State, media and democracy in Taiwan

This article presents a historical account of the relationship between the media and politics in Taiwan and its relevance to the democratic process. The history of journalism in Taiwan records the close links between the media and the Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT) regime which came from China in 1949. Within this environment a Taiwanese nation created an underground media network that competed for cultural sovereignty. By the late 1980s media control by the state had evolved into a form of market censorship. In the 1990s the emergence of corporatized media has inhibited journalism in communicating democracy, because the media seem to exclude citizens from a space in which they can contribute to the shaping of national identities.