Journal of Electoral Studies

Issues

Home Issues Backissues Volume 31, No.1 Voters' Media Use, Political Participation and Voting Behavior in 2000 Taiwan Presidential Election

Voters' Media Use, Political Participation and Voting Behavior in 2000 Taiwan Presidential Election

Bonnie Peng
2000 / 05
Volume 7, No.1

pp.21-52
10.6612/tjes.2000.07.01.21-52
Paper

Abstract

It has been said that the 2000 presidential election in Taiwan was unpredictable before the result coming out at March 18. This paper tries to look at the relationships between voters' campaign interest, traditional media use, new media use (call-in, Internet use), political efficacy, and level of campaign participation. It has been hypothesized that those variables could predict Taiwan voters' voting behavior. Communication scholars have long been debating the role of the media in the politicalprocess and democratic system. The rising of the new media, call-in program especially, was widely discussed by political communication scholars as a tool to attract those voters who might not be interested in politics or voting. Whether voters' new media use could predict their campaign participation as well as the candidate they're supporting? The result had found that level of campaign participation was very high in the 2000 Taiwan presidential election. Gender, education, income, and campaign interest showed significant power in predicting voter's campaign participation. While traditional media use could not show significant relationships with participation, exposure to TV call-in program and TV debates did show high pre- dictive power in explaining voters' level of campaign participation.

Keywords

Media Use

Participation

Voting Behavior