What are the cultural issues that dominate the social media scene in Taiwan?
Taiwan English-langauge blogs are dominated by issues related to the China-Taiwan problem and the local politics this creates. Michael Turton, another well-known blogger, and I have talked about this in detail and conclude that ALL the Taiwan'based English language blogs are either extremely strong in their orientation toward Taiwan or at least lean in that direction.

In addition, there are a growing number of blogs that deal with detailed issues in Taiwan. One of the top blogs is a tea blog read mostly by people overseas interested in Taiwan tea. I include my own blog in this category.

Michael also points out that there are hundreds of blogs written by Western Christian missionaries in Taiwan. These people show no interest in joining in the blog-based discourse of other expat residents. One of these bloggers commented on Michael's point in a post of his and I had a long correspondence with him. We have since stopped and have no communication. Such as been my experiement with trying to talk with missionary bloggers.


Do you foresee social media (e.g. blogs) replacing the role of traditional media in Taiwan. Why?
In fact, some bloggers write for the traditional media. The relationship between bloggers and the traditional media is quite tense. As I mentioned, ALL English-language bloggers lean toward a pro-Taiwan political position. This is referred here as Pan-Green. The local traditional media is dominated by what we call the Pan-Blue. Within hours of the 2004 reelection of the Pan-Green DPP, the Pan-Blue political parties began posting comments on websites, bulletin boards and blogs all over the work attacking the elections. Almost instantly, a number significant of blogs were opened in Taiwan to address this Englishlanguage bias. The result of this was that all blogs from the most popular blog server, Typepad - which I use - were blocked in China.


Are there any restrictions in Taiwan that might hinder further development of social media in the country?
A number of the leading English-language bloggers are university teachers. Some of them have expressed concerns about their schools censoring them. At least one of these blogs has a very high sexual content and we figure it's only a matter of time until his school finds out and deals with it.

I personally have experienced none of this. At one point, my direct supervisor told me that she appreciated the attention that my blog drew to our school. She is American and no longer my supervisor. It is not clear to me that her replacements will feeln the same way about my work, although she has been gone for mroe than a year and no one has said anything about this. I suspect that the school continues to feel that the publicity is valuable.


What do you think are some tips to effectively engage the social media scene in Taiwan?
This depends on your goals. If you want strangers to be reading your blog, then you have to pick a topic that others want to read and will stand out. In Taiwan, I do not suggest new bloggers to start writing about politics. The market is crowded and there are some excellent, well-connected analysts out there.

Michael Turton has suggested that new bloggers have to comment frequently on others blogs. They also have to write positively about the bloggers they agree with and know and link to their posts. Blogging is a community and you have to act the same way as you do among your face-to-face contacts if you want people to like you.


Difference between English and Chinese-language blogs:
For some reason, there is a very large divide between English and Chinese blogs. I stress that this is a blog-based difference and not a personal difference. I have meet many of the top Taiwanese bloggers and they are great people. Many of them speak and read excellent English. Also, I know that I have many readers who are local teachers and this problem is not just one of a difference in focus of our blogs.

Michael and I, along with another blogger, Kerim Friedman, have tried very hard to get more local readers involved in our blogs. This has not been successful. It is not clear to me why. Michael, David on Formosa and I have attended a local blogger conference and were well received. We have asked local bloggers why we can't get their attention and participation more. The answer was vague. I have been told that local bloggers are very uncertain about their English and how it will be received.