The instant message app LINE was first used by campaigns in the 2016 Taiwan presidential election. In order to learn how the candidates utilized the LINE app, this research examined the messages posted on the candidate’s LINE official account before the vote.
This study was conducted by a method of quantitative content analysis. All messages on three presidential candidates’ official LINE account were downloaded starting from two months before the vote. The functional theory of political campaign discourse and the functional approach of political visual symbols were utilized to analyze the sample messages. A total of 92 were collected. Tsai emphasized policy over character, while Chu and Soon emphasized character over policy. Research found the images contained a higher portion of image building and emotion. People were more willing to share a post with an emotional appeal.
