Discuss the Herd Behavior on Voting within Virtual Community-Take 2014 Taipei Mayor Election for example

• Main Authors: Chia-Chin Liu, 劉嘉欽
• Other Authors: Yi-Fan Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/u37uwf

碩士 === 國立臺北商業大學 === 資訊與決策科學研究所 === 103 === As the connection of people and getting information dependent more on network in this generation, the online virtual community was formed to respond the requirement of faster information access and keeping in touch with friends. Network possesses the qualities that are free from the restriction of time and space in connecting the lives among each other and creating interaction. In reality, the phenomenon of behaving identically with the group in order to obtain group identification referred to “Herd Behavior.” We may also perform the behavior which is similar to the real life in virtual community. With the awakening of consciousness and development of information technology, online community media platform has become the place for people to give speeches and the center to share beliefs. Users can comment, discuss, critic and gather information on the network, and the complicated news events are collected as reference collection, which all indicated the transparency and popularizing of information. The study aimed at discussing if the voting acts of voters in virtual community develop the herd behavior through the sharing and connection of online community media. This study involved the most popular virtual community in Taiwan, PTT, as the research subject. The study adopted in-depth interview method to interview 10 senior users of PTT who considered themselves highly-involving in election events and themed in 4 subjects: the characteristics of candidates, the identification of users to virtual community, the interaction of candidates and users of PTT, and the voter intimidation on the network. The study revealed the online community which possesses the multiple information resources has higher capability of objective judgment than viewer who receives information from only specific media, and thus would not form the herd behavior. Most of the interviewees believed that the comments and nicknames from community help them learn more about candidates, which increases the confidence of their voting behavior.