A note from Talking Taiwan host Felicia Lin:
Around the time of the Sunflower Movement in 2014, which was a protest in response to Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou attempting to force passage of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (a trade pact between Taiwan and China), the Taiwan Voice Facebook page quickly became a major source of news about the movement. Students and activists occupied Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan (Taiwan’s parliament) from March 18-April 10, 2014. Sophie Ping-Ya Hsu spoke about how the Taiwan Voice Facebook page got started, her involvement in it and its impact.
Here’s a little preview of what we talked about in this podcast episode:
· How the Taiwan Voice Facebook page got started
· How Taiwan Voice started in part to support the students who occupied the Legislative Yuan on March 18, 2014
· Sophie’s background and connection to Taiwan
· How Sophie got involved in the Taiwan Voice and met the others in the group
· How the Taiwan Voice Facebook page was getting a thousand likes per day
· Sophie’s contribution to running the Taiwan Voice Facebook page was as an editor, she scanned through Chinese-language social media posts for information and news ideas, to coordinate with English translators and to post to the Taiwan Voice Facebook page
· Sophie recruited people to help run the Taiwan Voice Facebook page
· The core group that started Taiwan Voice Facebook were 10-15 individuals
· Initially news and information related to social justice issues were posted to the Facebook page without any filtering
· How Taiwan Voice made an impact in creating awareness about Taiwan over social media
· How Taiwan Voice helped to gather momentum from abroad for the Sunflower Movement
· How Taiwan Voice was a quick source of news about Taiwan
Related Links:
Taiwan Voice Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/
Sunflower Movement: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/
Legislative Yuan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Ma Ying-jeou: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
