Taiwan Sunflower Student Movement

Maron(2007) first suggested the potential of OSM for humanitarian work. He indicated that "the map was built on open data that could be readily changed by anyone with knowledge of a geographical area, and access."(Soden & Palen, 2014)

OSM, also called "Wikipedia of maps", enable people around the world to join the process of building an elaborate online map together. Research found out that even the effort was contributed by multiple people, the quality of maps are generally high. (Haklay 2010a, Mashhadi & Capra 2013)

There are two major benefit of online mapping. First, it only takes little time to develop various maps with a great amount of volunteer. Second, it allows individuals to provide real-time information of local conditions. (Zook, Graham, Shelton, & Gorman, 2010)

Reference:

Maron, M. (July 16, 2007). State of the Map! http://brainoff.com/weblog/2007/07/16/1258

Soden, R., & Palen, L. (2014). From crowdsourced mapping to community mapping: The post-earthquake work of openstreetmap haiti. In COOP 2014-Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, 27-30 May 2014, Nice (France) (pp. 311–326). Springer. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-06498-7_19

Zook, M., Graham, M., Shelton, T., & Gorman, S. (2010). Volunteered Geographic Information and Crowdsourcing Disaster Relief: A Case Study of the Haitian Earthquake. World Medical & Health Policy, 2(2), 6–32. http://doi.org/10.2202/1948-4682.1069

During this student movement, Internet and new media are considered as an indispensable character. Due to the multi-polarity political positions of Taiwan’s traditional media, which makes the report bias, some students are developing their own press release and send it to international media platform in order to make up for a deficiency of traditional media.（賴宛琳, 2014）

Reference:

Some traditional media only report the materials that are advantageous to their concepts after affected by Chinese investment. They would produce bias news in order to obscure the facts and try to shift focus from the axis of activity. For example, reporting the outfit of female activists or the response of activists’ university. However, some civilians who were used to receiving information from those media are easily be mislead, which makes them couldn’t build a full aspect of this activity.（賴宛琳, 2014） There are two reasons that make the traditional media can still hold its power of influence: first, people tend to choose the media that report the content which they agree with. By reason of digesting the information that is challenging our original thoughts is more difficult than we think. In the end, people would stick to the media once they found the one matches their perspective and value. Second, finding the right information need hard work, so people tend to find the information that is good enough. They won’t crave for exact and perfect answer. (Nahon & Hemsley, 2013)

In history, activists need to rely on media to disseminate information (Gamson & Wolfsfeld, 1993.) However, mainstream media are found attempting to “discredit or marginalize” activists’ behavior or cover the activists’ behavior with “protest paradigm” (McLeod & Hertog, 1999).

The traditional gatekeeper has enormous effect on information flow. This power originated from selecting which information to pass, connecting different groups, and controlling information activity. But this power has been weakened because of the multi choices of information channel. Internet gatekeeper and the untraditional information flow have challenged the conventional role of gatekeeper such as media. The diversity avoids any gatekeeper to hold an absolute control over information flow. (Nahon & Hemsley, 2013)

Since the media environment has been contaminated for political reasons, in order to deal with the misleading information made by mainstream media, activists turn to use other kind of media. (Downing, 2001) Internet became the best channel because it provides a method enables activists to bypass traditional media and gatekeeper’s filter and control their own message. (Cleaver, 1998; Postmes & Brunsting, 2002).

Reference:

賴宛琳(2014, August). 太陽花盛開 催生臺灣新媒體。看雜誌。146, 34-38.

Nahon, K., & Hemsley, J. (2013). What makes something viral I: the control of networks through gatekeeping. In Going Viral (pp. 41–59).

Gamson, W., & Woldsfeld, G. (1993). Movements and media as interacting systems. Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science 528, 114–125.McLeod, D. M., & Hertog, J. K. (1999). Social control, social change and the mass media’s role in the regulation of protest groups. In D. Demers & K. Viswanath (Eds.), Mass media, social control and social change: A macrosocial perspective (pp. 305–330). Ames: Iowa State University Press.

Downing, J. (2001). Radical media. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Cleaver, H. (1998). The Zapatista effect: The Internet and the rise of an alternative public fabric. Journal of International Affairs, 51, 621–632.

Postmes, T. & Brunsting, S. (2002). Collective action in the age of the Internet: Mass communication and online mobilization. Social Science Computer Review, 20(3), 290–301.

Usually, companies are profit-oriented, but Chinese Communist is politic-oriented. Chin-Hwa Chang indicated that it might only be collusion between the government and corporations. What Taiwan encounters is more than that. It’s a threat of actual political controlled by dictatorial country. There isn’t a Chinese enterprise openly yet, but under the political factor, every medias choose their sides. Some of them even censor their own speech and abandon their freedom of speech and news in order to strive for Chinese market. All of these facts make Taiwan’s media ecology worth worrying; also deepen the people’s mistrust toward business media.（賴宛琳, 2014）

Reference:

Protesters organized the gathering spots around Legislative Yuan through GoogleMap and OpenStreetMap. The volunteered geographic information helped activists to get first hand information at the gathering spot and able to make respond accordingly. （臺灣對於太陽花學運的反應, n.d.）

As Soden & Palen (2014) said: “There was a clear and immediate demand for accurate and up-to-date maps to help guide logistics and support other elements of the response.” People voluntarily joined to draw the map around Legislative Yuan and pinpointed out traffic control condition and roadblocks to let activists select open and convenient route before hand.

Reference:

臺灣對於太陽花學運的反應. (2015, January 27). In 維基百科，自由的百科全書. Retrieved from http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E8%87%BA%E7%81%A3%E5%B0%8D%E6%96%BC%E5%A4%AA%E9%99%BD%E8%8A%B1%E5%AD%B8%E9%81%8B%E7%9A%84%E5%8F%8D%E6%87%89&oldid=33991603

Protestors outside the Legislative Yuan used Google docs to organize the essential supplies such as water, food, or medical goods. People who want to help could provide things that the protestors really need. （臺灣對於太陽花學運的反應, n.d.）

Reference:

They invited one of the top designers, Yung-Chen Nieh, to design the advertisement page. The title is “Democracy at 4am” in order to memorize the persistent of thousands of civilians slept on streets to protect the students in the Executive Yuan. Also call on to the society not to forget the violent suppression in March 24. (【沃草】紐約時報廣告「Democracy at 4am」，讓全球看見太陽花學運, 2014)

Reference:

March 24, Internet users launched a “buy the newspaper front page” activity through crowd funding website FlyingV. The goal was to raise money in order to buy Apple Daily and Ney York Times advertisement page. They raised one million five hundred thousand dollars in 35 minutes, which reached the goal of buying the domestic newspaper’s half page of front-page advertisement. There were 3495 Internet users donated and eventually raised six million seven hundred thousand dollars in three hours. They successfully bought the half page advertisement of Apple Daily and Liberty Times of March 25, and full-page advertisement of New York Times of March 30. (“臺灣對於太陽花學運的反應,” 2015) Their main purpose is using “person” as a unit to raise money in order to avoid monopolization.  (“【集資廣告】台灣，這次妳一定要撐下去” n.d.)

Reference:

【集資廣告】台灣，這次妳一定要撐下去 | flyingV 群眾募資平台 Crowdfunding in Asia. (n.d.). Retrieved February 19, 2015, from http://www.flyingv.cc/project/2648

Cons:

The major voice of objective toward CSSTA mostly concern that Chinese investments might lead to the price escalation of real estate and make Taiwan the next Hong Kong. Other concerns including people are worried that management echelon will occupied by Chinese, students facing graduation think CSSTA will heighten the threshold of their future opportunity to create their own business, printing industry, distribution industry, and storage industry think that they won’t be able to survive in the price cutting competition with China, many other industry also worry about they might lost their job. Some voices indicate that Chinese might take their family to Taiwan for a long stay, which will severely increase the disparity between rich and poor. (“海峽兩岸服務貿易協議,” n.d.)

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According to the regulation of WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Service (GATS), service has divided into four models:

Cross-border supply: the possibility for non-resident service suppliers to supply services cross-border into the Member's territory.

Consumption abroad: the freedom for the Member's residents to purchase services in the territory of another Member.

Commercial presence: the opportunities for foreign service suppliers to establish, operate or expand a commercial presence in the Member's territory, such as a branch, agency, or wholly-owned subsidiary. For example, Taiwan allows Chinese service provider to establish business stronghold in Taiwan with all kinds of format such as exclusive investment, joint venture, partnership, or establish branch offices.

Presence of natural persons: the possibilities offered for the entry and temporary stay in the Member's territory of foreign individuals in order to supply a service. (鄭秀玲, n.d.)

Reference:

Reference

海峽兩岸服務貿易協議. (2015, January 27). In 維基百科，自由的百科全書. Retrieved from http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E6%B5%B7%E5%B3%BD%E5%85%A9%E5%B2%B8%E6%9C%8D%E5%8B%99%E8%B2%BF%E6%98%93%E5%8D%94%E8%AD%B0&oldid=34114784

Professor Show-Ling Jang indicates that CSSTA doesn’t match those three points that Stiglitz suggests. As a result, Professor Jang recommends that Taiwanese people should think twice before making the final decision.

The clause, the economic scales, and the freedom environments of two sides are not in equal status.

The administrator who signed the agreement neglected his own duty. Taiwan’s economy, society and homeland safety have been in danger.

Only 18 civil servants at the basic level were in charge with the negotiation process. The process was lack of conversation between government departments and relevant industry. (鄭秀玲, n.d.)

Reference:

鄭秀玲. (12:27:45 UTC). 兩岸服貿協議對我國的衝擊分析. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/hungchengtu/ss-24730814?related=1