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The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
Changing history and adoption of media convergence in Taiwan
Before presenting my analysis, it is essential to briefly introduce the history and
present situation of newspapers and other news media in Taiwan. In the 1930s-1980s,
the news media have been controlled by the KMT party due to political and social
security reasons. The news media in this period are ‘servants’ for the political party
and the country controlled by the government. After the1980s, the KMT authority
gradually lifted the control of news media by allowing more news media to be
launched, which allowed different political and economic forces to penetrate into the
media and journalistic fields. Numerous media companies and news outlets were
launched, and most of them, usually representing different political parties and
business groups, have intimate relationships with the KMT.
The special political and social background of the Taiwanese news media has
created a distinctive news culture and media ecosystem in this island-country. In the
1980’s, there was a loss of control of the news media which led to an
over-competitive media environment in Taiwan and the news media therefore pursued
sensational and entertainment material in order to attract the audiences’ attention.
Paradoxically, the news media in Taiwan has been criticized with their quality by
consumers and scholars, but, on the other hand, journalism related content and
programs are still popular. A survey conducted by a marketing company shows that
only one percent of respondents believe the reports from the news media in Taiwan,
but another survey indicates that related news programs are still the audiences’
favorite programs.
With different goals, the news media in Taiwan has been developing and adopting
different types of convergence strategies since the mid 1990s. Most of news media
start their convergent actions with the aim of attracting consumers and cost-saving.
For example, the United Daily, the China Times, Apple Daily and the Liberty times,
four of the most popular newspapers in Taiwan, now are developing different
convergent strategies. For examples, the United Daily is training their journalists to
produce video news. Apple Daily has launched a computer animation department to
produce multimedia news content.
Compared to a single news company, the media groups in Taiwan seem to achieve the
goal of media convergence easier, because it generally owns different types of media
which make it easier to combine multimedia content. For example, ETtoday.com 2 ,
2 All the empirical data of ETtoday.com used in this paper is collected from 2005-2007, but the online
news website has been sold after my field work, and has since changed its name to Nownews.com. In
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