When Elections Become Social Movements: Emerging “Citizen-Initiated” Campaigning in Taiwan

Abstract

This chapter explains the emerging characteristics of citizen-initiated political campaigning for the 2014 Taipei mayoral election, as well as the 2016 presidential and legislative elections, and aims to answer two questions. First, if citizen-initiated campaigning can be identified, then what is the mechanism of mobilization? In light of the logic of connective action, this study explains how personal frame action has transformed into collective force in the process of citizen-initiated campaigning and how communication technology has transformed into networked organizations. The aforementioned characteristics, featuring recent digital mobilized social movements, have been demonstrated in election engineering in Taiwan. Second, it analyzes how Taiwanese political parties responded to rising citizen engagement in campaigns and adapt and adopt tools and strategies emerged from social movements in the election engineering.