英文摘要 |
Back in 2018, KMT’s Han Kuo-yu won Kaohsiung mayoral election and attracted people to be his supporters. Soon after, he was announced as the winner of KMT’s presidential primary to be running up against Tsai Ing-wen. However, during the election process, Han kept causing controversy after a string of gaffes, which made him get negative opinions on the internet and made himself and his supporters discriminated against by others. Thus, the fans flooded into competitors’ Facebook pages and left some fierce comments to protect Han. The phrase “when Han fans go to battle, there is complete devastation” describes this kind of comment attack. This also made the combat between the groups of mainstream and non-mainstream even tenser. Therefore, with the momentum of Han’s supporters, this study delineates how they use social media to battle with others and what exactly their discursive strategies and tactics are in the comments. Besides, how this attack affects political communication and democracy in Taiwan. Regarding the research method, we use OpView trend to collect data and textual analysis to scrutinize every comment left by Han’s supporters. The results show that their strategies focus on creating conflicts with others, letting off steam and releasing anger, and diverting the discussion topics. In addition, Han’s fans are not only influenced by social media algorithms and echo chambers but have become new information streaming ecosystem for vertical opinion integration. Furthermore, as a counter-public, it is surprising that Han’s fans do not seek more support from other marginal groups; instead, they incite opposition against them. Last, they use “subaltern” as a sign to gather and form a populist group to be anti-elites and anti-democracy. This will cause a severe impact on democratic politics in Taiwan. |