Live streaming in Taiwan costs marginally nothing. [laughs] When everybody is a journalist by default, there’s a need for democratizing journalism competency, just like this thousand people fact checking. That’s a very good example.
By settling on this strategy very early on, we made sure that we do not alienate the journalism community. The TFFC is blessed, and indeed still maintained in a foundation form, by some of the most renowned journalism professors, theorists, and researchers.
If we alienate the journalism community, we won’t get anywhere for this particular issue.
When I was working before this role in the K to 12 curriculum committee, Finland indeed is our main source of inspiration to design the K to 12 curriculum. The curriculum places media and technology competency as one of the nine core competencies to have.
Taiwan, I think, is influenced both by the more East Asian standardized test, individualistic competition, that’s maybe more US. Anyway, [laughs] we’re influenced by many different strains of thought.
When we’re doing the K to 12 curriculum design, the Finnish idea of this just autonomous, interactive common good, like in a very old sense of common good – like Henry George sense of common good sense – is particularly resonating with the education community in Taiwan.
There’s many cultural reasons, but I think people see this kind of multistakeholderism as representative not only about the necessity practically, but also culturally, because Taiwan, at least in the new curriculum is transcultural.
The new curriculum is paired with the National Language Act, so that we have 20 national languages now, and that people can choose to approach any knowledge and any discipline through the lens of any other culture.
People are raised now to view the culture that each individual is born with in the light of another culture that nevertheless share the democratic process. This freedom to travel between cultures, which includes religious freedom, but not limited to, is, I think, a core part of Taiwan.
In this identification of democratic process, it is inspired by Finland and also inspired by Switzerland, where this democratic process identity, and not football team identity is even more pronounced.
It works both ways. The 出征, how do I translate that?
Expedition, yes. [laughs] The expeditious harassments…
Now, I’m trying to use the term as they use it. [laughs] The expeditious harassments are reflecting the mass insecurity of the belief system. You see that happening when any of the supporting idea or candidate is on the height, but declining in popularity.
This slope is where the expeditions are most likely to happen, because they need to turn an individual event that upsets people in normal times into outrage to regroup and remobilize in the hope that they can regain the popularity.
This is, as everybody who have studied online social media know, counterproductive, because this dispels people’s myth that this is some idea that’s worth following. It may reinforce existing followers, but it turns everybody else off.
Just in a practical term, although many different waves like this have come and gone, the individual practitioners quickly learn that this is counterproductive to their mission. There are, for the non-digital natives who this expedition may be their first exposure to Internet culture, it takes slightly longer to wean off this habit. This is nothing new. We saw it in Usenet days.
The radio broadcasting station, I think, is technically that dish of the broadcasting facility is classified as cybersecurity-wise top-level critical infrastructure, so we’ve been thinking about it. Practically, I think historically, even during the martial law days, there is limited but vibrant use of radio.
The so-called underground extra-party videos, radio stations, and that is an important part of the culture. Of course, to me, nowadays, we will say there is no democratic debate between the underground radios and the official propaganda.
Both tell one side of the story, and there was no room for meaningful debate, of course, because of martial law. Still, that is one of the identities of people who identify with the radio broadcasters and the radio stations, is a most accessible form of civil disobedience.
That’s a historical fact, and that culture, of course, continues for people who are, I think, nowadays in their at least 60s. That’s still important to them. I would say radio is less important for people 30 years old or younger, because iPod is invented in their lifetime. They have podcasts to listen to.
Both excellent questions. The technical capability, of course, is there. Speaking the Taiwanese Hoklo, vis-à-vis Hokkian, Minnan, it only take maybe a few weeks training for a speaker of that language to speak fluently in this language.
This is like learning to write simplified Chinese. Once you know traditional Chinese, this is not particularly hard. Technically, it’s possible. I really don’t think that this is the most effective route to go, even if you are targeting people who are above 60 years old.
Broadband as a human right, people now belong to one or more Line groups, and we know that as a fact, that the elderly people, even though they know nothing about other Internet services, they are on Line groups.
Just recording something visual through the Line groups is much more convincing than something that is purely auditory in either podcast or radio, which is why, in the TFFC post-election, the fact checking, mostly you see they are fact checking video now, because these seem more convincing. That’s the answer to your question.
Your question, yeah, the Taiwan institutional media culture is unfortunately influenced by the need for so-called real time news. The real time news…
Oh, it’s very futuristic, isn’t it?
They represent alternate timelines.
Right, and the quantum superposition collapse on one of the futures.
Very sci-fi. [laughs] Yes, exactly. The CEC maintains the official tallying. The fact that the institutional media, based on the real time reports from the live streaming or observing of the tallying, which is a Taiwan specialty, differ, obviously, based on which group they are working with.
They, of course, have their own bias in which tallying stations they dispatch people to. I wouldn’t say it’s even misinformation, because these numbers are based somewhat on observations. There is systemic bias in those observations is what I’m saying.
Then that’s, as you mentioned, what they think that the viewers want or the readers expect. That is the interesting configuration in the Taiwanese institutional media landscape.
That is also one of the reason why there is a lot of pressure on the editorial process to be shortened when there is only a source from the social media or when there is only a source from even end-to-end encrypted channels.
All you have is a few screen grabs, but then there is enormous pressure to make a real time news on the Internet first. Then maybe you correct that later. Then after a few corrections, that appears on the television. At that point, it can be scrutinized by the NCC now.
Right.
Only after. Sometimes, the NCC commissioners, councilmembers discover that there is only seconds between this step and this step.
They would say, then, that when this station originally apply for a license for the public broadcasting spectrum or some cable that is running on public land or whatever, they say that they will have this and this fact checking process or editorial process between this stage and this stage, but they literally did it in 30 seconds.
If there is a way to do in 30 seconds what other institutional media usually takes an hour to do, I want to learn about that technology.
The most obvious explanation is that they skipped parts of the process that they committed that they will do. NCC issue letters to them. Recently, in the past few months, also fine to them.
Does Ning want to answer the question?
OK. It’s a fine fine.
In videos, definitely. In writing, difficult, because written Tâi-gí is either using Taiwan romanization or Tâi-lô. It’s a previous version.
Very few people, other than people who work in religious missions who invented Pe̍h-ōe-jī in the first place, or people who are computational linguistics, like me, that can even type correctly the characters needed for the Tagalog romanization.
Mostly, you see it’s using hànzì, writing a soundalike of Tâi-gí, which is not very convincing, because it seems like parody speech, just by nature. If you say, for example, one of the most-heard phrases during the election during is “tòng-suán”.
Oh, you did?
OK, you learned some Tâi-gí? That’s excellent.
Like if you write tòng-suán in hànzì, of course, it is just the same as the Mandarin hànzì. You wouldn’t think that it’s Tâi-gí when it’s written like that. If you want to write and have it sound like Tâi-gí in your reader’s mind, you have to write “frozen garlic,” like 凍蒜.
Then frozen garlic is comedic by nature. [laughs] It loses potency as an outrage-provoking device, because once you laugh about it, you cannot feel outrage.
That’s very difficult. Of course, I must say that the public television systems, the public television station, is now teaching the recommended characters and the correct orthography for Tâi-gí.
The Ministry of Education, yes. That is a worthy goal that I also personally helped. We all know that it will take another 5 or 10 years before that become the main orthography, though.
In romanization? Yes.
