ARE TAIWANESE AFRAID OF TERRORISM? THE IMPACTS OF HARD AND SOFT TERRORISM ON TAIWANESE

Technological developments in the last 20 years have affected people's daily lives and caused many innovations. The internet and social media are among the most important developments, and these developments have led to an increase in the speed of news and people's rapid access to information on various topics. However, progress in technology has also affected terrorist organisations. This effect has changed the methods, strategies, and visions of terrorist organisations. With these new methods and strategies, terrorist organisations could negatively affect the psychology of the people who are not directly affected by global terrorism. The best example of this is Taiwan. In this study, I focus on the impact of hard and soft terrorism on the Taiwanese. In this direction, I use the mixed-method approach in this study. I analyse the 7th wave of the World Values Survey with the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression method. Qualitative face-to-face interviews with Taiwanese will support the quantitative results.

Keywords:

The Soft Terrorism Strategy; The Hard Terrorism Strategy; Taiwan; Social media; Mass media

Related Link: http://global.ir.fisip.ui.ac.id/index.php/global/article/view/715 

The Opinion of The Taiwanese Media on Pro-Independence and Pro-Unification with People Republic China During Tsai Ing-Wen Era

Abstract: Taiwan-People’s Republic of China (PRC) relations have attracted a lot of attention in recent years. These relationships are at the core of Taiwan's social and political life. The pro-independence and pro-unification social cleavage line affected by Taiwan-PRC relations divides Taiwan's political life into two separate camps. These camps are pan-blue coalition (pro-unification) and the pan-green coalition (pro-independence). In this study, the views of Taiwanese newspapers containing both camps on Taiwan-PRC relations are analyzed quantitatively. The study focuses specifically on the Tsai Ing-Wen period. Within the scope of the study, dictionary-based and sentiment analysis methods are used and the selected newspapers are examined with these principles. As a consequence of the quantitative analysis of these three English Taiwanese newspapers, it is shown that the media adopted a perspective similar to the views of the government and the DPP throughout the Tsai Ing-Wen period. Furthermore, sentiment analysis is done of the news from these newspapers relevant to PRC-Taiwan ties. It has been noted that the reporting regarding PRC-Taiwan ties in all three newspapers has a positive language.
Keywords: Taiwan, PRC, Text Analysis, Pro-Unification, Pro-Independence, KMT, DPP


RELATED LINK: http://daadtr.com/DAAD/ArchiveIssues/PDF/787eb20a-e1bb-ea11-810a-005056b0673e

2020 General Election in Taiwan

The results of the Taiwan general elections had been eagerly awaited for a long time. Especially the results of the local elections in 2018 made these general elections more remarkable. In addition, the protests in Hong Kong increased the importance of the Taiwan general elections.

In this article, I will first describe my observations in general elections. Then I will briefly explain the results of Twitter analysis about Taiwan general election, which I analyzed with the text analysis method.

OBSERVATION

In the morning, I started following the general elections in Taiwan. At the same time, I also tried to feel the political atmosphere inside country. Because of that reason, I talked with some of my Taiwanese friends. Around 7 PM, the election results began to be announced. Around 7.30pm, I first went to the KMT's headquarter in Kaohsiung. However, the KMT headquarter was quite empty. The most important reason for this was that DPP was ahead by far, according to the first results. Another important reason was that pan-blue party sympathizers did not trust their candidates.

Around 8 pm, the results began to be clear and I decided to go to the DPP's rally. The rally area was quite crowded. It was as crowded as the KMT's rally, which won last year's local elections. The excitement and joy of people in the rally area was quite interesting.

As a result of the local elections in 2018, the Green Party(DPP) lost the local elections. As a result of the defeat, the DPP leader and Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-Wen resigned from party leadership. But Tsai Ing-Wen, who withdrew her resignation, won this year's general elections.

With the results, the KMT candidate Han Kuo-yu made his speech first. About an hour later, Tsai Ing wen, the winner of the election, made her speech. However, the first thing that caught my attention during this speech was that Tsai Ing Wen spoke quite calmly and seriously. Unlike Ing Wen, DPP sympathizers were extremely happy.

In her speech, Ing wen praised Taiwan's democracy and stated that relations with China will continue in the same way.

TWITTER ANALYSIS

2000 English tweets about Taiwanese general elections between the January 1st and January 20th were examined with R computer program. First, the most commonly used words were found in these 2000 tweets. The words Economy, Growth, Hong Kong Protests, independence and victory are the most used words in 2000 tweets.

Most of the tweets are positive about Ing-Wen and DPP's victory.

Words like freedom, peaceful, democracy, growth and hope are the most commonly used positive words. Words such as infrared, protest, fight and Xi Jinping are the most commonly used negative words. 

Secondly, sentiment analysis of these 2000 tweets was analyzed. The highest sentiment in these tweets is trust. Then comes anticipation and fear.

Words like president, democracy, freedom, integrity, alliance and brilliant are the words with the highest trust sentiment. Words like young, vote, result and prevention are the words with the highest sense of anticipation. Words like Fight, Interfere, and Xi Jinping are the words with the highest sense of fear.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, DPP sympathizers were very happy and hopeful at the DPP rally. Twitter analysis results gave similar results.

However, despite all this happiness and anticipation, it is a matter of curiosity how China-Taiwan relations and Ing-Wen's attitude towards China will change and shape.