Digital democracy in Taiwan: opening the internet in the Ma and Tsai era

The Centre of Taiwan Studies is delighted to welcome Sam Robbins to give a talk as part of this year’s Centre of Taiwan Studies Summer School on the rise of 'g0v', civic tech, and the changing relationship between technology, activism, and the state during the Ma and Tsai eras.

In 2012, nebulous online hacker networks began to mobilize around the newly formed 'g0v' community (pronounced 'gov-zero'). A decade later, Taiwan established the Ministry of Digital Affairs. In between, the g0v movement rose to become one of the most famous ‘civic tech’ movements in the world, and Audrey Tang emerged as one of its most charismatic and famous participants. Especially following the Sunflower movement, 'openness' emerged as a key concern for activists and government officials alike. Although ‘civic tech’ has started to gradually lose its purchase, the legacy of the g0v movement still shapes tech policy in Taiwan.

This talk traces this decade of digital activism in Taiwan. Instead of focusing on the most famous technical solutions of this era, this talk instead tries to place digital activism, and activists, back into Taiwanese history, charting the shifting relationship between the government, social movement actors, and the international world of civic tech. Crucially, it asks what we gain from understanding this as a period of 'digital democracy', and what the uneven successes of the era can tell us about the ongoing interaction between technology, democracy and international politics in Taiwan. 

Image credit: Umberto via Unsplash.