Interactions between different language communities on Twitter during the 2012 presidential election in Taiwan

Abstract

Researchers can compare the different communication patterns between cross-language communities, and explore the potential and limitations of social media as global public spheres. Global social media such as Facebook and Twitter connect a large number of users online. Most of the time, this vast network consists of numerous loosely connected clusters that are defined by the extent of the daily personal social lives of individual users. The chapter focuses on the 2012 presidential election in Taiwan as a case study to explore the interaction between various groups from Taiwan, China and Japan in the global social networking platform, Twitter. N. Anstead and B. O`Loughlin analysed the audience behaviours on Twitter during the candidates` debates on TV in the 2010 UK general election. They called this new audience an `emerging viewertariat`, which means that viewers watch real-time events on TV and give their comments on social media at the same time.