Research topic

Mediating democratic politics: Generational understanding of democracy and identification with Taiwan

The departure point of my PhD research project is media representation of the Sunflower Generation (太陽花世代, tai yang hua shih dai). In media, young people of this generation are often portrayed as active supporters of Taiwan democracy, as more engaging in digitally networked forms of political participation, and more strongly identifying themselves as Taiwanese. Nevertheless, having observed it during my participation in the 318 Movement that young people’s views were not homogenous and could differ from media representations, I have focused my research on exploring intra-generational differences. Along this line, my research, instead of paying mere attention to certain media texts and audiences’ interpretations of these given texts, conceptualises a more dialectical relationship between people’s everyday life and the media. It asks how people’s engagement with the media contributes to their meaning making of democracy. In addition to intra-generational analysis, I am also concerned about interactions between young people and their elders. More specifically, an inter-generational analysis is conducted for building a better understanding of political communication within family context.  

Supervisor(s)

Professor Sonia Livingstone and Professor Ellen Helsper

Biography

Ssu-Han studied English and Japanese for her BA degree. In the final year of her undergraduate study, she was an exchange student in the Department of Communication at University of Jyväskylä. Between her first Master’s degree in Journalism at National Taiwan University (NTU) and the second one in Media and Communications at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), she worked as a research assistant with Dr. Chiu on health communication in the Department of Bio-Industry Communication and Development, NTU. During this period of time, she witnessed and participated in the Sunflower Movement of 2014 and the Anti-black-box Curriculum Movement of 2015. Since then, she has been interested in researching political participation, democracy, citizenship and national identity.