Social Media Usage and Voter Attitude for the Taiwan 2024 Presidential Election

• In Event: Poster Session: Predicting Political Preferences & Civic Engagement
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Predicting Political Preferences

Abstract

After social media becomes popular and used widely, it become a source of collecting information and contacting or establishing relationships with others. The previous researches show that because social media can deliver information, and create social network ties and mobilization, social media in political usage can increase citizens’ political knowledge, social capital, and political participation.
The Pew research (2014) mentions that voters who follow politicians have more political participation frequency. Also, most politicians, parties, and administration agencies in Taiwan have social media accounts to publish information and interact with people which may create a political fandom culture (王泰俐 2013, 1-52; 林瓊珠 2013, 181-193) . As a consequence, social media changes information collection and interaction especially interaction between politicians and voters, that factors influence politics. In this research, I want to figure out does people who follow politicians on social media can increase their support for politicians and does people’s attitudes change when they are exposed to the candidates they prefer and do not prefer.
In this research, I conducted by online survey and collected from Dec. 13 2024 to Dec. 21, 2024, and received 138 qualified responses. To test the relation whether using social media and not using social media can have a difference, I will use the chi-square homogeneity test to test out the difference between using social media and not. The conclusion finds that, first of all, social media following may be caused by many reasons including partisan, and living areas. The second finding is that people who follow politicians on social media pay more attention to political issues. The third finding is that using social media to collect information can increase understanding of candidates and supporting degrees, but the effect of increasing rivals or decreasing haters on the opponent side didn’t have a significant and consistent effect.

Author

• YA NI HO, National Chengchi University