” tool.
5. Discussions and conclusions
As the Facebook trend continues to grow, this paper uses the content analysis method to explore the strategic difference in legislators Facebook pages during regular sessions and elections. In comparing the strategies of regular sessions and election periods, the study results show that political information and daily information sharing are the most frequently used strategies on legislators’ Facebook pages, and there are significant differences between these two periods in terms of emphasis on personal characterizes, endorsement, mobilization.. Unlike previous literature( Bichard, 2006; Trammell et al., 2006; Wang, 2009), opponent attack is not the priority to legislators even in election. This finding is surprisingly different from Wang’ s( 2009) research result, in which opponent attack is the major strategy used in Taiwan’ s 2008 legislative campaign. Facebook have more sociological functions and deliberative characteristics than blogs or web sites( Robertson et al., 2010), which makes it not only the campaign tool, but also the public sphere on‐line. In general, Legislators of Taiwan tend to use diversified strategies in elections than in legislative sessions.
This study also reveals that the percentage of e‐participation is more than 50 %, but most communication on Facebook is one‐way. Legislators still favor a monologic approach( Jackson & Lilleker, 2010) to manage their interaction with citizens on Facebook. The result indicates that legislators’ Facebook is another platform to distribute public information to citizens, and may have potential to create more public values. To improve democracy, legislators need to get more feedback from citizens, i. e., improving the two‐way communication on Facebook.
As with any research design, this study possesses limitation. First, we focus on difference in legislators’ strategies of web 2.0 tools in regular legislative sessions and in election periods. Facebook, however, is only a type of web 2.0 tools used by legislators. Taiwan legislators may apply different strategies in various web 2.0 environments. Future studies may need to further explore strategies adopted by politicians and( elected) public administrators in various web 2.0 and social media. Second, the concept of e‐participation includes citizen participation in the decision‐making level of public policy. However, we do not delve much into defining participation in actual policy making, but broadly consider various degrees of citizen involvement. We do not attempt to further analyze whether or not legislators actually take suggestions from Facebook“ friends” into consideration while making public policies. Future study may employ the in‐depth interview method to explore the actual influence of Facebook pages on legislators’ policy making qualitatively.
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