Topic 2: introduction （Photo：TIGCR）

Visit https://youtu.be/713ITz2W1S8 (in Mandarin) for the clip relevant to the workshop.

Taiwan Institute for Governance and Communication Research (TIGCR) invited Associate Professor Brett V. Benson of Vanderbilt University Department of Political Science to deliver a speech “Understanding the Strategic Logic of the 1992 Consensus in Taiwan-China Relations” on March 22nd, 2021. Prof. Benson first introduced the history of the 1992 Consensus and explained its strategic logic which has been influencing both policy-making in Taiwan and China profoundly since then.

Dr. Benson（Photo：TIGCR）

During the speech, Prof. Benson provided the students of NCCU with data analysis and his incisive visions toward the Consensus. He brought in the terms of “Bargaining” and talked about bargaining tactics existing among Taiwan and China, then he highlighted several reasons why the Taiwanese government would have agreed to make the consensus in 1992.

（Photo：TIGCR）

What are the contributions of the 1992 Consensus? Where will it lead us to? Why general public of Taiwan doesn’t approve of the Consensus anymore? Prof. Benson addressed several issues at the closing of the speech and welcomed the attendees to have discussions with him.

Group event photo（Photo：TIGCR）

Visit https://youtu.be/WXeUTLOtX_I for Dr. Benson’s speech.

Taiwan Institute for Governance and Communication Research (TIGCR) is honored to have Professor Chi Huang, Director of TIGCR, and Associate Professor Hsiang-Kai Dong, Chair of Government Bureaucrats Survey Committee as speakers of the workshop. They used TIGCR-PPS 2018 and TIGCR-TGBS 2018, which are released by TIGCR last year, to showcase TIGCR data archives. With thorough demonstration of the survey data, they illustrated how everyone can explore crucial sociopolitical issues, such as the stances of Taiwanese citizens and civil servants.

The workshop began with Professor Huang introducing TIGCR’s history and data archives. Taiwan Institute for Governance and Communication Research (TIGCR) is a research center established and funded by Ministry of Education in March, 2018. Focusing on policy making, policy communication and polarization, TIGCR hopes to apply the research results to the prevention and alleviation of political polarization. The iconic survey data include TIGCR-PPS 2018, TIGCR-TGBS 2018 and TIGCR-W-PPS 2020. The bilingual data have been released on TIGCR’s website. (Online Application: https://tigcr.nccu.edu.tw/tw/surveys/center. After registration, you can then download the data) Also, Professor Huang used both TIGCR’s open data and Nesstar Online Analysis to demonstrate TIGCR’s pioneering data archives and informative website.

The chart shows the perceived polarization on Unification-Independence issue

Professor Huang used TIGCR-PPS 2018 to analyze people’s cognition of political polarization. The result reveals that about 60% remain neutral on Unification-Independence issue. While KMT supporters prefer unification, most of them still hold neutral opinions on this issue. However, when KMT supporters are asked of DPP supporters’ stances, they all think the other side upholds independence. Similarly, DPP supporters will aggregate biased opinions when viewing KMT supporters. This phenomenon is the so called perceived polarization. 

Next, Associate Professor Hsiang-Kai Dong introduced TIGCR-TGBS 2018. The main goal of TIGCR-TGBS 2018 is to build long-term panel survey of civil servants’ stances on work satisfaction and various issues. Associate Professor Dong took the recent pension reform issue as an example. Contrasting popular assumption, more than half of the civil servants consider pension reform to be reasonable. In addition, nearly 90% of them believe the public won’t sympathize military personnel, civil servants and teachers after the enforcement of pension reform. Even though 56% of civil servants are for pension reform, 70% of them think the government didn’t collect complete information before undergoing the reform, and they aren’t satisfied with the outcomes of the new policy. From the data, we can see that more than half of the civil servants believe the reform will not affect their promotion, and about 64% of them are highly satisfied with their job.

The workshop fully demonstrates how promptly and thoroughly TIGCR releases its data archives. Professor Huang pointed out the contradiction between Taiwanese people’s self-recognition and others’ opinions. Associate Professor Dong used the data to analyze various perspectives on pension reform. In addition to TIGCR’s data archives, you can click the link below to understand how to analyze data using both Nesstar and Stata and to learn more about this workshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHjqPmL_YPE.

Following Data Science Workshop on Thursday, December 5^th (Read more: Practical Application of Data Science: Professor Natalie Pang Tracks Major Incidents in Real-time), Taiwan Institute for Governance and Communication Research (TIGCR) and College of Communication invited Professor Natalie Pang from National University of Singapore to hold another workshop, with the topic “Qualitative Analysis with NVivo”. It’s our privilege to have Associate Professor Kuo-Feng Tseng host this workshop.

 Professor Tseng introduced the workshop

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

Professor Pang introduced qualitative research

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

Professor Natalie Pang first introduced qualitative research. Qualitative research contains rich and flexible research methods, so qualitative data depends on the interpretation of researchers. The research approach focusing on quality and quantity becomes more and more important. However, this mixed-way approach is criticized heavily for the reference of paradigm, underlying philosophy and the rising need of research. What’s more, whether this approach can answer research questions remains in doubt. Speaking of the implementation of qualitative research, Professor Pang reminded students of data-collecting process and the related issues that they need to be aware of. Then, she shared her research experiences on farm women in Australia. Based on words, oral history, videos and photos, she shaped collective memories by building personal knowledge.

Professor Pang shared her research experiences on farm women in Australia

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

Software NVivo can assist researchers to handle documents, voices, videos and photos. This workshop began with learning multiple coding ways. Professor Pang advised that after editing codebook, we should be flexible to modify codebook and theories when reviewing collected data. She used her data to illustrate the way and process of coding. In addition, reliability and validity are crucial as well. There is no uniform standard to analyze in qualitative research, so it is essential to find out suitable standards. She pointed out that triangulation strategy and inter-coder reliability are viable alternatives.

Professor Pang demonstrated the software function

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

Next, Professor Pang demonstrated how to make use of NCapture function to attain data on Twitter, including tweet contents, tweet time, tweet type (retweet or tweet), social network, number of retweet, hashtag, location and number of followers. The data can be utilized on research analysis, it can also be combined with maps and graphs. As for facebook data, we can only obtain public webpages and articles due to the privacy settings of posts and users. According to Professor Pang, privacy settings of social platforms differ; therefore, NCapture cannot be applied to every of them.

Professor Pang demonstrated the software function

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

Finally, she emphasized qualitative and quantitative analysis are important research approaches. We should choose either of them based on research questions. Attendees benefited a great deal from this workshop.

Group photo after the workshop

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

Taiwan Institute for Governance and Communication Research (TIGCR) worked with the College of Communication to invite Professor Natalie Pang from National University of Singapore to hold the workshop “Introduction to Data Science with R” on Wednesday, October 5^th. Professor Natalie Pang taught students how to apply software R to the hottest data science research. This workshop was hosted by Professor Trisha T.C. Lin, Associate Dean of College of Communication and Chair of International Research and Collaboration Committee in TIGCR.

Professor Pang shared her research experiences

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

 Professor Lin introduced the workshop

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A series of news happening in Little India at the night in 2013 shocked the world. An Indian worker was killed by a private bus which angered local pedestrians and workers. The later-arriving police cars and ambulances were destroyed by hundreds of protestors. The death of an Indian sparked off ethnic conflicts. This two-hour riot occurred in relatively stable Singapore. The hashtag Little India Riot (#lir) then appeared on Twitter at that night. Users from everywhere uploaded and updated the news of turbulence in Little India. Professor Natalie Pang analyzed the whole disturbance.

Professor Pang demonstrated how to use R and RStudio

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

In the workshop, Professor Pang shared the topic “About Data Science Myth”. By taking the riot in Little India as an example, Professor Pang used the software Python, excel, R and Tableau in different phases. This workshop focuses on R and RStudio. Professor Pang first discussed about R and RStudio, helping attendees to learn R step by step. She also offered open resources for self-learning. 

Professor Pang demonstrated how to use R and RStudio

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

Professor Pang shared her research experiences on social platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. She pointed out that it is important to get templates during the process of searching data, because we need to edit the contents in the software. Among several social platforms, the openness and consistency of Twitter make it become an important source of analyzing data. In contrast, Facebook, which is popular in Singapore, is not an easy way to reach data. On the one hand, the format of its users’ posts is inconsistent. On the other hand, the news of Cambridge Analytica pushed Facebook to update its privacy setting which requires more efforts in data-collecting.

Eventually, students raised the question about various software and platforms which are mainly used for data science currently. Professor Natalie Pang answered that the choices of software actually depends on the problems users want to solve. Hopefully, this workshop has refreshed and enriched every attendee’s knowledge about data science.

Group photo after the workshop

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

Taiwan Institute for Governance and Communication Research (TIGCR) held the speech “Fake News, Real Problem: The Case of Singapore” on October 4^th, 2019. It is our honor to invite Professor Edson C Tandoc Jr. from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore to deliver the speech for us. As a journalist before, he shared his working experiences and the research of digital news with faculty and students in National Chengchi University to discuss about the problems of fake news.

Professor Tandoc shared his working experiences and the research 

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

First of all, Professor Edson C Tandoc Jr. used real cases to reveal the danger of fake news to a country and society. Because fake news can imitate the format of news, it is difficult for people to identify the truth. The improvement of technology changes our ways to absorb the news. Even though people know it is easier to reach fake news on social media, they are still attracted by free, quick and more entertaining information. In addition, people rely more on the news shared by their friends instead of the ones made by professional journalists. This will worsen the phenomenon of fake news.

Many NCCU students and faculties attended the speech

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

To tackle the issue of fake news, Professor Tandoc encouraged audience to be skeptical with the information they receive. In the age of information overload, we have the responsibility to protect media environment. Once we find out fake news, we should clarify the rumors. Besides, we should also support professional reports, because a piece of valuable news requires a lot of surveys and research. In the end of the speech, Professor Tandoc exchanged the ideas of the types of fake news on different social media with the attendees. By offering different research results and data, he pointed out the reasons why people believe in fake news. Professor Tandoc hopes everyone can beware of fake news.

Group photo after the speech 

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

After the speech, Professor Tandoc was invited to the closed meeting held by our center. TIGCR Director Chi Huang gave the brief introduction of the achievements and database of TIGCR. Professor Tandoc was amazed. He hopes that he can apply for the research data of our center, and we can have more opportunities to work together in the future.

TIGCR Director, Professor Chi Huang introduced TIGCR

(Photo credit: TIGCR)

Professor Tandoc attended the closed-door meeting

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